OhioFisherman

The bass club I was in had a tournament years ago at East Harbor, a bay off of Lake Erie. The guys in the club were all very good bass fishermen and also fish other bigger events. This was one of our favorite places to have one, always a chance for big fish and we had a 3 fish limit, you usually needed around 15 pounds for a chance at a win. I came in 3rd in our spring trip there with just under 11 pounds and I was eager for the late summer tournament there, we had 12-15 boats 24-30 guys, and no one got a fish! The bay is shallow except for the navigation lanes, sheltered water but the wrong wind direction blowing all day caused the water levels to drop. No one was able to locate where they moved to, or get one to bite, even fishing the deeper edges, or 8-12 foot channel to Lake Erie. There will be days that look good, but turn out not to be! Lure selection didn't help.

Cool, great looking area.

Tjames, they made millions of them, they are popular here because we have a lot of smaller lakes and small city water supply reservoirs that are electric motor only and you don't really need an outboard to fish a 30-100 acre lake. If it's an older boat 9.9 or 10 hp might be it's limit, older boats tended to be a bit narrower than newer boats, most used to have a tag on the inside of the transom with a hp and weight capacity? As a kid I spent a lot of time motoring around Pointe Au Baril in a 14 footer with an old 5 hp motor, I didn't get anywhere fast, but it was enough to get around and beat rowing or an electric. It's been years since I was up north, I can just imagine the boat traffic now, and like here the trend has probably gone to bigger is better? A lot of bigger boat traffic can make for a bumpy ride in a small boat. You don't have to go fast to catch fish though, and going slower gives you more time to explore new places and methods.

It may be unpopular to some, but carp are pigs and will eat just about anything. On some of the bays I fished off of Lake Erie it was easy to tell where a school of carp were feeding, you would go from fairly clear water to water that was all muddied up. Bedding fish like bass may be able to chase panfish away from their beds, but they don't stand much of a chance of chasing 20-40 pound carp away. I used to enjoy seeing a commercial carp netter with a boat load of sows!

Sure you can troll with a small hp engine, 5-10 hp engines are great at it. What is the maximum hp for your boat? Probably 20 hp or less? Some places are safer than others for small boats with small motors, you don't want to venture anywhere known to kick up quickly.

I used to fish a number of lakes here in Ohio that were water supply reservoirs and electric motors only, 1 was almost 1000 acres in size. A 50lb thrust electric will push a 12 tinny along pretty well, but don't expect miracles from it, any outboard from 6-10 hp will be a lot faster.

One of our areas local news channels did the same thing in conjunction with an area police department. http://www.cleveland19.com/story/29640075/vote-shoot-dont-shoot If you watch and look at the results you will see most people would have shot, it's pretty ridiculous not to expect a cop to do the same. Stuff goes down fast on the streets, you can be a live bad guy for shooting, or a dead cop for not shooting!

I don't watch TV, the small city near me only has about 6k more people than Lindsay, and the weekly paper I get from there has a whole page dedicated to police reports. Some would almost be funny, if they didn't seem so stupid!

GBW, heroin and fentanyl, or maybe a mix of the two? As I understand it the cops and other first res-ponders are carrying OD kits that have an antidote, and it is available in some drug stores here without a prescription because of the amount of cases and deaths, just crazy! I think 3 of that 20 in Akron died, the rest got help in time. It seems to be everywhere, even the small city near me has problems with it.

I have seen them at Pointe Au Baril, and right in camps, it has been years ago, and none were quite that big, their rattle is unforgettable! The other is a common water snake, not dangerous, but can be aggressive if cornered or surprised, like any wild critter bite there maybe a risk of infection from a bite. They maybe lighter or darker in color, they tend to get darker closer to their next skin shedding time. While fishing with a friend around Middle Bass Island on Lake Erie he got a strange hit, " I got something, it feels weird " he snagged one about 3-4 feet long right in the side! A wriggling mass of motion! We cut the line!

Cops seem to live in a war zone here, any traffic stop or even domestic incident may be their last stop? We had a cop shot here about 10 years ago answering a call about a guy starting his 4 wheeler on fire, and nothing much ever happens in my area. A few east - west, north - south interstates in my area, with the drug traffic they area looking for suspicious activity to make traffic stops, and they do bust people with guns that don't report them in a traffic stop. They also bust people carrying a lot of drugs! Like 20 drug overdoses in Akron Ohio over last weekend, why would you rag on cops that may save you or a loved ones life when they OD?

Good luck! think of it as a game though, you can't always win, just as long as you have fun playing!

It became very rare to see people carrying a limit of bass on a stringer dead here!

I remember the camp fish fry's of the 60's - 70's - 80's, most people were cleaning smallies and panfish for them, they weren't catching walleye in the summer. Akri " ohio my place is 10 doors down from PC They are less a fishing camp now and more resort for time shares. They actually put up all of the cottages for sale!" LOL, camps have changed I guess, it did look like a yuppie retreat!

http://www.pleasantcove.com/fishing.shtml No idea on how recent their recent catches are? Just the back part of that area, from Payne's to the Sturgeon, is bigger than most lakes here, and a lot better habitat and spawning areas for them. Hard to picture a real decline without signs of a die off.

I had round and low profile reels in the boat, never noticed a difference.

A guy one of my former fishing partners knows is a writer for a bass fishing magazine, he brought me over the magazine article one day and asked what I thought of it, he had made the same conclusions. Where was he fishing? We started seriously fishing for smallies in Lake Erie in the early 70's, outside the usual Erie island spring spawning areas nobody really seemed to target them much, or have much luck when they did. I had days on Lake Erie where you would have thought the smallies were non existent or all dinks, then in 15-30 minutes catch a limit push 30 pounds, then they would disappear again. Glen Lau, who used to be a guide, fishing writer for outdoors magazines wrote articles about the tremendous schools of smallies, and big ones, he saw while diving in Lake Erie in the 60's and 70's. Today's electronics are also much better?

Like Art says, just from days of old, most bank branches didn't have enough Canadian cash on hand. In smaller towns and burbs here stateside it is even more of a problem finding Canadian cash, most I dealt with would get it for you. An auto club location might have some ideas? Do people still use travelers checks?

Two largemouth in a morning didn't used to be a good morning at Pointe Au Baril, although the lure bite could shut down at times a live bait was the go to way to get them.

http://www.courierpress.com/features/woodstock-on-the-wabash-the-bull-island-rockfest-40-years-later-ep-444067342-324677351.html

I remember jumping - diving off the docks at camps in Point Au Baril in July and August, that surface water was comfortable, but once you got down 6-8 feet it was like hitting an ice cube! Lake Ontario is a deep lake, it's going to take some time for anything other than the first few feet of surface waters to warm up? Lure choices? any steelhead I kept for a meal here was stuffed with baitfish, minnows, shad, small perch, something that imitated them would be my choice.

Way to go guys! Looks like a fun trip!

Spawning season is over, nice to see them reproduce and continue the musky stories and catches?

I saw a guy at Pointe Au Baril one time with a 19-20 inch largemouth a muskie grabbed, it was ripped from it's gill plates back. He didn't get a hook in it and when he got it near the boat it let go and swam away, he said it was huge, I believed him!

I'm old and had fished for a long time, I knew when too much weight could be an issue for a rod. I have a spinning rod that was made on a flipping stick blank, it is rated at like 3/8ths to 1 1/2 ounce lures, I very rarely used anything over 3/16ths ounce on it. That recommended weight is usually a clue to the rod's stiffness and how easily it will be to fish heavier cover with it.