Seneca Lake 5/29 – 31

I checked out Seneca Lake on my own on Friday, then guided 1/2-day trips on Saturday and Sunday.  Here's the breakdown:

5/29:  Went over to Sampson State Park to get my annual Sessler (Sampson and Geneva/Seneca Lake State Park) permit.  After picking that up, I went out and checked on the fishing - I wanted to get one small to medium sized lake trout for dinner and then see what was happening in mid-lake areas.  I tried some casting for bass/pike around the park for 1/2 hour without action.  I set up on lake trout and it didn't take long before I caught my dinner - a 20" hatchery laker.  This fish spit up a live sculpin!  When I filleted it, I found another sculpin or two plus some young gobies.  It's good to see the sculpin hanging on, since they must deal with a lot of competition from the aggressive round gobies.  Anyhow,  I had a better fish (maybe 25") up to the boat in short order then missed a few hits in a row.  That was all I needed to see.  Fishing was good!

I tried some tube jigs and blade baits in a couple of other areas without success.  I did see a fisherman catch a large northern pike off of his dock!  He was clearly excited about that!  I tried some similar areas with jerkbaits but didn't get anything going.  The lake remains very cold - 50 degrees in some areas and 56 in others.

5/30:  Today I guided regulars Kevin and his buddy Drew, plus their friend Andrew (basically two Drews.)  I was hoping they'd come down on Friday with the west and WNW winds, but they couldn't swing it, so we were stuck up in Geneva on Saturday with winds out of the north at around 15 mph gusting close to 30 at times!  Any dog would have said it best:  "Ruff!"

It was a cold morning and I wore the same stuff I wore back in February!  Knit hat, long underwear, fleece, down vest and Simms Insulated bibs and jacket.  I'm getting older and colder, that's for sure, but at least I was comfortable.  Andy did get cold and Drew got a bit wet from some of our runs.  We did the best we could in the high winds with some drifts.  This trip clearly could have gone either way - a success or a disappointment, but fortunately my strategy worked and we were able to get into a pretty good (for the conditions) shallow bite.  Andy had the hot hand, but everyone caught fish and we wound up with 8 nice lakers (all released.)  Most were hatchery fish - I think we had one wild one out of the bunch.  Nobody else was out there fishing that we could see.  Some kayakers worked the river and we saw guys in a bass boat fishing around the park.

5/31 AM:  I met Heather, Angela and Layken at Seneca Lake State Park just before 7:30 am and we were underway shortly thereafter.  Today was the day of the full moon and that can have fish feeding extensively at night.  Anyways, yesterday's strong northerly blow made for cold water on Seneca's north end.  We encountered a few fish and Angela managed a laker out in around 125' of water.  The bite definitely appeared tentative and we never marked any bait today.

We wound up working down lake and finding good numbers of lakers from around 50' to 90'.  Heather wound up nabbing a solid 27"er in one area and lost another.  Some hits were had all the way around, but the fish weren't gobbling the jigs very well.  We kept working downlake and again, managed to get around plenty of fish but the bite was off.  I worked hard trying to get Layken into a fish - we came close but it never happened.  She probably had 5 or 6 hits on the day but none of them were more than momentary grabs.  She did a good job, as did everyone onboard, but it was just a tentative bite.

It did wind up being an absolutely gorgeous day on the water with air temps hitting the upper-60s, plentiful sunshine and peace and quiet!  Very few boats were out today - we saw a few sailboats along with a couple of trollers and that was about it.

Docks still are not in at Seneca Lake State Park.  I'd expect them to go in shortly.  Water levels are still high, but the forecast calls for much drier conditions than the past two months, that's for sure!