jwl

great pictures..love the one with the big speck faded into the sky

are we talking just tackle and bait here?, or the whole spectrum? because I am sure that many of us don't even want to add it all up in the long haul I don't..or at least I don't in front of my wife .....first there is site fees for my trailer lot,trailer insurance, boat insurance,fuel for 2 boats,fuel to get back and forth to the trailer, that all adds up to a good couple grand or so ....20-25 bucks a week in the summer just in bait for me and the kids....top off the kid's tackle boxes(then they score my stuff too for some reason). My tackle top ups for the year depend on what I am fishing for could range from a dollar pack of hooks to a 25 dollar musky bait depending on my needs at the time..... I knew I didn't want to start adding it all up

I am one of those nut-jobs who uses my boat on the river all winter long on the Niagara trout fishing or takes advantage of a good hike and shore fishin down in the Niagara Gorge area...set aside all the crap winds off Erie that have muched up the river and pretty much set back my fishin by like 3 weeks now....since the musky G2G on the Upper a month ago I have fished the river 4 times and am itching to go bad,fishing 5 times in the last month is simply not enough . With this cold snap however looks like I am waiting a few more days to get out again, when it's like this outside you have a whole bunch of little problems that all add up into making your day hard out there. Right from the get go....the cover is usally frozen onto the boat (wrecked about7-8 snaps on the cover in the last 2 seasosns), storage compartment to get into where the deepcycle goes for the bowmount often frozen and super hard to open, then there is getting to the launch..road usually really sucks so I have to call on a buddy with a 4X4 to head out with me for the day..ramp is usally frozen big time and requires a whole bunch of work to get in the water...top that off with the boat being frozen onto the trailer at first. Ok now after about an extra hour dealing with all that crap the boat is finally in the water . Oh but don't clap too much ,now to start the boat....take a good couple cranks and maybe 10 minutes to get the boat started and warmed up enough to stay running at idle speed and guess what...not pumping water...check a few things out,get a long pin to stick in the pee hole and finally everything is all good to go. Now we can finally get under way and go fishin!!!!, but wait..travelling a few miles down the river as ever drop of water that hits the boat flash freezes to everything, get to the spot to start some drifting, go to deploy the electric motor..hey guess what..frozen stiff, can't put it down..after some struggling to do that finally get it in the water, go to move a seat up to the bow so the guy running the electric for the day has a comfy spot and dagnabit, seat post is frozen in the whole...wrestle with that for another 20 minutes and finally freed up and now we can actually start fishing!!!!!! Give the seat posts,electric motor shaft and other moving parts a good shot with silicone lube spray and that helps solve some of those problems out there. Now the fishin part after probably going on 2 hours into the day.....then you deal with frozen up line/guides on your rod, re-rigging lines and baits taking a whole bunch longer due to the inablity to use cold fingers out there, snow now starting to fly...ice pellets hitting you in the face as you move to a new spot, now comes the fun part of fish on!!!! been waiting for this all day, get the fish in the boat remove hook,take a pic...guess what now..who ever is involved in the "catching" part is now freezing from getting wet..flash frozen slime on floater jackets ,carpet of the boat and everything else it may have touched. Then comes the part where we all start laughing at eachother, wondering what the heck we are even doing out there in the first place trying everything we can to stay the slightest bit warm, then it happens again...fish on!!!!! this time its a big one..enough to get the blood pumping and remind us of why we got up at 5am to go out and freeze our off all in the name of fishin. Man I love fishin in the winter!!!!!

scroll wayyyy down to the bottom of the screen and thereare options for changing the board skins....I have mine set to...OFC Club

ya...but it's a dry cold

that's a hog cat for sure...speaking of...too bad the tourney didn't start yet...or did it???

wow that must have taken some time to put all that together, some pretty interesting history there, just the fact that you traced back some roots to almost 500 years is pretty cool

that's a pig for sure, must have had a few gut wrenching moments coaxing that through the hole

that's right around the time of year on our side, at the launch,where there are always some form of yahoos out there with some 2X4's nailed together as some sort of lever contraption with a rope and a net hanging off it, then it's usually nailed to the dock at the boat ramp for some unknow reason And when me and a bunch of my buddies are out there in our boats getting in on the last few weeks of prime steelie action they look at you like this becasue apparently us guys with the boats ar in the way when we launch and come in Most of us are coming in with 15-20 thousand dollar boats or so and these guys are leaving nets and ropes and such in the water and looking at us wierd becasue we have the nerve to be using..THE BOAT LAUNCH!!!! 3 key word there !!!!!

I need to get out with you soon Bruce...prhaps some docks and some pike/perch fishin

nice going on the fish, good see some action from out at Fishmaster's place.

funny, now that I think about it, I tend to say lots of different things.... when fishing with bait...and getting lots of nibbles, I say.."come on..eat it!...eat it!...didn't your momma ever tell you not to play with your food?.......that's better...I'm in!!!!" when fishing with lures for pike for example....." oh ya!...that one hammered it!" when big water trolling and the action is fast and furious with rods popping off everywhere...just holler out what ever rod is going off...."inside dipsy!!!!!"....."watch the rigger!!!!"..." who's up?" when drifting the river for steelies in the boat and doing lots of bottom boucing.." there's one for sure this time!" couple other things come to mind...."that one gorfed it"........" he just inhaled it that time!"

