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BlueEye

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    2023 Year End Post - Fishing with Family

    in Musky, Tiger Musky & Pike (ESOX)

    Posted

    Happy New Year LOU!  Hope you all had a good fishing season last year and were able to find some time to get out on the water.  I didn't get out as much as I would have liked to for muskies on the river due to the busy schedule that comes with having two daughters these days ages 8 and 10 that want to be signed up for everything.  Regardless I still made sure to make some time and get them out on the water this year, away form the electronics to enjoy some natural scenery.  We did a lot of perch, bass and pike fishing..... targeting whatever would bite that day.  I felt like I was re-living my own childhood and in many cases I was.  Here are a couple photos and funny short videos from the family outings starting with my favorite picture of the year:

     

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    Plenty of good sized perch in the river; and everyone knows about the world class smallmouth fishery here.

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    Really had a good time out there with the family chasing anything that would bite just to watch the excitement on the kids face.  My youngest daughter Caroline was especially funny to watch as she would literately lose control with excitement and start screaming half the time.... and sometimes it was just over the sea weed she snagged... haha.  Either way, it was good to get away from the computer for a while in this new age of Artificial Intelligence; who knows where the next gen of fishing equipment and fish finders will evolve too.  One thing that I do know is that it can be fun to generate some funny fishing images with AI..... this is what was rendered when you type in "Crazy old fisherman" :

     

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    As for musky fishing this year, pretty good all in all.   I think the highlight of my muskie year was getting to watch my long time friend and college roommate catch his new personal best during the Gananoque Muskies Canada event.  What a thrill that was!  Congrats again to him :beer:  The awards banquet afterwards was equally as fun getting to sit with some of my NMA buddies and catch up with some of my Muskie Canada friends.  The raffle table was especially kind to our table that night :-) 


    Overall, I thought the river looked pretty good with respect to the muskie population in general.  I saw a bunch of fish in that low-to-mid 40" range:

     

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    and then a couple that stretched into that mid-50 range, including one of the heaviest I think I've ever caught (red october tube given to me by Hans > thanks Hans!); unfortunately I was fishing alone that day and didn't get a girth on her as my focus was on a nice clean safe release, which was accomplished on all fish this year and I encourage everyone to release the beast!  Did not see a lot of fish from 46-52" range which is different from previous years.  Might have just been luck of the draw this year.  All fish I caught looked pretty healthy and clean overall and certainly like they weren't having any problems find food.

     

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    Happy New year everyone and best of luck to each of you in 2024! 

     

    • Like 7

    Chautauqua Lake Showdown Musky Tournament

    in Musky, Tiger Musky & Pike (ESOX)

    Posted

    Had a lot of fun at the tournament- seemed like a big turnout for the event (117 participants).  Nice job by everyone running the event and CRO for hosting awards ceremony at their tackle shop. Huge raffle table was nice as well :yes:

     

    Ended the day with a couple nice fish, good enough for third place and big fish.
     

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    Fun getting to see everyone and catch up.  Good luck the rest of year out there.  

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

    Conesus tournament

    in Musky, Tiger Musky & Pike (ESOX)

    Posted

    Special thanks to Mike for running another fun tournament and bringing a load of pizzas to the awards afterwards - delicious!  Wasn't sure if we were going to be able to make it to this event or not as a week before my dad was testing the boat out for the first time this year and found that some rodents had gotten into the engine... to say it was a mess would be an understatement:

     

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    Every wire had been chewed down... some almost to nothing.  Credit to dad for taking on this ambitious project knowing we most likely wouldn't be able to rewire the entire engine in time for the event.  He pulled out the engine schematics and re-did all the wiring and low and behold that old smoker craft fired right up again!  The smokiest of all smoker crafts was back in action and ready to rock n' roll!!

     

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    Tournament day had some beautiful weather and it was nice that we had scheduled the event with no bass tournaments to contend with at the sole public launch on Conesus lake.  Lord knows my experiences at the launch have not always been my best moments... haha.  Fishing had some good activity throughout the day but lots of non-committal lazy follows early.  Ironically almost all tournament participants seemed to either catch or have follows from a bullhead or two that day:

     

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    We ultimately managed one nice pike at 35", good enough for 2nd place and big fish that I caught 2 casts after snagging a bunch of sunfish schooled up out there.  Dad and my brother both missed a couple other fish during that 1/2 hour window around 10 AM that day.  Special thank you to Dan Lacko for returning my brothers spinner bait that he snapped off during one of his casts.  Dan just happened to notice the line floating, pulled in the line to find a nice spinner bait and then heard my brother and I talking about how upset we were that we lost his favorite spinner bait that day at the awards afterwards!  What are the odds! 

     

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    Great event, looking forward to next year.  Up next... Otisco.

    • Like 1
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