Guided Bruce and his cousin Steve for a full-day trip starting just after 8 am. Bruce has joined me on a couple of trips this year. His extended family is renting a place on Keuka Lake for the week, so Seneca Lake seemed like a good call. He's trying to get familiar with the fishing on the Finger Lakes and we fished Cayuga earlier this year, which was a somewhat slow trip and then we did Owasco Lake a month or two ago, which was much more productive.
Fishing out of Sampson State Park looked very promising to start. We had a lot of baitfish along with good numbers of lake trout in fairly shallow water (for this time of year) but they weren't hitting well. We gave it a good shot - for at least 90 minutes to two hours before moving. Our second location proved to me much better (some of it was likely timing) and the guys started getting some good action on lakers running 19" to 23". Most were stocked fish but a few appeared wild.
Once the guys had enough trout to feed the dozen or so people at their rental, we tried some bass fishing. We didn't have much time left in the day, but I wanted to show Bruce the drop-shotting technique. We also worked some blade baits. Blades can be tricky to work. I did a demo for Steve and made one cast and hooked a lucky big largemouth bass, which got off by the boat. It's amazing how often I've had that happen. It's the same with other guides. Just a weird phenomena. On my own, my fishing is rarely ever like that! Last time out here, I didn't encounter any largemouths. Anyways, Steve made a couple of casts after my demo and we saw a fish take to the air! I thought for a moment it could've been a brown trout, but I think it was a good smallmouth! Steve got the slack out of the line, but the fish got off in short order.
The dropshotting was mostly a goby-fest, but Steve did hook a chunky "tackle-busting" bass which also got off. It was a fun day. Only a few anglers and boaters were out on the lake today.
