Spiel

The Great White North. Bill and Solo must be loving their north of Superior weekend, Brrrrrrr !

Spinners you say, who'd have thunk.

Wow, this deserves more attention. Stellar report Cookslav! Love them Brookies!

I've used these for years, they're no muss, no fuss and can be set up quickly at any depth. http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_44716_225014000_225000000_225014000_225-14-0

Vampire fish torment Great Lakes creatures Video Link - vampire-fish-torment-great-lakes-creatures

Ohio intolerant of anglers going hoggish on fish May 07, 2010 Steve Pollick / toledoblade.com Six fishermen from Tennessee and Georgia face the loss of their three bass boats and other gear after being charged with 30 counts of taking over the daily creel limit of smallmouth bass on western Lake Erie. "This is the worst case I have ever seen of bass overbagging," stated Gino Barna, Lake Erie law enforcement supervisor for the Ohio Division of Wildlife. The men are charged with illegally taking at least 141 smallmouth over the limit during a recent stay on South Bass Island. Smallmouth bass are highly prized for their sporting challenge and most fishermen keep them only rarely if at all, favoring walleye and yellow perch for the table. The six men charged include Freelan C. Leffew, 66, of Soddy Daisy, Tenn., his son, Michael Todd Leffew, 38, of Hixson, Tenn.; Freddie Warren, 63, of Wildwood, Ga.; Charles H. Burkhart, 67, of Ringgold, Ga.; Samuel J. Carroll, 65, of Ringgold, and Herbert Samuel Stephens, 58, of Soddy Daisy. All six entered guilty pleas on the charges on Monday in Ottawa County Municipal Court before Magistrate Lou Wargo. They are set to be sentenced June 2. Each charge is a fourth degree misdemeanor carrying as maximum penalty of 30 days jail and $250 fine. The state also is seeking state-prescribed restitution for the illegally taken bass at $50 a fish, for a total of $7,050, along with forfeiture of the boat rigs and freezers. The men also could lose fishing privileges in Ohio for three years.Barna gave this account of the case: State wildlife officers on the lake were running a seasonal surveillance project, watching of over-limit angling and multiple trips, between April 25 and 30, on the eve of the May 1 closing of the bass season on Lake Erie for spawning. The six out-of-state anglers arrived on the island by ferry with their trailered bass boats and two freezers. Wildlife lawmen observed three boats making multiple daily trips, as many as three a day. "We watched them fish all morning," Barna said at one point of the surveillance. "We knew something was up." The arrests were made last Friday. Barna said that lawmen can prove the six men took 141 bass over limit, "but they admitted to more than that." The daily legal limit on Erie bass is five, except during the closed season, which is May 1 through June 25 this year. No bass may be kept and only catch-and-release angling is allowed for bass during closing. The supervisor said in the arrests officers seized 155 bags of frozen, chunked fish and also seized 20 more bass that had not been frozen. The freezers were seized along with the three boat rigs. Barna said a lot of out-of-staters bring along freezers to Lake Erie. "There are not a lot of places you can catch so many fish like you can here," he said. "The sad thing was in this case, half of their fish were females staging for the spawning season." Since Ohio does not have possession limits on fish, it legally is possible to keep, say, seven limits of fish for seven days of fishing. But the six anglers are accused of going far beyond that. Barna noted that Ohio law is written such that fish must be kept "in the round" or filleted with the skin attached when "on the water." That includes anyone bringing back fish on a ferry from the islands. Cleaning and chunking fish is a method poachers can use to cover up the numbers and species of fish they have taken. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overall on western Lake Erie, when conditions have allowed walleye fishing has continued to be exceptional, says the Ohio Division of Wildlife at Sandusky. Even as the spawn begins to wind down, limits are still being caught by anglers jigging hair jigs, with and without shiners, or vibrating blade baits in Maumee Bay, nearshore around Turtle Creek, and on some of the Camp Perry reefs. Trolling catches of post-spawn walleye have been best west of the Bass Islands from Green Island to the international border using both crankbaits and spinners. Trollers have also caught fish north of Kelleys Island. Good catches of yellow perch have been reported between Marblehead and Kelleys Island, east of Kelleys Island, and north of Lorain. Note that since May 1 the daily creel limit for Lake Erie walleye is six per angler. The minimum size limit for walleye remains 15 inches. Also, the daily creel limit for yellow perch is 30 fish per angler on all Ohio waters of Lake Erie, the 25-limit having been lifted from the western basin. In addition, the Lake Erie black bass seasons for both largemouth and smallmouth are closed to possession [catch-and-release only] from May 1 through June 25. On June 26 the daily creel limit will return to five bass per angler with a minimum size limit of 14 inches. The seasonal tackle and other restrictions on the Maumee and Sandusky rivers also have been lifted, and white bass action remains fair to good.

