LongLine

Merry Christmas!

This one's a little harder:

Guess the next one has to be a little harder.

Here's some fish:

My wife lets me have all the fishing gear I can hide.

Something to work on while we wait for the snow...

HB - Don't take that as an insult. Off topic from the subject of this thread, but there's a difference between "actively feeding" and "hitting." Back in the 70's I caught a female while balancing on a rock, 1/3rd of way out the east side of the Oak Orchard channel on a very dismal October evening. (rainy, windy, freaking cold) Casting a CD5 Rapala. Poor cast with a lot of slack. Fish hit it as soon as I reeled in the slack. Never saw fish till it was a couple feet from the rock. Very dark and dropping eggs after I landed her. She had both trebles in her mouth. I thought it was great to catch 28# Salmon feeding under those condition. However, her guts were shriveled up and hard to distinguish which was what. (Totally empty stomach) I then thought that the lure settled directly in front of her, scared her so she grabbed it. Since then, I've seen a lot of underwater videos of spawning fish. Pre and post spawning smallmouth chase anything away from their nests. (Which is why the closed season) I've also seen underwater videos of Salmon runs. In addition to discoloration, hooked jaws and deformed bodies, I've noticed (in most of them) the frequency of their mouth and gill movement. Spawning is very stressful and exhausting for Salmon so I can't help thinking these fish are gasping for breath. I.E. Sucking in a lot of water to get more oxygen. Just like any animal's respiration rate increasing when stressed or exhausted. Bottom line: Did that fish take the lure because it landed so close that she instinctively grabbed it. Was she being protective? Did she just suck it in during one of her deep breaths? She was a spawner, hit a lure but definitely was not "actively feeding."

Believe what you want. Personally, I believe statistical sampling a lot more than anecdotal fish stories. There's an age old saying that "all fishermen are liars except you and me, but sometimes I'm not too sure about you."

I agree with Whaler but note regulations can change every year. I'm sure many members remember when the Salomine limit was 5 and not 3 in combination with only 2 Stlhd over 21." Also the years before the slot limit on Lakers; and years when the limit on bass was 10" with 6 per day; just to name a few. I don't remember when they initiated the timed closing of the Little Sandy (Oswego) nor when they initiated the section of the SR to fly fishing only. I really don't see why a new one of a "max length slot" type one can't be initiated in the General Lake Ontario and Tributary regulation section. (I.E. Harvest one King over "X" length per angler per day) According to the 2022 angler surveys: 51,864 Kings were harvested by boats over 169 days, (5+ months) yet 30,968 Kings were caught in the SR in the month of October alone. We don't know how many of the boat caught fish would have gone to the SR but we do know the benefit of Pen rearing regarding returns and according to same report, 62% of those boat caught Kings were on the west end. We also do know that the 30,968 Kings were in the SR at spawning time. As to enforcement, what keeps anyone within the laws? Actually getting caught? The threat of getting caught? Upbringing as a "law abiding" citizen? Knowing that DEC is counting cars and doing angler surveys?

Let me 1st say I'm an open water guy. Tried tribs twice in my life. 1st time (early 80's) I saw guys snagging huge salmon and thought it was criminal. 2nd time, slipped on my butt & nearly drowned...so scrow that! But I'm also a Data guy. It's not a matter of what I'd like to believe. As to the Sandy Pens, someone contributed the size issue to discontinuing those pens yet here is the data from the Chinooks measured at the SR over years: Pens were at Sandy Creek in 2017. Size decline showed up well before 2017. Here are the pen numbers from 2017 report: As to why they discontinued pens there, published strategy was that they wanted to spread them out more based on the tagging/marking studies that Chinooks caught in the open water could have originated from anywhere and to spread out the trib runs somewhat evenly across all 4 regions of Big-O. They also did away with Little Sodus (Fair Haven) Sodus and 12 Mile. Here's the numbers for the 2022 stocking: (note they increased the numbers in the pens and did away with the direct stocking. They did have a small surplus but unknown where they went) As to closing the river, I'm not against that however, it's not going to happen. Angler survey estimated 870,000 effort hours spent on the open water in a whole season and 747,000 on the SR. On the SR, 373,000 hours from shore estimated to occur during the month of October. That'd be a lot of pizzed off trib guys and a lot of potential economic loss for the east end. As proposed before, I'm all in favor of some kind of daily max length per angler for open water and tribs. I.E. keep only 1 over a certain length per angler. I don't know how that affects tournaments (But don't they require all legal fish must count in box?) Maybee some tourney guys can chime in on their rules? There's no doubt in my mind that Pen Rearing helps survival and growth so here's an "off the wall" idea. I believe the DEC and OMNR coordinate efforts (sometimes "friendly" competition). Could a deal be made where some of the Chinook SF in our pens are Canadian SF? Maybe 10% or so in each pen? Maybe over a few years?