Fall transition spreads across NY waters as Niagara bass turn on

What's biting

What's next

With water temps sitting in the low 60s and flow stable across all four gauges, expect a gradual, continued cool-down over the next several days rather than a sharp drop, which is normal for this point in October. If that pattern holds, the walleye and lake trout activity Brookdog has logged out of the Niagara corridor and Barcelona in recent weeks, with jigging working especially well on lake trout, tends to spread east as thermoclines break down lakewide. Finger Lakes anglers should watch for that shift over the next one to two weeks.

This week's Waning Crescent moon favors low-light dawn and dusk feeding windows over bright midday hours, so plan around those hours rather than midday.

Context

Early October sits squarely in the fall-transition window for New York's inland and Finger Lakes fisheries: thermocline breakdown pushes baitfish and gamefish into shallower water and triggers more consistent feeding as summer stratification ends. Water temperatures in the low 60s are right on pace for the calendar, neither ahead of nor behind a typical year, with the stronger bite trends still building rather than peaking.