Guiding Alec, Evan and Ben for a 1/2 day trip getting underway at 6:45 AM. Alec and Evan were out with me on this same date back four years ago - in 2021 on Cayuga Lake out of Dean's Cove. On that trip, we dealt with the algae bloom, but still managed to get some fish. Today's trip featured better fishing!
We launched out of Geneva and Alec nabbed one laker in around 90' up there. South winds had pushed a lot of warm water up north and we had good numbers of fish ranging from 80' or so out to maybe 110'. They weren't too cooperative first thing in the morning, so we ran downlake and tried different areas. Once I got us a bit out of the wind, the fish became cooperative. I just had the guys work a couple mile long stretch drifting from deeper water up the drop-off into the shallows, basically zigging and zagging along, and on nearly every drift someone caught, lost or missed fish. So it wound up being a solid morning with double-digit hookups, but 7 fish landed. All were chunky, well-fed lake trout. All were also hatchery fish. Each fish had fin-clips, although some had regenerated a bit and probably would have fooled all but the most careful observer into thinking they were wild fish. The guys kept two for the Trager and both had been feasting fairly heavily on alewives. We had a few encounters with smaller "silver fish" - perhaps landlocked salmon.
Today was the Rochester Power Boat Association's Annual "Poker Run" and fortunately we got off of the lake before they reached Geneva. Hopefully they've improved their behavior over the years, but I found some of the operators to be very careless back in the mid-2000s when I guided this lake as much as I did Cayuga. There was a fatal boating accident maybe 8 years ago around the Showboat Motel, and that may have scared some of these operators "straight" so to speak. Either way, it was a perfect day to be out on Seneca Lake weather-wise and a great time was had by all!
