OhioFisherman

http://www.uglystik.com/uglystik-combos-spinning-combos/ugly-stik-elite-salmon-steelhead-spin/1347950.html There is more info on that combo in the link.

Great pics and report, those walleyes have some awful white bellies?

When I was young we never saw them along the Lake Erie shoreline here, of course back then they might have needed x-ray specs to see a fish 2 feet away! There was an island across from the city boat launch in Sandusky Bay, it used to have live trees on it, by 2002 they looked like the trees on page 2 of this article, and that island is now loaded with cormorants. To Kill a Cormorant | Natural History Magazine With the increased water clarity here and the normal very clear Canadian waters I can see how having tons of birds around that can dive to 45 meters ( according to wiki ) in search of food could pose a real problem! Sandusky Bay at around 46,000 acres is the largest bay on Lake Erie here and it's main feeder river, the Sandusky River is home to a number of spawning runs by different species of fish, walleye, white bass. The bay itself with a lot of areas of sheltered water is also a spawning ground for other species, smallmouth and largemouth bass, crappie, bluegill, catfish, northern pike and others. Nothing personal against Cormorants myself, but if you have enough of them in an area to kill all the trees on an island there is a balance that needs adjustment?

No idea of their " native " range up there, but they get them all over Ontario, even places like Lake of the woods.

https://www.simcoe.com/opinion-story/8345169-lake-simcoe-whitefish-gobble-up-invasive-gobies/ Sounds like the smallies have some competition for the gobies?

http://www.fishingsimcoe.com/conservation/invading-species It probably all depends on the body of water you are fishing in, crappie eat a lot of baitfish, and you can only assume smaller young gamefish?

David, that is a great looking fish! I would have been smiling too! As I was growing up we kept waiting for some one in Florida to break the largemouth record, LOL it still could happen?

For sure, since it seems to affect poultry too it could cause havoc?

Ontario Record Angler: Andy Anderson Length: 24 inches Weight: 9.84 lbs Girth: 18.3 inches Waterbody: Birch Bark Lake near Kinmount Date: September 26, 1954 Bait: unknown That might be a hard fish to beat? What made that lake special? No gobies there, reduced fishing pressure during the ww2 and korean war years? Not saying a 10+ couldn't happen, but here in the states they have come from states with a longer " growing season ".

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&q=where+to+buy+marine+grade+plywood+in+ontario+canada&npsic=0&rflfq=1&rlha=0&rllag=43604145,-79993730,40158&tbm=lcl&ved=2ahUKEwjYz9GdpoPdAhWhyoMKHQDNDv8QtgN6BAgEEAU&tbs=lrf:!2m1!1e2!2m1!1e3!3sIAE,lf:1,lf_ui:10&rldoc=1&biw=1132&bih=668#rlfi=hd:;si:;mv:!1m3!1d7705655.2544093905!2d-79.71018788907776!3d46.17973806573785!3m2!1i712!2i523!4f13.1 Brian, I googled where to buy marine grade plywood in Ontario and got that if it's any help?

I grew up 3 1/2 - 4 miles from Lake Erie in Cleveland and fished it often as a kid along the Cleveland lakefront, never got a largemouth or even a smallie fishing there. Times have changed with the improvement in water quality, lots of youtube videos now of people catching them there now! The bass club I was in used to have tournaments in a couple of areas of Erie, bays though, and with a club rule 3 fish limit you still needed 10+ pounds to stand a chance to make the top 3 spots, and a 4 + to 5 + largie was pretty common for big bass. Even the largies seemed to wander a bit in those areas I guess depending on where the food was, at times they were in 15 - 20 feet of water where the bays meet the main lake on the deeper break walls and break wall rocks.

I remember this guy and the news articles from the 60's, https://www.cleveland.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2009/05/glen_lau_has_evolved_from_ohio.html He was also a diving fan and reported giant schools of huge smallies back then. Ohio's record came in 1993 from Erie 9 pounds 8 ounces and New York's also from Lake Erie in 1995 and tied in Lake Ontario in 2016 at 8 pounds 4 ounces. I don't believe the gobies were anywhere near established in the great lakes in the early and mid 90's, but technology and equipment was making it easier to target them?

