Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen 2/27 + 28 (AM)

2/27:  Guided Carl for a full-day today starting just after 9:30 am.  Last year he was out with me around this time of year and managed a rainbow trout on bottom in around 40' of water on a bladebait!  We also had some salmon action then.  Seneca Lake in 2026 is probably the best landlocked salmon fishery in the northeastern United States.  We are seeing excellent numbers of fish throughout the lower lake with multiple year-classes represented.  Any cast can result in a 14" fish or a 28" fish, but most fish are running 14" to 17".  There are plenty of 20" to 23" fish around as well.  A few brown trout and rainbow trout are also around.  Why this lake is fishing so well is something I'll address below.

The weather forecasts that I saw were calling for calm conditions with south winds picking up in the afternoon.  It wound up being the opposite, we had a good southerly to start and then by early afternoon the wind died down and blew gently out of the west until becoming calm.  In many years past, calm winds would really put a damper on the bite.  Today, that wasn't the case.  We had some of our best fishing after the wind died down.  Carl had a great day with solid double-digit numbers of nice sized salmon running up to just under 25".  He had a lot of large fish follow.  He also landed a good number of 18" to 21" chunky fish.  We had relatively few dinks today and most fish were at least legal sized.  He also nabbed a 20" chunky brown that fought well.  Jigs and stickbaits did the trick.

When clients are keeping some fish for the table, I encourage them to keep fish with lamprey scars and/or hook scars.  It's also a good idea to keep any fish that are injured - that goes without saying!  Today's 25" salmon can be tomorrow's 28" or perhaps even larger!  We had a terrific day and Carl was satisfied early, so we wound up the trip a good hour and change early.  Can't beat that!

2/28 AM:  Today I met Jim and his friend Perry at the launch at around 8:25 am and we were underway shortly thereafter.  Last year, I had a very tough half-day trip after a cold front blew through and the fish shut off to a large extent.  I didn't want that to happen today, so we did our best to beat the weather system's approach.  We had decent numbers of salmon today (double-digits) and a small rainbow, but didn't encounter too many bigger fish.  Our best today was Perry's 23"er.  We had a lot of 15"+ salmon on the day.  On both days, we covered a lot of water and most of our fish have been coming from areas I don't fish often for salmon.  The fish bit fairly steadily after the front came through, but not as good as earlier in the day.

Why is Seneca Lake fishing so well for salmon?  I used to talk to former DEC Biologist Jeff Robins occasionally and he told me something that makes a lot of sense:  When you've had a couple of bad lamprey years and the lampreys get under control (that is, the population gets greatly reduced) the fishing over the next year is often superb.  A lamprey infestation kills off most of the predator fish - mainly lake trout, but also larger browns, salmon and rainbows.  A lot of northern pike also die-off.  So when salmon are stocked, they don't have nearly as many predators to evade.  Also, the lack of predators results in booming numbers of baitfish.

Angling Pressure has also been very low here!  These salmon just aren't being targeted much apart from the winter fishery (which usually features pretty light fishing pressure) and then during the Memorial Weekend Derby.  Apart from that, there are a few charters that harvest their share of salmon, browns, rainbows and lakers, but the angling pressure here is very light throughout the summer and fall.  The "Charter Fleet" here (and that term really doesn't apply here) is about 5% of what it is on Cayuga Lake.  I do a lot of lake trout trips here during the late-spring, summer and early fall, often covering the lake from Sampson/Dresden north to Geneva - sometimes in a day.  If I see three boats out trolling, that's a lot.  Cayuga Lake gets lots more fishing pressure.  This lake is huge and can get very rough fast, it just doesn't lend itself to a lot of day-to-day fishing pressure.

Why is Cayuga Lake not producing the salmon like it used to?  That's the million dollar question and even DEC really doesn't know.  I think a lot of it comes down to predation from lake trout.  Even since round gobies got into Cayuga Lake, many lake trout have been prowling the shallows in the spring, when salmon are stocked.  We also have a huge cormorant nesting colony at the south end of Cayuga Lake with many, many more fish-eating birds than Seneca has.  Those are my two best theories.

Another factor is that it's my understanding is that the South Otselic hatchery has been raising salmon for stocking in Seneca and Cayuga Lakes.  The crew over there does a great job with fish production and I'm guessing that the quality of stocked salmon we're receiving is top-notch!  I don't know what percentage of our salmon are coming from there, whether it's all or a portion, but they do a great job.  Think about the tiger musky fishery we had on Otisco Lake over the past couple of decades.

Regardless of what's going on, the bottom line is that the salmon fishing on Seneca Lake really can't get much better.  Now's the time to enjoy it before the next "issue" comes around!