Guided Mark I. for a 6-hour day starting just after 9 am. Forecasts called for calm conditions in the morning turning into a south wind around 6 mph after noon, thus our shorter day (usually we do a full-day.) Calm conditions generally make for tough salmon fishing, whether trolling or casting with gear, and with fly-fishing it can be even tougher. We did not see much of anything during our first hour. We kept working uplake and I started seeing some decent numbers of spooky salmon. Unfortunately they weren't showing much interest in our presentations other than occasional sluggish distant follows.
Angling Zone contact/friend on the lake Pete has been having some success on lake trout via trolling. He's been catching them as a bonus fish when targeting salmon. I had Mark work some laker jigs around an area where Pete had picked up a few lakers earlier in the season. We had a couple of follows, but no hits. I believe we marked a school of perch in 85' of water on the bottom! That's deep, but they weren't around for long.
Eventually the wind came up a bit, we set up on a tried and true area and shortly thereafter Mark started getting some follows and had a couple of hits on one cast. We were getting closer! Finally, in one area Mark made a cast and a fish immediately started taking his fly-line sideways. He set into a decent salmon that ran 19". We even tried a little bit of spin-fishing towards the end of the trip with no luck.
Pete was out trolling and although the bite wasn't as hot as it had been the last couple of times he was out, they managed a laker and some nice salmon up to 25". Fellow guide Kurt Hoefig had a gear fishing trip today and did very well.
Here's what I'm seeing on Seneca Lake this season (starting with November):
We have very good numbers of landlocked Atlantic salmon on the lake this year so far. The condition of the fish is generally very good; only a few fish are showing lamprey scars. A lot of mainly smaller salmon are in relatively shallow water (less than 20') and feeding on round gobies. These fish are doing what salmon were doing on Cayuga Lake in the mid-2010s - acting like suckers and working the bottom of the lake for gobies. Many salmon are also suspended over deeper water and finding plenty of alewives to eat. Lake trout are also in the mix and anglers familiar with the lake will note (on their sonars) much more fish and bait activity on the bottom of Seneca Lake this year than in prior years.
Salmon prefer alewives and there are plenty of those on Seneca Lake as well. Pete keeps his share of fish and mostly has been finding large alewives in them. The fish on Seneca Lake do have many options for food.
Today wasn't an ideal fly-fishing day with the lack of wind. Like on Cayuga Lake in recent years, I think our best salmon fly-fishing will be later in the winter and early spring once the days get longer and the sun gets more intense. I think mid-February through mid-April will probably produce the best salmon fly-fishing with March usually being tops. Now is a great time to cast various lures for salmon. I will be out here again shortly as well as on Cayuga Lake. Nothing like getting the fishing/guiding season off to an early start!
