Seneca Sampson national lake trout derby 2017

[cinnamon fish]

Congrats on the 12 lb. laker!  That's amazing it was the first fish weighed in.
I landed 13 fish, but couldn't get any lakers over about 5lbs.  A couple of 18-20" salmon & rainbow.

My first time fishing Seneca, really enjoyed it.  Mostly fish Cayuga.  Happy to take part in such a great event with a long history.

[Adm Byrd]

So my trout derby started out very different as I was alone for Saturday morning, Liney had to work till noon. The only nice screen I found was down 250' in 300' of water, pulled rigs and a top line with no results. The afternoon wasn't much better and we finally found a couple land locks after 7PM. Sunday we went back to land lock country and spent the day running leadcores and down riggers, ended up with 15 three to four pounders, included browns, rainbows, lakers and salmon. almost every fish had lampreys or recent scars, one rainbow came in with two attached and we even hooked one on a Yozuri - never had that before. Monday we stuck it out till 10:30, lost one decent fish of leadcore and got drowned by the time we got the boat back on the trailer. The good news was catching browns, we haven't caught any in years on Seneca.

[Fishstix]

I never ran cores or any toplines. I had enough trouble with weeds on my riggers and divers.

I could not believe the amount of weeds floating this time of year. Sometimes it was hard to get something down before it was weeded up.

[Adm Byrd]

Weeds & debris where awful at times but 3/4 of our catch on Sunday came from one leadcore spoon combo and that spoon got crushed this morning by whatever would of been our only good fish.

[Zebedee]

Congrats to all who placed! Fished with my dad on his tri-toon all day Fri/Sat/Sun...decided to sleep on Monday with the forecast! I did get my 9 year old daughter out Sun evening but couldn't buy a bite with the wind picking up. We boated 10 fish all weekend. Tough fishin for sure. Fish we caught were high at first light about 55 down over 120 and off the bottom mid day. Like all other years it was a great time fishing with my dad and I look forward to next year.

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[Zebedee]

Waiting for a bite.

Smallest of the weekend.

Sunday fog.

Biggest of the weekend.


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[Sk8man]

Hey Admiral I think the only improvement would have been to put the lamprey in Liney's sandwich when he wasn't looking...you know how fond of them he is

[Sk8man]

You deserved it Fishstix. It was a very tough derby and anyone who placed with fish deserved there prizes too. We fished as hard as we could and couldn't come up with anything big enough to enter this time Two 12 hr days of hard fishing and I'm still spent after resting up today

Edited May 30, 2017 by Sk8man

[shaneo19]

Another tough derby for us.  Fished almost every minute of daylight plus even a couple hours after dark one night.  Landed 29 lakers and 1 brown.  Biggest laker around 6lbs but all the rest under 2lbs.  Fishing was better then last year but a far cry from 100 + fish we use to catch in derbies past.

 

A couple thoughts about the state of the trout on Seneca.  No secret the lake trout population has experienced a massive decline in the past 3 or 4 years.  Just a natural cycle that will rebound?  That's certainly the hope and a good possibility.  If it is something else though the number one issue of concern  I think are the lamprey numbers. 

 

I recently bought a place on Seneca on the west side/ mid lake area.  I was pleasantly surprised with the numbers of brown trout I caught just casting spoons off the docks.  I probably landed over 35 keepers from March through early May including a 33 inch 16.5lber.  The 16.5lber was the only one however over 5 or 6 pounds which I thought was odd considering the sizes caught in the most recent derbies.  This years brown leaderboard was in line with what I had been catching though (barely 6lbs winning) and really the most shocking change from last years huge brown sizes.  I think around 75% of the browns I caught had at least 1 lamprey attached and probably 100% had lamprey marks which was the depressing part.  Another thing to mention is there have been a massive number of small/likely recently stocked browns all along the shoreline the past couple months (6 -12 inch range).  Not sure if this is normal but it is certainly encouraging for the future as long as something can be done about the lampreys.

 

[Zebedee]

I saw a pic of that big brown, Shane. What a catch!

I can't imagine what the lamprey situation would be if they didn't treat the creeks. We caught several as well and all fish had marks. Those things are nasty!

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