Seneca Lake out of Seneca Lake State Park 7/15 + 16

"We all came down to Seneca, on the City of Geneva Shoreline."  The last two days have me thinking about the Deep Purple song "Smoke On The Water."  I can still remember a kid in my 4th grade class bringing in that 45 (record) back in 1973/74 around 4th grade.  Just when I thought the smoke was all in the past, here we are in 2026 with new rounds of smoke blowing in from Canada.  I checked Canada's wildfire map and the most fires were burning just north of the Minnesota Boundary Waters, so west and especially northwest or west-northwest winds are going to blow the smoke over.  How the smoke played into the fishing is anyone's guess.  We are also around a new moon phase, so darkness reigns supreme.

7/15 AM:  Had a recent call from Kevin, who was staying on Seneca Lake with family and wanted to book a trip.  He was out with his brother in-law Chris back on August 4th, 2019.  That trip was a good one, with me giving him some flack about bananas and then him catching a fish on the first drop of his jig after eating his.  Kevin brought the bananas again today.

We went out of Geneva in order to minimalize the impacts of possible gusty north and west winds.  Fishing started out slow with Chris landing one laker.  I think the guys had some short hits but no hook-ups.  After three hours of futility (around good numbers of non-biting fish) it was time to try somewhere else.  Our first stop led to the guys doubling up.  Kevin had the better hook-up, but the fish got off.

We tried a few areas and then settled on an area that I've had some good fishing on periodically over the past 7 or 8 years.  Chris nabbed a decent fish in short order.  Kevin lost a good hookup just below the boat before it was in netting range.  Then Kevin caught another and another and another.  We can't blame the bananas since both guys ate them!  But either way, it was a fun day and very smoky.  It was reminiscent of an eclipse.  It was so hazy that I didn't need my polarized glasses and the sun was dulled like the moon - you could look right at it.  Kevin did have a follow from a silvery fish in one area, which was cool.

7/16:  Today I guided Scott, from last Thursday with his son Joseph and daughter in-law Alanna.  Last time I had these three out was on Cayuga Lake for some insane summertime jigging near AES.   This was the first time on Seneca Lake for Joe and Alanna and the first time here out of Geneva for Scott.  Today was another somewhat challenging day.  We started out shallow with some huge schools of bait around and some light hits.  Alanna lost a laker to get us started, but shortly hooked up and landed a 20"er.   Joe also nabbed a 20"er early on.  We kept fishing and like yesterday, the bite was stubborn - lots of fish around but not a lot of solid grabs.

I moved us back down to yesterday's hotspot and Joe really showed us that he had the hot hand!  Alanna had a couple of light hits, but Joe nabbed a nice laker or two, then a 24" salmon and a 30" fat laker!  After that we tried a few other areas without much apart from light hits.  Today wound up being a 6-hour trip.  Fun day and the smoke wasn't as bad as yesterday.  You certainly didn't want to look at the sun today!  It smelled just like a campfire out on the lake.  Hopefully we won't be seeing much more smoke.