OhioFisherman

Just from looking at a navigation chart, some serious drop offs in that lake, that eliminates most of the lake for smallies or largemouth? I don't picture either hanging out at those kind of depths. I would be looking at some of those points and reef areas for smallies, and broader expanses of shallower water for largies if there are weeds lilies cover?

A healthy tourism industry can and does provide a tremendous economic value to an area and good sport fishing can and does help fuel it. The debate over Ohio buying out the commercial walleye licenses raged on here for like 20 years. Events happening during the 50's - 60's - 70's help the Cleveland area develop the undesired nickname of " the mistake on the lake ". It's pretty sad when the main river in your city burns? I am older and can remember when whitetail deer here in Ohio were on the verge of becoming an endangered species. LOL the suburbs and their no hunting zones probably saved them, now they hire professional hunters to cull their numbers. In some suburban industrial parks here they grazed like cattle and stopped traffic blocking the roads, times change and the thinking has to also? You have different laws and challenges we didn't face here, my family started going to Ontario to fish for walleye because Lake Erie was so bad you couldn't catch them here. The current debate is over banning commercial perch netting, the economics of it seem pretty clear to me? http://www.the-daily-record.com/sports/20061015/greed-gets-best-of-commercial-perch-industry https://ofbf.org/2017/06/29/fishing-big-business-ohios-great-lake/ I do see a number of different challenges facing the camps there though, with the return of walleye fishing here it became harder and harder to convince people to spend the extra money in times of job loss and stagnant wages to venture north, and the need of an extra expense for passports certainly didn't help. Too much competition for the entertainment dollar? Most of the younger generations seem to think a weekend at cedar point or kings island is more appealing than a week in the woods? Changing times? Scary though?

My dad and my brother used to go to Dale Hollow lake in Kentucky/Tennessee in the 60's for spring crappie fishing, he said a lot of people there called them calico bass, I thought it was a southern thing.

I am not a hunter but live in a rural area, before they built homes across the road it was common to see 20 - 30 of them grazing in the field across the road, a local farmer planted it yearly so that did attract them, with the homes there now we don't see them in herds anymore. Having the homes there doesn't mean the are gone, after a rain when the ground was damp I could find deer tracks in my own yard so I think they are just wandering more at night now when people and pets are indoors. If they are wandering at night color might be a moot point? I have a dog, as do most of my neighbors, and the dog scent certainly doesn't seem to keep them away, I had one damage a young maple tree 50 feet from the house rubbing it's antlers and have seen tracks even closer to the house. My next door neighbor on one side has horses, and an electric fence around their back field to pen them in. The horses learn to stay away from it, wandering deer though still break it running thru the back fields. I planted trees every year while I was able to, my son does now, they will top them, especially in the winter when the food supply diminishes. Here are some tips? http://www.havahart.com/articles/keep-deer-off-your-property but a scarecrow that moves with a breeze might scare them off? A plastic human shape?

https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/columnists/paul-smith/2018/06/30/can-walleye-populations-rebound-if-bass-and-panfish-reduced/738077002/ That article isn't about Scugog but " But recent studies have shown a link between higher water temperatures and reduced production of walleyes, a cool-water fish. "?

Well Jim that article was from a natural history magazine, so I am assuming they are in no hurry to decimate a species of birds without evidence that they are the actual cause of a problem? After a search I found the article was published in 2009, which sort of fit my assumptions based on the dates mentioned in the article. Even I have some issues with the article... " The population growth in the Great Lakes—from approximately 90 breeding pairs in 1970 to nearly 115,000 in 2000—was fueled, ironically enough, by government managers stocking the region’s waters for recreational angling, often using fish raised in the southeastern aquaculture ponds. " They forgot to mention improved water quality? and here in Ohio a ban on commercial walleye fishing, which improved despite a growth in the cormorant population? Outside of LOL, invasive species like salmon and steelhead I have no knowledge of them stocking Lake Erie? The news reports here this year are saying it's the best walleye fishing on Lake Erie in 40 years, amazing what a few consecutive good spawning years can accomplish? and again this is with an increased cormorant population. Sandusky Bay is for the most part shallow ( under 10 feet ) except for a few shipping boat channels and fishing there was much better even with the cormorants than back in the later 60's and early 70's. Of course though, different bodies of water, so cause and effect varies?

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.