If there’s a harder hitting fish in our region, I haven’t found it yet! These fish are native to the area and are never stocked. Big pike love soft-finned forage fish and cold water. They find plenty of each here in the Finger Lakes. Pike in this area are neglected due to the fact that most anglers target trout, salmon, bass and perch.

Traditionally, when anglers think of northern pike and the Finger Lakes, the first lake that comes to mind for many is Seneca Lake.  This lake has long held a reputation as being a top lake for northerns.  When the habitat is present, this lake is capable of producing terrific numbers of nice sized pike.  Unfortunately, the amount and quality of pike habitat (aka weeds) in this lake can vary greatly from year to year.  Over the past few years, there has been much less weedy habitat than in prior years.  For some reason, the milfoil tends to die out and disappear just as water temperatures get conducive for shallow water pike activity.  Seneca Lake still has respectable numbers of pike, but the fishing quality hasn’t been great or consistent over the past three years or so.

Cayuga Lake offered some top-notch pike fishing in the 1990s and right up through the 2010s.  Like Seneca Lake, the pike fishing here has been a shadow of its former self in recent years.  Lake levels are kept low here in the winter and spring.  This helps to prevent shoreline erosion and damage as well as lamprey spawning success, but it greatly impedes the reproductive success of pike.  Pike have been scarce in the lake’s southern portions for years now.  Like Seneca Lake, weed growth continually changes on this lake and some areas are hot one year and void of fish the next year.  The northern half of the lake seems to be producing better pike fishing than further south, but they’re still a bonus species as of this writing.  There are plenty of pickerel up there, but you might get one northern for every 25 pickerel.

Owasco is coming on strong as a top-notch pike fishery.  The fish appear healthy and well-fed and there are very solid numbers of young fish here as well as some nice 5 to 12lbers.  I landed a 40″ beauty here in 2021 fishing with John Sander of “Sander’s Guides” fame.  I had clients catch a couple of beauties here in 2023 – fish up to 41″ long! 2024 was also very good as was 2025.

Keuka Lake offers an occasional bonus fish, but it’s mostly pickerel over there.

Conesus Lake is a consistently good pike fishery in the Finger Lakes.  It’s the westernmost Finger Lake and out of my guiding range, but it’s capable of producing some beautiful northerns.

Pike love just about any lure, especially flashy, gaudy colored ones. Fly-fishing is deadly for pike of all sizes, and I consider fly-fishing for pike one of my specialties.

Giant pike aren’t common in the Finger Lakes, but all the Finger Lakes with good pike populations – i.e. Cayuga, Seneca, Owasco, Conesus and even Keuka Lake have produced 20lb+ fish over the years.   Fishing during the winter is one of the most productive times to chase pike in the Finger Lakes region. Fish are often quite active and the weed growth is limited – concentrating the fish.