I'm trying to do my "homework" checking on some fall patterns on my local Fingers. I managed to fish Seneca for around 5 hours Wed. PM and can report that pike are very active on the lake - pretty much from end to end. The drawback is that the pike are small - running from 18" to 22". Not what I fish Seneca Lake for! They are fly-fishable and I expect the size of the fish caught to improve considerably as water temperatures cool down. Lake trout were a "no go" for me. I marked a few inactive fish and I checked from Sampson north to Belhurst. I think a lot of them are spawning right now in the southern third of the lake. Bass should be very active, though I didn't fish them.
Cayuga was terrific this morning! I motivated myself to get on the water just after first light and the bass fishing was great. My first fish was a 13" smallmouth - basically a dink! My second was probably my biggest Cayuga smallie to date - a 20" fat slob! If this wasn't a legit 5lber, it was darn close! The fishing was great throughout the morning and I landed another 7 to 8 fish - all nice 16" to 18" fat fall bass. The jerkbait bite was on and I couldn't have asked for a better morning. I couldn't catch or hook a pike to save my life. My guess is that they are still deep. My bass came from 7' to 30' of water south of Taughannock.
This afternoon I took my fishing class down to Watkins Glen and they fished the pier. Plenty of small northerns were around. One nice smallie around 17" was landed as were a bunch of rockbass. The highlight of the trip was a beautiful landlocked salmon around 24" that hit a white superfluke! Nice job Melissa! The fish was a male in spawning mode. So mixed bag time is here! Both Seneca and Cayuga Lakes are around 55/56 degrees on the surface and fishing pressure is light to non-existent.