bosco
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Everything posted by bosco
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There's not anything here I would disagree with.
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Or maybe NOT Erie. I just investigated these “ice reports” and I’m pretty darned surprised.
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An Erie program on Honeoye might be a bit heavy handed. Honeoye may be the weediest lake on planet Earth (even this early in the season) and they lowered the limit to 15" because they run small there. If I had the gear for an Erie program, I'd be on Erie on opening night/day. That's just me though.
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Florida, eh? That's a heck of a trip. You must've gotten a STEAL on something. What are you coming home with?
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I get ya. If I decide to get up to the St. Lawrence I've got a couple starting points. I took a 4 hour night charter last year and picked up a little info. I'm on Irondequoit Bay. I'll have a line in the water at the stroke of midnight but honestly, opening night has at best only produced one or two fish for me. Usually around the 3rd week of May it starts to get a little more consistent for me down here. But I'm absolutely chomping at the bit. Good luck and let's hope for an improved forecast.
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So where is opening day for you?
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Not so much on I-Bay today. Did get a surprise Brown though.
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I got a little impatient and tried Hyde Lake for the first time last week. I'd never fished ANY of the lakes in this area. With nothing but a DEC contour map to go on I headed out figuring I'd lay out a spread of lightly rigged tip-downs, bounce around with a jigging rod, and see what happened. Well...even the blind squirrel finds a nut now and again. Drilled my first hole, sent down the minnow and had a fish on before I could let go of the line. I had a hard time getting a five line spread out the action was so steady (Perch). I might have just jigged and had better results but I wanted to get a full spread out before sunset to get a decent shot at a walleye. No luck on that end of things but I got a few meals and a beautiful day on a real nice body of water. Good access to the ice and a decent bait store right on 37 make this a great plan B for Saturday if Quinte still isn't safe. -
From the DEC website...."From 1993 to 1998, Irondequoit Bay was annually stocked with fingerling Walleyes. Since 2003, the stocking policy calls for bi-annual plantings of fingerling Walleyes. Assessment surveys have shown that these stocked fingerlings survive and grow to produce a good adult Walleye population". I can attest to that last sentence. I've never targeted them through the ice though. Just Spring, Summer, Fall. -
When I first started fishing Walleye on I-bay about 14 years ago, my friend who introduced me to the fishery said the DEC had quietly been stocking the bay for years. After a few years of hit and miss and dialing in my programs as I learned the bay I don't think I ever caught an eye under 18"....seriously. The last few years I've caught steady limits and with some exceptional explosive nights and with a few cold runs in the mix and in those last few years I've been regularly throwing back shorts. Some of the smallest I've caught came just this year so that tells me they must be stocking regularly. I really don't think I-Bay is at all an ideal habitat for successful natural reproduction rates of the kind that have been filling my live well so regularly for well over a decade now.
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Little feller'
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So here's a reply to my own question, asked way back in December of 2007, "Say....do any of you perch nuts fishing off the markers out there ever catch an oddball walleye or two? I'm trying to improve my knowledge of the bay as a walleye fishery and I'm curious if they're ever out there feeding on small perch.??" Well....it look 11 years but yesterday it happened. Fishing the channel markers late afternoon, having a fair to good day on the perch, and up comes an undersized Walleye. He was small but then again, so are tons of those tiny perch down there. Always happy to get small walleye in I-Bay though as I see it as a sign of possible good year classes to come.
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Sorry to scare anyone on western Ontario or the St. Lawrence but I saw these on a Walleye we caught on a charter near Ogdensburg this past weekend. I pointed them out to the captain and he said he hadn't seen them before. The only reason I thought to even look for them was because of this thread (and I told him as much....that they'd been reported out of Erie). I wonder how far and wide the problem is. If I ever get a keeper this year on Irondequoit Bay, I'll certainly look for them there as well. -
Coincidentally, I just took a 4 hour charter out of Lisbon yesterday AM. 1AM-5AM. We boated 4 and lost one. The captain said that was a slow trip on what’s been a tough year.
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Wait...you mean all these years I’ve been fishing I-Bay I could’ve been dropping a limit off to the car at 11:59PM and then gone back out for another limit at 12:01AM? I always defined a day’s limit as what I caught in one outing...from, say, 9:00PM to 2:00AM...for example. That’s good to know. That’s ALOT of eaters I’ve been unnecessarily throwing back. The freezer should be twice as full in the next few weeks then. -
I just noticed the link on the bottom left of LOU's home page. https://www.lakeerieunited.com/ -
Because a couple decades ago you had to catch 15 eyes to get one over 18. The lake was loaded with smaller fish. At the time, I welcomed the 15. It meant I got to actually keep a couple from time to time.
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I was going to say that (even if true) it's still nearly 2 lbs shy of the legendary Mabry Harper's 25 lber out of Old Hickory Lake in TN.
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I've got a buddy who charters out of the Genessee and he says he gets an odd ball Walleye now and again while fishing for the trout and salmon but as far as targeting them in the open water apart from the Niagara and St. Lawrence area I would think would be futile.
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I do very well on the eyes in Irondequoit Bay in May, July, and August but only at night. I haven’t figured them out in the day and, frankly, with all the drunks and recreational boaters/jet skiers tearing it up out there I’m not inclined to put the time in to find them. I’d heard the DEC had been quietly stocking the bay a bunch of years back but I’ve never caught a tagged one.
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Yup. I get them in the Honeoye Perch all the time. I pop 'em out like a zit with the tip of my fillet knife and fry them up. It's not ideal but I like Honeoye and I like Perch. I don't fish the gills but even so, yours is the first story I've heard of those worms showing up in the gills. Or was it in the Crappie? I'd guess the gills because the Crappie are often higher in the water column and the gills tend to hang toward the bottom, which is where I think the fish are getting their food containing this parasite. -
I surely would've preferred mid lake. My folks used to have a cottage just south of the Ranch so I could park there and walk across to the trench with little difficulty. They sold it last year so now I'm either Sandy Bottom or State Launch and a lot of hoofin' it. I'm just not yet in a position to take on that distance. Hand augering wasn't terribly comfortable either. Maybe in another week or so.
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I went out of Sandy Bottom yesterday figuring the water might be less stained being so far from the inlet. I started in 13' and was able to see me lure go down to the 7 foot mark. The fishing on the other hand...I had a real hard time marking ANY fish. Bounced all over the place. Finally I found a spot that got me about a dozen or so dink perch. I stuck in that area and fired up the lantern after dark to try and call in the Crappie. Not a single blip on the Vex for nearly 2 hours. Anyways, I was grateful just to get out. I went up to Quinte over Christmas break for a couple days, started to get a bad stomach ache on the ride home and 4 days later I was on the operating table getting my appendix removed. That was followed the next week by a bad infection at the largest incision point. Anyways, I was finally feeling good enough to try and get on the ice last night so I was extremely grateful just to catch a dozen dink perch.
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I call it "propane brain". I rented a hut on Quinte for a day over Christmas break. The heater provided gave me a headache and made me want to lie down and sleep. The next day I went out with my Clam and a Mr. Heater Buddy and with a little ventilation and it was absolutely night and day.
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I'm going to Honeoye after work today to fish for Walleye through sunset and then for Crappie by lantern light. I enjoy this kind of fishing because I usually have plenty of solitude. As far as targeting Walleye after dark, like pulling an all nighter, I've tried it on Honeoye and didn't get anything until twilight the next morning. I plan to try an all-nighter for Walleye again in the real near future but not around here (Rochester/Finger Lakes area).