LOL @ catching fishermen, true, if I was using a crankbait on Erie it was almost always chrome and black or gold and black. Unless you are trolling on Erie a deep diving crank bait becomes a lot of work, tubes, drop shots, jigheads are a better approach.

grimsby, I saw the thing about them not having swim bladders on tackle warehouse's site, I am sort of surprised that there aren't more deep diving crankbaits out there in goby colors, rock bumpers

The gobies are another food source so I am sure it helps and the zebra mussels do seem to have helped water visibility here on this side of Erie, at least the last time I saw it. I was fishing Lake Erie for smallies back in the 70's, and there were hog ones out there then, but much harder to locate them because of the old electronics. I had a bigger boat docked near the Erie Islands in the early and mid 1980's and you could see what the charter captains brought in, some pigs back then too. Not sure if I am ready to give complete credit to the gobies, we used to get huge schools of shiners and shad too, so they had plenty of meals to choose from? gobies maybe easier for them to catch and are more likely to hang out in the same rocky areas the smallies do? When I was young, if the bait store had trouble getting Emerald Shiners their back up bait for sale was fat head minnows, just from what I am seeing online now the trend has moved to small golden shiners. I personally have never seen a golden shiner in Lake Erie or it's back waters, but with all the people using them for bait that may have changed, and they get big enough so no smallie could eat one, so breeders if a walleye or something else doesn't get them? I fished with live bait at times on Lake Erie, and a 4-5 inch golden shiner would catch some big smallies. Those are nice fat fish though.

That's way too much of the wrong kind of excitement for one vacation Drifter. Akri, it's weird how those weather patterns works, my grass hasn't even turned brown this year. I would think that with the heat there would be more evaporation from the great lakes and you guys would be getting rain.

Condolences Old, I feel your pain, I lost a brother yesterday evening. I don't know what the differences in the laws are between our countries, but I think here you need a living will that specifically states DNR. There are other things to be aware of also, my brother specifically requested to be cremated, and now we find out that the cemetery will not allow him to be interred there next to mom and dad because of that. Two uncles, an aunt, and now a brother since Christmas, it's been a tough year!

https://www.cleveland.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2018/08/fishing_report_for_aug_18_lake.html Looks like another good one maybe?

Dave, just throwing it out there, that might also be a different lake. One of the lakes I fished in western NY was a different sort of setup. It was semi private, property owners owned most, if not all of the land it was on. Monday - Friday you could launch a boat at a public ramp, the weekends and I believe also on holidays the ramp was closed. The only other boat launch was at a private campground on the lake and you had to be staying there to launch your boat. The property owners had some kind of agreement with the state allowing for limited public access in exchange for lake maintenance. As I understood it NY had a luxury tax on lakefront property, like 25% of the purchase price? and the annual property taxes on those old lakefront homes seemed outrageous to me. People were buying 2-3-4 homes adjacent to each other and tearing them down and building lakefront mansions.

https://www.hookandbullet.com/fishing-pinecrest-lake-garibaldi-bc/ It appears to be a public lake.

Years ago my brother took me to a riding stable that had a pond about 1 - 1/2 acres and it was loaded with them. I doubt if there was any water in it deeper than 8 -- 10 feet, and they seem to survive the winters here well. The parts of that canal I mentioned earlier were even shallower than that, my dad used to net crayfish there and I saw him walk all the way across in chest waders, there may have been deeper spots in it though.

Sir, I doubt it, they are tough, and even in lakes here that have winter fish kills the carp never seem to be affected.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/invasive-goldfish-being-electrocuted-1.3527733

Congrats on surviving that! One of my son's close friends just had one and he is only 29 and very fit, you just never know?

I have seen them in Lake Erie since I was a little kid, never saw any small ones though, some had to be 2 pounds or so. There is a canal that wanders through the southeast side of Cleveland, parts of it maybe in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and I believe it empties into the Cuyahoga river which empties into Lake Erie. When we were real little my dad used to take us there fishing for them, it was loaded with them. A soft ray fish, at least the smaller ones, a two - three pound largie isn't going too have much trouble munching one, and their coloration makes it sort of difficult for them to hide? Ya, it seems like a bad plan to be releasing fish not native to the waters into them! Given the prolific spawning rate of some of those carp species I have wondered many sport fish are eating the young ones in Lake Erie.