Started around 7:30 am with my buddy Mike - we tried perch fishing for a couple hours with no luck.    Tried some areas for landlocked salmon.  It didn't take too long to have some contact with fish - we saw some and had some hits from dinks.   I landed a couple.  But some quality fish were showing too.  I had a miss from what appeared to be a nice brown trout around 22" give or take.   Then Mike hooked a solid 19" landlocked salmon on his Kingfish tube pattern.   We had a few more short hits.   Winds cranked up and Mike switched to some gear.  I missed a good hit on a chartreuse streamer fished on a RIO Deep 7 line.    Mike nailed a 19.5" salmon on a jig/plastic.    Water temps were around 41/42 degrees.   Lake level was low, but no problems launching at Schamels.   

Fishing (our style of casting and fly-fishing) remains fair on Seneca Lake for salmon/browns.   Trolling success has varied according to those we talked to on the water.   Most boats we saw trolling were covering a lot of water and not concentrating on any areas too much.  

I expect some better fishing as winter continues, but early indications are that the classes of salmon here aren't on a par with what we saw over the past two years.   Time will tell though.  It has been a warm winter and it's quite possible that many schools of fish are in different parts of the lake.    Stay tuned!

After a couple days of temps in the mid to upper 40s, I figured the boat ramps uplake might be launchable.   I took a chance and drove up to Long Point this AM and found chunks of broken up ice.   Great!   So I dumped in the boat around 10:30 am.   BTW - the last two times I've launched with chunk ice around, I've hit the ice (as I back in the boat) with my transducer and found that caused my transducer to go way out of allignment.   In general, if you get poor bottom readings, inaccurate depth reading and things just don't look right, that's the first thing to check.

The plan was to jig up some lakers, and then if I had time, scout out some mid-lake areas on Cayuga for pike.   Things started similarly to yesterday, within a few drops of the jig I landed a small laker around 18".    Again fish ranged from around 100' out to 160' - I basically found lakers as deep as I cared to look.  Within a half hour or so I landed a good fish for the smoker, one around 26".   A foul-hooked dink from 150' surprised me.   

I stayed a few miles around Long Point then headed across the lake.   The southerlies died down and the forecast was for light westerlies, changing into the north 10 to 15 tonight.  The ride across was nice.   But things didn't last.  Winds came cranking out of the WNW hard!   Before I knew it, the lake was awash with whitecaps.   I did manage to hook a couple more lakers, landing another around 26", but the fishing really shut down.  

I really enjoy the deep jigging for lakers.  I needed one more good fish for my smoker and didn't get it (should have kept a couple of the small ones from yesterday, but hindsight is always 20/20!)   Never had any time to scout any pike areas.   I don't expect much mid-lake for pike away from the powerplant.  Cayuga really doesn't have a great pike population, but once in a while a big one turns up in an unexpected area.   

Decided to give the laker jigging a try, given the weather conditions and the fact that I'd like to smoke a batch of fish soon!    I fished around 4 hours today from 12:30 till 4:30 pm.   Cayuga Lake's level is LOW.    Water temps mid-lake are 43 degrees.   

I was very impressed with the numbers of perch and baitfish I saw in the marina area on the way back in.   It's interesting to see perch and alewives move into colder, shallow water.  Must have been something they like to eat in there.

The laker jigging was good.  I forgot my jigheads and failed to check a knot after landing a fish - that cost me one I should have landed.  But I landed 4 and missed quite a few more.  I surmise that many of the "misses" were smaller fish.   No great size on the fish for me today - all 18" to 23", with most around 22" to 23".   Plenty of fish were available N. of AES and I can guarantee if Long Point or Dean's launch gets ice-free, we'll have some great laker action up north.  I used 1 and 1 1/2 oz. jigs today with Shakers and Tubes.   Fish were fairly scattered depth-wise, but there were concentrations around 105', 135' and 165'.