I volunteer with the MNR (LEMU) in the spring for the last couple years and I have a couple direct MNR contacts whom are always happy to answer any questions I have ever asked, I even volunteer to get answer about things for other people, and they are more than happy to do so for me to pass on the info

Well that's one heck of an imaginative post for the day, that's hillarious man , um I mean glad you are finally able to start talking about your problem, and express yourself to others about it Maybe some of you guys are onto something because when I went fishing on Tuesday, this guys was hanging around at my feet looking like it wanted to honk on something luckily for me, it couldn't get up that little ice patch for a couple minutes so I got away with all my fingers, my eyes,2 nuts and a picture

most of them where the size of perch, alot where bigger than what some people keep for perch....ask anyone who netted them down there in the late 70's into the early 80's....it was nuts...litterally you could drop a big dip net in and before it even sank it was bowed down in the current loaded with fish....sounds nuts, but I am not even remotely exaggerating one bit. It would take a couple people to haul the net in after sometimes. It would be what looked to be a never ending cloud of them for about 2 weeks a year. It was an annual mission for alot of folks, you would see the same faces every year and lots of how are ya's from people everyone had seen around the river. Best part was...no idjuts...everyone actually helped each other...helped haul nets...once one person got a load they moved out of the way so the next guy could have a dip, everyone rotated, took turns, helped load huge tubs of fish into each other's trucks..it was like a little fishing community within itself for those 2 weeks. We need more places and values like that in this day and age for sure

used to be able to get them by the garbage pail full in an hour or so down in the Lower Niagara, I remeber going with my neighbours and thier parents when I was a kid, everyone in the place would be hauling them in so much your net could barely handle the weight, 1 -2 dips and you probably had 150lbs worth, and back then some where a good 12-14 inchers and fat as a good keeper perch.

I have caught quite a few pike in the 40 incher plus range and a couple pushing 48 inches..average weight for a fish like that is probably in the range of 20-22 lbs.....yes I have weighed a couple

well it ain't me that keeps too many either..2-4 fish a year out of a couple hundred.. as for the river fisherpeople..yepper what we have is lack of green water not lack of fish, starting to be a big bummer fish aren't gone for sure. Also stated the put and take aspect of that fishery..if people aren't taking, there won't be much effort into the putting.......I will be helping out with the pen project when comes time as well I also know personaly that there are Charter Captains that do infact volunteer thier time and efforts, some often boats, trucks, tanks ect for different enhancement projects...it's in thier best interest for a few with thier efforts atleats 2 of them answered on this post

alright, but I will bring my own fish from home just incase...you guys can have my catch of minnows....I like my fish a little less, ummm...boneless,skinless,tailless, and finless. does sound tempting, and a heck of a way to warm up on a cold day Perhaps chipping in on a road trip soon is in order,althuogh all my ice fishing gear is pretty much at my trailer

I remember the one fish fry we had at your place a while back and we couldn't cook the stash of smelts you had fast enough for the vultures...heck we had tonnes of fish and couldn't keep up to the masses, all that was left for us cooks was the greasy napkins to lick and a couple little batter nuggets so we need to do that again soon, I had to miss the last one,I got some walleye and pike in the freezer

there is actually a pretty good stocking program annually in Port D, thousands of fingerlings get stocked, the local club there is also looking into other alternatives for this year as well. A good point was made in Canuck2fan's reply.....the local clubs need young blood out there. I am a trustee on the executive commitee for a conservation club here in Fort Erie and am involved annually in a walleye rearing/stocking project,it's a great expereince going out with the MNR(LEMU) in the spring electro fishing with them,catching,tagging,relocating fish, and collecting brood stock for a small local hatchery, then we raise the fry in a pond on the FECC property. At almost 40 years old, believe it or not...I am the young blood at the club It's the general consensis at most of the clubs, the aging membership needs new,young blood to keep these projects going

I'm in....soon as the river turns green I will have a GL trout entry too

that looks like a good haul Bruce..atleast you guys got out and into something around here, I been waiting for the river to turn green again.. , not much into fishin for minnows I certainly ain't going to eat them maybe soon we can give some ice pikin a try, or when the river clears we get out in my boat for some killer steelie action..ummm..or both

I have to agree that fishin has sucked lately for sure Canadadude, these conditions around here have made for tough fishin all around. I haven't even had the boat out for almost a month..not worth the trouble with the water so stained. I got a couple nice steelies in November in Port D, but haven't really fished there since. Hopefully it picks up in there soon, funny there are so many browns caught, and all I ever catch in there are steelies, I didn't get 1 brown in there at all for 2008 and that covers last January until now, I been in my boat where a bunch of browns are landed by other people, and all I get is steel I think the main problem is the dirty water,steelies aren't biting that well on the Niagara either,10-15-20 fish days have turned into 1-2 fish days if you are lucky, last 2 times out shore trashin for me where skunk days Mon and Tues, and that never happens to me

umm you guys going to keep using that for a microphone, or are you going to pass it around while we try and figure out the answer???