Fishing has generally been good to excellent lately on Seneca and Owasco Lakes and fair to good on Cayuga Lake. I have not had any reports from the other cold water lakes lately. Cayuga Lake is showing green flecks around the Dean's Cove area and near Kidders. I believe swimming areas have been closed as well. I would expect the entire lake to get green within a few days, although hopefully it won't. Owasco Lake's northern portions are murky on the surface, but that's likely due to the heavy rainfall from a couple of days ago. Seneca Lake is in good shape.
7/9 AM: Today I had Chris Kenyon, who writes for the Finger Lakes Times and has done tourism promotions for Wayne County, along with Bill Hilts Jr., who is located in Niagara County. These guys started the LOC Derby quite some time ago. I have a lot of fun with these guys so we're trying to make this an annual get together. Bill is very involved with Lake Ontario's fishing (and did promotion for Niagara County until Charter Captain Frank Campbell took over) and if you read the New York Outdoor News, you'll see a lot of his writing. He also does a weekly fishing report for the Buffalo News which I contribute to.
Whether trolling for salmon, browns and rainbows, or jigging for lake trout, Seneca Lake's fishery has come a long ways since the gloom and doom of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Brad Hammers, the biologist that manages the lake, along with DEC Region 8 and others, have worked long and hard to get the lampreys under control, research the lake and adjust the stocking numbers. We are seeing the fruits of his, and their labor. The lake trout population is expanding here. There are a lot of young fish around - I'm not talking dinks, but 22" to 24" fish. Some older battle-scarred (for the most part) survivors of the lamprey era are also swimming around, as are some clean looking fish that managed to avoid the lamprey infestation. Anyone that's been a fan of this website can track over 20 years of ups and downs on Seneca Lake via my reports.
We had some somewhat slow fishing to start after we got underway around 6:45 am. The fish were around but not super-cooperative, although they showed some signs of getting more aggressive. As the morning went on, fish began chasing jigs better. Bill had the hot hand today, but Chris had a lot of chances - both guys landed some nice fish. We wound up catching and releasing 9 nice lakers - most in the 23" to 26" range, but one at 19" and a couple over 27" up to 30" as well. Most fish were very clean in terms of lamprey marks, with the exceptions of the larger, older fish. We had a good mix of stocked and wild fish. They all looked well-fed. Hot colors included white/chartreuse tail, limetreuse, chartreuse silk. We did not keep any fish today, but for my money these Seneca Lake lake-trout are some of the tastiest in the region.
