GAMBLER

About fifteen or so years ago there was a hill billy bragging in the bait shop down there that he was dumping pike from conesus in there because he was sick of catching so many small bass.

There was a bigger one caught on the North end a couple seasons ago. The pic was on Iceshanty. I believe it was 42" long. Very nice pike for sure.

I keep bottom contact and raise it up 3-5'. I always keep dropping them to make sure I'm close to bottom. If my ball is dragging bottom, I raise the rigger up 3-5', I'm not far off the bottom. With my graph zoomed on the bottom, I will mark arches that the top off the arch is level with the ball. I do not run a probe that close to the bottom. I run a third rigger with a probe off the bottom that is clean (no rod). At the speeds I run, blow back is not an issue. The cable angle is next to nothing unless there is a ton of current. I run mostly .8 - 1.8 ball speed. I run 12lb weights. I don't have any pictures of what I'm talking about. This summer I can get you one.

20' deeper? When laker fishing, I keep my rigger weights within 3' of the bottom ( I keep dropping the ball and make bottom contact) and mark the top of the arches level with the rigger ball. There is no way the fish can be 20' below the ball.

Cannon changed the pulley to a new design that keeps that from happening. I don't have any issues dropping and raising in small increments.

You can't go wrong with either. I have been using cannons for a long time. I just replaced my old Cannon Mag 20's after 13 years of abuse. I spend a lot of time fishing lakers in 100+ fow on the bottom. They were great riggers for years. I upgraded to the mag 10 stx cannons and love them.

The ice was 4" on the south end today. Not far north of the boat launch the main lake was 2" according to the guy next to me. There were some nut jobs that ventured to the trench on scary ice. No thanks.... We stayed in the gill water and caught a bunch but a lot of small ones.

If you are going to buy the Smart troll for $800.00 just to hook it to any rigger, it is a waste. You can do the same thing with the X4d for less money. If you want the versatility to put it on a copper or diver, it might be worth the risk. To me, sh*t happens and the chance of a wire or copper break is way higher than losing a rigger probe.

Fish Hawk X4 or X4D.

I have had very good luck with UV stingers for browns and kings. I also field tested some Hammerhead Cowbells in UV last summer and it put some really good lakers in the boat. What I noticed with the UV cowbells is they only worked good on bright sunny days. Cloudy days, they were slower than the original of the same color pattern.

Gobie. The belly fin looks to be one solid fin not two separate.

Conesus perch population is poor but the sunfish / bluegill population is far from poor. Most are stunted and not over 6".

Are reproductions available in more poses now? I see a lot of different poses in skin mounts but the reproductions seem more straight.

I agree the pike creel should be dropped. 5 is WAY to many. 1 or two would be a lot better. Definitely a one pike limit on the ice and use a slot limit in the winter. I do enjoy eating pike but I let the big girls swim.

On top of kings putting on weight, the YOY alewive will survive. The last two years, the survival rate has been poor. We are right on track to follow the 2011-2012 winter. The 2012 class of 1 year old alewives was HUGE. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I would rather see more effort go into the pike population before they do more with the tigers. Conesus is nothing like it was years ago.

It was on the LOC facebook page. The lake is way warmer this year than the last two. It is even warmer than 2012 at this time.