Jonny

"Guess" seems to be the operative word here. Judging by how badly they screwed it up, "estimate" would be too kind a word.

The spawn on Nipissing was significantly earlier than usual. Once the ice is out (and it was out early this year), the water reaches spawning temps fairly quickly no matter what the weather. I'd say by this weekend, think June 1st norms for where the walleye might be.

Yup. Where I live, it's time to basically give up on the water level and simply enjoy the warm sunny weather without the boat.

Thanks for the crossed fingers, but personally the opening weekend is wiped out for me. No water to launch my boat. I'll check that link. Seems hard to believe, but I suppose it could be. Thing is, it seems to me that even in the 50's there should have been areas where flooded timber was still showing, and I can't recall that being obvious.

I used to fish the Lavigne/West Arm area quite a bit. The lower water level should not prevent you from getting out around the Hardwood Islands (i.e. Little Oak Island) and deeper water. I would recommend a hydrographic map because even in the best of times you have to watch out for shoals in some places. In my opinion, as long as you can launch your boat and get out into roughly the center of the channel, I don't think you'll have any trouble. I've used that boat launch, but never in water this low, so I don't know about that, sorry.

Interesting follow-up to the discussion. Seems the beavers also have an impact on the fisheries. http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/05/13/prince-edward-island-to-cull-nuisance-beavers/

Well, I was fishing my current area of the lake in the 50's as a little kid and the water level was the same as the normal water levels for this area nowadays. I don't know if the 'mudhole' thought would hold water (joke), as I think the gov't docks in North Bay pre-date that by many decades. I think the lake was better off when the Chaudiere was just a spill dam instead of a water-control dam. Or maybe even when there was no dam at all, but that's just a guess. I wonder if the Chief Commanda II has enough water to operate from the gov't dock this year? We had a heavy snowfall a few days ago, and some rain here and there (it's raining now), but we'd need some real downpours, and consistent ones, over the entire watershed, to make a difference.

You mean open the Chaudiere (Nipissing) dam? Hell, most of Nipissing would be mud flats! (exaggeration) I just bought a paddle boat from a neighbour a few cottages down, and to get it from his place to mine I dragged it in a few inches of water where normally there's about 2 to 2 1/2 feet at this time of year. It was constantly getting hung up on the bottom. Then my wife and I had to lift it for the last 20 feet to get it onto my boat ramp. Nipissing has given all it can to the French.

The lake level has only come up negligibly in the last month. A couple of cm maybe. We're in big trouble for launching a boat where I am. But the fish, if I can get to them, will still be biting. They gotta eat. Aside from the spawn, I don't think they care too much about the lake level; they'll just shift to their preferred depth and structure in other places.

Heavy hunting knife and sever the spine behind the head. Quick. To those of you who let a fish slowly suffocate to death, I suggest you use any other method that's quicker and more humane.

That one's good enough to last a lifetime. No probable cause, guilty until proven innocent. I only met Quebec CO's once, in the days before they had sidearms. My brother-in-law and I were up near Sept-Iles, fly-fishing a speckled trout river from the shore at a rapids, so we didn't even hear them coming. They were not friendly but not aggressive either - just checked our out-of-province licenses and our catch, and then left.

There's another one like that, "power-tripping" down on Manitoulin Island.

I'd expect that from anyone I met out on the water. Up in these parts anyway.

The water level currently is officially pegged at 53 cm below normal for this time of year, which jives with what I've been estimating. The lowest level of my dock is usually awash this time of year, and right now it's about 2 ft above the water level. Good news is it's raining heavily (finally) all over our watershed. Let's hope it keeps up! http://www.nugget.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2559030postbox

You must be running across a kinder gentler, breed of CO in Southern Ontario. Many of our CO's (talking over many years of encounters) are suspicious, brusque, a little arrogant. Of course it probably has never helped that I (and friends) have run across them almost exclusively during hunting season. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've run across a CO in open-water fishing over the course of the last 40 years or so. And I know, or know of, a few CO's in the north who built themselves reputations as real.... (expletive). There are also good ones, yes, but in my experience it's a bit of a toss-up what kind you're going to meet.

Isn't it amazing to realize that hunters in Germany are well-thought-of and hunters in Canada are looked at with doubts. You would think it would be the other way around. I don’t think that’s true in a wholesale way, especially not in the kind of numbers that used to exist in S Ont. That’s just not realistic. The habitat’s just not there, and too many conflicts with people would occur – just look at the fuss about ONE bear in the London area! And there are certainly not going to be any plans to establish a protected wolf population in S Ont! I think you might be referring to things like the re-introduction of wild turkeys and the re-introduction of elk. But those things were done with a view toward also increasing hunting opportunities. In the case of wild turkeys we might definitely say their re-introduction has been a success. With elk, it has been less so. For example, in the Iron Bridge area, on the Huron North Shore, farmers' complaints about the elk have prompted a reversal of policy, and efforts are being made to reduce the herd (not through hunting) even though the herd is small. Wild turkeys do not come into conflict with human activities; elk do. I haven't stayed abreast of the deer situation in Rondeau Provincial Park, but some time ago there was great concern that an expanding deer population was browsing so heavily that it was destroying Ontario's only example of naturally-occurring Carolinian forest. That was (is?) a destructive change in the environment, one that people do not want. Coyotes were rare in S Ont until fairly recently yet there was no plague of rabbits and rodents. I assume they were held in check quite well by raptors (hawks, owls, etc.) and by small carnivorous mammals like mink and weasel. I’m not so sure coyotes are an important part of the ecosystem. I think you’re correct though about not being able to get rid of them, and about hunting being too controversial. Too many bleeding hearts in the cities. Beavers, on the other hand, which you mentioned before are impossible to get rid of, well, they’re much more susceptible to control and eradication (mostly by trapping). They are tied to water and to identifiable lodges (or bank holes) and feed beds. Don’t forget that the fur trade almost wiped out beaver in the less remote parts of Ontario a few centuries ago.