No crocs at Cootes But American eel and longnose gar mark two firsts May 07, 2010 ERIC MCGUINNESS / thespec.com An American eel and longnose gar mark two firsts at the Cootes Paradise Fishway this spring, but Royal Botanical Gardens staff report no sightings of either crocodiles or alligators. Tys Theysmeyer, head of conservation at the RBG, said the eel, an endangered species once abundant in Lake Ontario, is the first caught since 1997, when the fishway began operating to keep destructive carp out of the Cootes marsh at the far west end of Lake Ontario. He said it might be one of 144,000 released into the St. Lawrence River in a 2006 restocking effort. Eels are small enough to swim through the fish barrier, so it was just chance it was caught in one of the steel baskets used to sort carp from desirable species allowed into Cootes to spawn. Longnose gar is a large, primitive predator species with an elongated snout and many large teeth. Young males have turned up at the barrier before, but the recent catch was the first female and the first big gar, 1.2 metres long. Theysmeyer said they can grow to 2 metres. "They are a normal, big, wetland predator fish historically wiped out in Cootes Paradise, but they have hung out in warm water near the steel mills in the harbour, where the Hamilton Naturalists' Club once counted more than 200." A heavy rain in March submerged the fishway, giving carp a brief free pass into Cootes, but Theysmeyer said few appear to have taken advantage, so the marsh remains largely free of the invasive fish that uproot plants and stir up mud, making the water murky. He reports the water level in Cootes is down half a metre from last spring's near-record high. "It's no fun if you're a fish," but it could give a big boost to Project Paradise's efforts to restore vegetation to the wetland. Instead of planting seedlings as it's done for years, this summer the RBG is fencing off mud flats near the mouth of Spencer Creek, hoping seeds will germinate and grow in much larger numbers than could be planted. The fences are to keep Canada geese from munching on the sprouts. Theysmeyer said: "The water hasn't been this low in the spring since 1961 and has approached this level only twice since, most recently in 1999, so we've changed our approach to plant regeneration. "We're focusing on protecting seedlings. There are about 10 hectares of bare mud at the creek mouth now and if we get plants growing on even seven, it would make a dramatic change in the appearance of the marsh. It would also help rebuild as much as half a kilometre of the creek channel. It would make the marsh much more interesting for fish and people."

LOL....Fake is always a MISTAKE, real is the only good deal!

Yep, that's a seal.

Congrats Dave, it was a great little video!

HaHaHaHaHa......Love it!

Anything over a $50 charcoal BBQ Gerritt is a down payment on a boat.

Reduced to a single word....."Damn!"

Wow, first rainbow Jacques, late bloomer I says. Want to buy a custom 15' rainbow rod......

Sweet ride JP but I'll bet my last dollar Doug will be doing the work, not Clarence.

Can't comment on the Fishhawk but I do have a Lund 1700 explorer, 75 tiller, incredibly wide boat at 91.5"s

No video, no pictures, never happened......

That'd likely be the best option. 403 to the Linc, then down the Redhill, exit east on King to Green.

Ditto for me. The galv trailer was a no brainer, don't look so nice at first but it'll far outlast a painted one. If you can afford to sell I'd say upgrade.

Far to many people being lost to this nasty disease, hopefully someday they'll find better treatments and perhaps a cure for cancer. Please accept my condolences on the loss of your friend Cliff.

Very generous of you Chessy. If I didn't already have a drawer full of turkey feathers I would have gladly accepted some. They're quite popular in many fly patterns.

Oh my......privileged information.

Cigarettes, a demon I'm still battling after several years of failed attempts to quit. Kudos to all that are that are doing better than I.

To take it one step further HH I've never understood why they close fishing for browns, lakers and brookies after ice season, they all spawn in the fall. *also scratching head*