7/18 - quick solo pm trip on south end (west side) and picked up one brown about 15" on a small silver/blue slider down about 25ft off the rigger
7/19 - late start, fished solo 10:30-1:30 pm and picked up one nice brown about 4 lbs, again on a slider (small pink/green scorpion) about 25ft, slow fishing but marked good numbers of bait pods and suspended fish pretty shallow further up the west side in 60-150ft, fished briefly on the east side coming home with a growing north wind and not marking much
7/20 - got an earlier start with a friend and we went back up the west side to where I had found a good screen the day before and set out a spread, fished from 7-11 am and we found a little more action, started out with a nice 4lb bow on the slider (pink/green) down 25ft, after a few smaller fish got another longer but skinnier bow about 4lbs on the wire dipsey rod with a green/black ladderback superslim DW back 150ish, finished with a slightly larger acrobatic bow that took the slider once again and made a few nice jumps before coming to the net and then back to fight another day with our 2 bow limit in the cooler, in total we went 9/9 with all but a laker for the slam (though the browns and salmon were all sub-legal)
Not the most fast and furious fishing I've seen on Seneca but certainly worthwhile with some nice eating fish to boot. Fleas were present but mostly a non-issue. Weeds were moderate first 2 trips but non-existent today on the west (thick on the east side coming back though). Water is nice and clear and surface temps toasty for Seneca from 72-75. Brown had a large lamprey attached which is always sad to see but the bows were all clean
Ugh you're not making it any easier to be sitting here at work, screen looks very good, can't wait to hear how you did.
BTW it looks like you're a day ahead of yourself, haha.
Jon
Go get em!!
I worked on several treatments on tributaries to Lake Champlain and can say that if conditions are good (they won't treat if they aren't) and treatment is done properly ( which I trust the DEC to do) non target species mortality is extremely low. The treatment concentrations of TFM (lampricide we used) to kill lamprey are very specific and below the lethal level for most non target species in normal conditions. The biologists monitor the levels at several points continuously over the course of treatment in the streams and take into account many other environmental factors. In Region 5 they also kept trout in live cages in the stream like "canary in the coal-mine" style to monitor for toxicity. I was on several crews and had the pleasure of walking/floating streams after treatment to count numbers of lamprey killed. We would sometimes see 10s of thousands of dead lamprey and usually only a small handful (3-4) non target species mortality which may have just been coincidental. In this case I think the benefit of treatment FAR outweighs any risk/harm.
Awesome report, its great to have a fight like that you'll never forget, I was thinking he was going to get off but glad you got em to the boat finally, I wish I could hear the audio from the fight it would great, haha.
Nice report, glad you guys found some fish, sounds like a great day (minus the obnoxious boats), I'm stuck inside at work this weekend so nice to live vicariously