I didn't read it that way. When you look at shares in a management lease that you can buy in Germany, it may be similar to, say, an Ontario deer camp. And if you look a the bucks you spend for gear etc. to go on big game hunting trips here, that really adds up too. Of course habitat is important, yes, but I think you may be splitting hairs here. The good management and the good hunting are co-dependent. If you read the article closely, there are so many boar and deer in Germany that the system is not balanced without hunting. It's not the natural balance that matters (there isn't any, because it's more of a "farmed" system, for lack of a better term), it's the wildlife/people balance that's important. It's much more analagous to Southern Ontario than Northern Ontario. In most of N. Ont. a natural balance could be achieved. Not in S. Ont.

The people who set this up have rocks in their heads. Densely populated areas are no place for wildlife larger than a rabbit, and sometimes not even those. Deer are cute until they start eating stuff they're not supposed to and causing car accidents. Beavers are cute until they start cutting trees off people's properties and plugging culverts with their dams. And a bear habituated to humans? That's a threat that people don't want to deal with at all. Wildlife in populated areas simply causes headaches. I think what is needed is wildlife management; otherwise whatever benefit is seen from having these animals around is lost in the controversy of animals being nuisance animals. The "comeback" is artificial. It needs to be controlled or halted altogether. The vast majority of people haven't got time to worry about the problems animals cause when they're not used to it.

Judging from that hot "Bear" thread, people would rather debate the pro's and con's of shooting a wild animal and have pissin' contests over who knows the most, than to examine game management strategies that allow for hunting while at the same time minimizing the potential for problems - be it bear/people or deer/cars, etc. The fact is that in certain ways, animals and people don't mix and it's a question of maintaining a balance between viable populations of animals and lessening their negative impact on people, while also allowing traditional hunting to take place. Besides its economic impact on Northern Ontario, the cancellation of the spring bear hunt removed an important management tool, and let's face it, when animals and man meet, management is necessary. I wonder if anyone actually had enough interest in the management question to browse the links I posted.

When they roam into Timmins they're shot. I was present once to witness it.

I wouldn't even wish for that at a zoo with bars in between. Be careful what you wish for; you might not be so lucky a second time.

I've been sitting on this for a little while, but the currently active thread on bears in Southern Ontario reminded me of it. Game management in Germany is interesting for two reasons: firstly because it's a big surprise to most people that there's so much game in Germany, secondly that the way they manage the game is fascinating in and of itself. http://www.spiegel.d...nal/zeitgeist/0,1518,663411,00.html http://fwp.mt.gov/mt...tingGermany.htm From another site: Germany has one of the largest deer populations in Europe (1), and ≈19,000 tons of venison are consumed in Germany each year Information on distribution of age groups was obtained from local hunting authorities. The target population of our 3-year study was ≈3,492,000 roe deer, 181,000 red deer, and 157,000 fallow deer (Table 1). The population size was estimated by assuming that the annual hunting bag (number of animals killed each year) represents approximately one third of the population, that age distributions in the hunting bag correspond to those of the deer population, and that the annual population sizes before hunting did not change during the study period. These assumptions correspond to management regulations for hunting (2). During the 2002–2003 hunting season, 1,117,511 roe deer, 60,407 red deer, and 52,240 fallow deer were killed in Germany (2). On the basis of these data, the hunting bags of cervids >18 months for the 3-year study period were estimated at 2,095,000 roe deer, 109,000 red deer, and 94,000 fallow deer

A timely news article: http://www.nugget.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2552875 Maybe it should be syndicated to Southern Ontario.

Right on. We keep being told how to 'bear-proof" ourselves. Time to start applying that kind of public education in Southern Ontario instead of shooting the poor critters. Some people are fond of quoting to us here in the North, "The bears were there before you were." Well the bears were in S. Ont. before the big crush of people too. (Or, as they are also fond of telling us, the cormorant explosion on Nipissing is just a case of a species reclaiming its traditional range) Personally I think every nuisance bear trapped in Northern Ontario should be distributed by a lottery system to a Southern Ontario county.

Frenchy Cloutier used to run sleds on the water way back in the 80's up around Timmins.