How was the 2025 Summer season?

We had an absolutely incredible summer season this year and we were able to run over 200 open water trips. The majority of the time we were running 2-3 trips a day. It was a very dry summer here in Upstate, NY, which is great in terms of running trips because we had very few that had to be cancelled due to the weather.

Both of the main species that we target, bass and lake trout, held true to their usual patterns, giving us an extremely consistent and productive bite all summer long. The lake trout bite became difficult once the water temperature was around 76/77 degrees, as it pushed the fish into depths of over 120’, but we were still able to find ways to catch them.

Overall we landed over 1,700 lake trout this season, which can only mean that Lake George’s lake trout population is off the charts right now. Some anglers are noting that as the population increases, the size has begun to plateau at around 23-26” (Stunted due to population), but we did find some lake trout in the 30”+ range.

Lake George has one of the largest naturally reproducing populations of lake trout in New York State, so it’s great to see so many of them around. I remember when I first began guiding we would be happy with a 5-10 fish trip and now our regular clients are so used to catching 10+ a trip that when we don’t, they feel we had a tough day! Our trip average came out to 11 per trip and the trip record was 37 lake trout in 4 hours (very consistent with the last 5 years).

As far as the bass bite goes it was overall a better year for Largemouth Bass than it was for Smallmouth Bass. Our biggest largemouth bass weighed 6.0lbs and there were a ton of fish in the 4-5lb range.

I always say we typically get 1 bass over 6lbs a year so we hit our goal for finding that really big fish. Most of the largemouth were shallower this year in the 15-25’ range, but the biggest fish came from the 30-40’ zone. A lot of the bass we targeted were keying in on yellow perch. As much as anglers like to talk about Rainbow Smelt being the main forage in the lake, I would argue that it’s really yellow perch for just about every species.

The Smallmouth bass bite was really good at times, but we just didn’t see the giant schools that we normally see on our rock piles. I think a lot of fish pushed really deep this season because of the extremely warm water. Our biggest Smallmouth Bass this season was 5.3lbs, but it was caught during April.

Aside from the fishing, we had a very mechanically sound year and that really really helps. Some years you get stuck with an engine issue that can cause us to cancel over 2 weeks of trips, but everything ran great this season.

What was one highlight of your Summer season?

One highlight of this summer season was the birthday parties we had out on the boat for kids. I took out the same group of kids twice for two different birthday parties and the boys just had an absolute blast out there.

I mean what can be more fun than bringing 4 of your best friends outon a fishing charter with you to go after bass and lake trout. I remember all my birthday parties as a kid and I never got to have a fishing one. So those trips were extremely special because I know how much it meant to them. It’s great seeing young kids get involved with the great outdoors and I am happy to say that 90% of our trips are typically families.

Going on a guided fishing trip should be a blast for everyone and I’m so happy to be the

highlight of a kid’s summer.

Are you seeing any major issues for your industry?

The only major issues I am seeing for my industry is the continued rise in overhead costs. The price continues to drastically increase for gasoline, dock slips, insurance, and engine maintenance.

The problem is that the more it costs to run our trips, the more we have to raise prices and that will eventually cause some of our clients to not want to get out. So we have to balance keeping our trip costs fair while battling against inflation.

What was a highlight for your fall season?

The highlight of my fall season was just consistent fishing and finding a new bait to catch pre-spawn lake trout. Nothing makes me more excited than by figuring out another way to catch fish and finding something different to use.

Over the last few years I have struggled in the fall because the fish just stop focusing on eating and transition to spawning mode. The trolling guys use slow running plugs to antagonize these fish off bottom.

I discovered a jigging bait to do the same thing this year. This ended up working excellent and we had some amazing fall lake trout trips. There was also a new color of bait that ended up making a major impact towards the later part in the season that I haven’t had confidence in before.

What’s the future of the NY salmon and steelhead runs looking like?

I think overall both runs are headed in a positive direction, however there are more and more variables hurting the fishery yearly. These variables include construction, low water, climate changes and more private sections.

I only get to fish the salmon run 1-2 times a year. However, I do have a bunch of friends who guide out there, so I keep up with what’s going on.

The state has begun construction on a few different areas which can alter the way the fish migrate and navigate the river. They are attempting to fix certain areas of the river to make them more navigable for the fish. The locals who have lived there for the last 40 years said it is going to end up hurting the fishery more than helping.

The state has taken massive construction equipment through the river in certain spots and you can still see the marks that were made in the stream bed. Only time will tell if that ends up impacting the fishery (Trestle pool). Anglers are also observing fish spawning way lower than they have ever seen before which can be a good thing and a bad thing.

Some say there is an excellent naturally reproducing population of Chinook Salmon now, so these fish do not need to swim all the way up to the hatchery where they were stocked. They simply spawn in whatever part of the river they were born. Douglaston Salmon Run, which is the largest privately owned section of the river, has observed a huge increase in spawning fish over the past few seasons. So fish are not even making it to the public section of the river for most anglers to catch them.

This can be viewed as a positive because Douglaston Salmon Run regulates the number of anglers it allows fishing per day and the fish you are allowed to keep, so less fish will be kept (Catch and release of all trout/steelhead in their section).

Now depending on how political you want to get, the rumor is that Douglaston Salmon Run is creating more spawning grounds in their private section and physically spawning King Salmon eggs in their section of the river to increase the amount of fish staying in their section for their members. I do not know the validity of that, but I do know that their regulation overall helps the fishery.

As far as steelhead goes, every single year seems to be as good or better than the last. So the steelhead fishery will stay consistent as long as their spawning habitat stays the same and average watertemperatures do not rise too high. The last two seasons I have seen more steelhead than I ever had while fishing for salmon.