Singe Post

Guided three full-days in a row:  Landlocked Salmon fishing remains good to excellent on Seneca Lake.  Numerous smaller fish are around, but there are also good numbers of fish in various year-classes that keep things very interesting!  I've been casting and fly-casting for salmon on this lake from my boat since the late-fall of 2001.  Even with 25 years of experience on this lake targeting salmon, I'm still seeing things this year that I never saw before and I'm still learning a lot about the mysterious ways of these fish.  It's amazing.

3/8:  Today I guided Dan and his friend Dave.  Dan has been out with me several times over the years, both for lake trout and longnose gar trips.  He's very busy with work and it's taken us 5 years or more to coordinate this trip.  Finding good days to salmon fish isn't easy in the winter and requires flexibility.  The weather is a huge factor this time of year.

I spent some time texting Dan going over the directions to the boat launch.  Unfortunately he put in the wrong ones and wound up at the "Lucky Hare" brewery in Owego, instead of Watkins Glen!  Yes, there are three different Lucky Hares.  Next time I'll use a more error-proof location for the GPS.  Their delay gave me time for a long overdue truck interior cleaning.  We were underway by 9:45 am.  Fishing conditions were a little challenging to start.  I came close to hitting a huge log that was just barely submerged - this thing had a diameter resembling a telephone pole!  It would not have been good.

We got into some fish in the third area we tried.  Dave landed a nice brown on a stickbait.  After that we had a small salmon and a good salmon.  We worked some different areas and got into quite a few salmon as the day progressed.  I believe the top fish was around 24".  Great day and the weather was amazing!

The one great thing about being on the water a few days in a row is getting dialed in on what's going on.  Keeping a finger on the pulse of the fishing is important.  So I was psyched to get Gordon out after the full-day with Dan and Dave.

3/9:  After checking a lot of areas with Dan and Dave, I knew exactly where I wanted to spend the majority of the day with Gordon.  We wound up having a great day despite the challenging winds at times.  Gordon loves to fly-fish, but that often gets better as the day goes on and the sun gets high and water warms up.  We started with the fly tackle anyways and he had some hits, but no solid hookups, so we went to spinning gear to at least get a few quick fish in the boat.  It worked and we were off and running.

He enjoyed the steady action with the gear.  The lake was windy and had some chop.  Once we got into a semi-protected area, Gordon went back to the fly.  We didn't see much until BAM!  He was into a strong fish on the fly!  After a spirited battle, I netted a beautiful 24" fish (if I remember correctly.)  That fish made the day.  Later on we checked a bunch of areas and he caught a couple more very nice sized salmon along with plenty of smaller ones on gear.

3/10:  Day 3 was with Mark I.  Again, I knew right where we were going to fish, although we tried a different area to start with action from a couple of dinks on gear.  Mark loves fly-fishing, but is open to whatever works best.  Today, our strategy was to locate fish with gear, then go to the fly.  When the bite slowed on the fly, Mark cast the spinning rod.  If he immediately started getting hits/follows on the gear, we switched up the flies.  This method allowed us to optimize our fly-fishing presentations!  It gave us a lot of insight into what was triggering the fish.

We had a terrific day with Mark nabbing 5 fish on the fly and double-digits on the spinning rod.  Mark lost two very nice fish on the gear - one was probably around 24" to 25" and the other a fat one around 23".  He did manage to land a nice 25"er late in the day, but bobbled the hold when I was trying to get a photo and sent the fish back on its way into the lake without bonking its head!  So the bad news was, we weren't able to get a nice photo of the fish (although he did take some great go-pro footage throughout the day) but at least we didn't harm it!

One of the highlights of the day was seeing a big beaver swimming around in the lake not far from a creek mouth!  We also saw a cool diving bird of some sort that I could not identify.

Cayuga Lake's water level is up at least a foot.  So day by day, launching should get easier.  With all of the run-off that we are receiving now, the lakes are all rising.  We could actually see some minor flooding on Seneca Lake if we get the forecasted rain.  Although the Canal Authority tries to keep Cayuga Lake low in March, they will not flood out the residents "down stream" on the Seneca River, so expect Cayuga Lake to continue to rise until we dry out a bit.  By that time, the lake may already be up on schedule.