Seneca Lake continues to provide good to excellent fishing for Landlocked Atlantic Salmon along with some bonus fish as well.
3/20 PM: Got out here on my own to do some scouting after last week's rain and blow. I also wanted to field-test some new fly-patterns I've been working on, as well as check out some potential shallow water lake trout fishing areas. The lake level is at full-pool, if not higher. Water levels here continue to rise. Water temps are 37 degrees on the surface.
I found good numbers of salmon of various sizes in a bunch of different areas today. I have a couple guided trips coming up and wanted to make sure I knew what was happening.
3/21: Guided Ron for a full-day trip today starting at 9 am. Forecasts called for rain later in the day, and it sure did rain! Thankfully both of us have top-notch rain gear and we managed to stay warm and dry. Ron's been chasing landlocked salmon with me for a long time - probably going back to 2009 or 2010. He had a terrific day today! His first salmon came within maybe 30 minutes of our trip and it was no dink! Instead, after a great battle I slid the net under a 26" chrome beauty!
The weather conditions dictated some of what we could do when we began the day, but as the winds diminished, we were able to fish more areas effectively. On the day, Ron managed a small rainbow, a nice 27"/28" northern pike, a 23" salmon and a bunch of smaller salmon. He lost a really large salmon after a good fight. That fish probably went 25" to 26" long.
3/22: Guided Jeremy today for close to a full-day. We started at 9:30 am and he realized that he had to go around 4 pm, so we cut things 90 minutes early. He's a tremendous fly-fisherman with experience around the world. Not only that, but he's also a regional die-hard that's lived in various states and spent serious time chasing brook trout, salmon, steelhead and more.
We had an interesting day today with a slow start after the frigid night. Cold rain and freezing cold nights can put a damper on spring fishing. Warm water dissipates and fish scatter. He had a couple of very nice salmon chase in his flies for our first two hours. After that, we tried some gear and for some reason we were able to get the fish to go well on the spinning tackle. It gave us some clues for our fly-fishing presentations. Jeremy caught a lot of fish today but they ran on the smaller side. Best one was a hard-fighting 21" salmon. We had a lot of 15" to 16" (Seneca legal) chunkers that gave good accounting of themselves.
It was a fun day, but the promised sun never materialized and it stayed cold all day. I don't think we broke the 30s today! It certainly wasn't what many casual anglers would call "fishing weather!" That's for sure.
