senecamike

A big fish hammered my lure. We fought. Fish spat the hook. Hook caught the attached lamprey, and pulled it free. I hauled in the lamprey and beheaded it. Sometimes.... the fish win! lamprey eel.MOV

I respect your opinion Sk8man but beg to differ on ROOT causes. Yes the invasive mussels filter out some of the plankton which the baitfish also need, and the invasive spiny water fleas also eat some plankton soup. But the quantity of mussels around Keuka was minimal at worst (they were nowhere near as dense as on Seneca, Ontario etc at worst) and they declined in recent years... along with the sawbellies of course. FYI I had properties on both Keuka and Seneca.... I pumped lake water.... I know how dense the goddamn mussels were at their peaks! The mussels didn't do so well in Keuka .....not enough plankton floating around to feed 'em! So. In Keuka now theres just not enough plankton to feed ANY of the critters at the low end of the food chain. So what else kills off those types of plankton and stops them replenishing? Chemicals, is what! Just eyeball the DENSITY of the cottages/McMansions/vinyards around Keuka shoreline. Compare it to the DENSITY around the perimeter of other finger lakes. Look at the VOLUME of water in Keuka's comparitively shallow 'basin' (not even a tenth of Seneca's volume!). Keuka can't dilute the chemicals enough. Seneca still can. Cayuga can. Etc. I repeat..... the problem is lack of property development/usage controls, through greed for our property tax dollars.... and pure ignorance, of course. PS: just FYI, the fishing in S Seneca is really good this year! Best for many years. DEC did something right (lampricide).... theres fewer eel marks these days and tons of healthy salmonoids On Seneca.......Spiny's, mussels, eels, development density..... all now within the capabilities of the volume of water to deal with. Keuka..... OOC.

There are no baitfish. None. Lakers, rainbows...all salmonoids... are starving. Theres a few skinny lakers left with big heads and small bodies. Abominations. They and the rainbows are few and far between. These few feed on insects, perch/bass fry and a very occasional sculpin... thats about all. The swimmers/cottagers/visitors etc are saying 'no its healthy, we see big fish jumping out of the crystal clear water'.... little do they know that those are mostly starving trout desperately trying for flying insects! Pollution is to blame for the sawbelly/alewife die off and the shad went the same way but sooner. Dense packed lake properties mostly AirBnB'd now and therefore highly utilized, and wineries galore soaking their chemicals into the watershed. All of it out of effective control for many years now. Us trolling trout fishermen must leave it to the tourists and jetskis now..... and go elsewhere to spend our time and money. Its not even much good for bass and perch guys these days. Oh but the DEC will save us with their wonderful CISCO baitfish project? I mean... they've got PhD scientist from Cornell on the team and they've spent hundreds of thousands on the project these last few years! Baloney! It was all BS right from the start. The ciscos can't survive in that toxic soup any better than the alewivesor or shad did. The real root cause.... no development controls worth a damn because the lakeside towns all want the big bucks from various types of property and sales tax. Be sure to shower after swimming in Keuka folks!!

heres some info about using a Minn Kota Ulterra, might help ya minn kota ulterra trolling analysis.xlsx