Seneca Lake out of Watkins Glen 3/20
What a difference a day and lake makes! Guided Mark for the full day on Seneca Lake starting at around 10:45 am. Conditions were nearly perfect for fly-fishing salmon on Seneca. We had a light south wind and a high sun. Lake level is high. Water temps were 39 to 40 degrees. Mark always fishes hard and we’ve had some difficult trips together (as well as some successful ones) and I was really hoping he could get into the salmon. Lots of boats were out – both trollers and perch fishermen. On our first drift Mark had 3 hits and we knew we were going to be in business.
Fishing was very good to downright excellent. Mark managed to land 14 landlockeds – 10 were legal sized. His largest two fish were each 25.5″! One of the big ones fought incredibly well with some great acrobatics, nice runs and deep digging, though they all gave good accounts of themselves. We released all but one fish. The high lamprey population in the lake was very evident. Every fish except one or two of the sub-legals showed signs of at least one, if not two lamprey attacks. Both intermediate and Type 3 sinking lines produced fish, with the full sinking line accounting for the lion’s share. We used my bionic smelt pattern in white.
Trollers we spoke with had varying degrees of success. Some folks only caught a few sublegal/small fish. Others did well and a few rainbows were taken. Great day!