hermit

Okay thanks a lot. I'll rig up what I've got and see how it looks, may pick up some lighter line too.

Cool thanks Les. Could I get away with a long leader on heavier line? I don't have any spools of 4lb on hand but I do have some leader material, Seaguar fluoro 0.148 mm (0.006") that's rated 4.8 lbs. In aberdeen style I have 10s (probably too small) and 2s (probably too big). I do have some 1/32 jigs on size 6 but then can't tie them on the shank. Hmmm doubt Wallyworld has aberdeen hooks. Edit: totally wrong about hooks I had.

Hi all, I'm heading for a perch trip on Cayuga Sunday. It's been quite a while since I've gone for perch and I'm rusty on details. Any tips on rigs or depth for this time of year? We're going to use minnows primarily but I'm open to suggestions on other bait. So far I'm thinking either a drop-shot setup or small jig, maybe with another hook 12" up or so. Hooks on main line or short leader? Thanks for any help! Alec

According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_walleye They've been gone for 30 years and "[t]o date, none of the bluish-coloured walleyes recently captured has been shown to be a blue walleye" and "ubsequent exhaustive efforts to find a relict population have been entirely unsucessful". It is now considered extinct. Unfortunately. Pretty cool anyway! edit: fixed link

It's been a while since I've been in school but here's the "book report". The topic first came up here. Several interesting points that say a lot more than the abstract and clarify the canal/native thing. I was pretty surprised at first! Hard to argue with DNA though, fascinating! (Or something, it's kept me obsessively occupied the past few hours.) They actually are native! -Lamprey entered the upper Great Lakes through the Welland Canal. This is well established and the subsequent invasion of the upper Great Lakes is well understood. These lamprey came from Ontario (Capt. Obvious checking in ) and there's plenty of good info out there about the lamprey in these lakes for the curious. -It is most likely that lamprey entered Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain via the St. Lawrence River. Cayuga Lake lamprey most likely came from Lake Ontario via the Seneca and Oswego rivers, NOT the canal system! The lamprey have been in the Finger Lakes (and Ontario and Champlain) for >10,000 years. Biggest shock of the article for me. -The Ontario and Champlain population share some characteristics but are distinct. Cayuga Lake lamprey are also distinct, and while they are most closely related to Ontario Lamprey there are definite differences. -It is likely that historically low Cayuga Lake populations caused this effect- what they call a genetic bottleneck. If population is low at some point, genetic diversity drops, and even if the population rises again, those genes are lost and the remaining lamprey are a little less diverse. This happened to the Cayuga lamprey. (It also happened each time the lamprey invaded another Great Lake, meaning that Superior has the least genetic diversity among the lamprey.) -The genetic data for the lamprey being native is also backed by the existence of the Seneca strain of lake trout, the only known strain of lake trout that exhibits behaviors that thwart the lamprey. -The historical record doesn't show lamprey in Champlain, the Finger Lakes, or Ontario before the early-mid 1800's, which was one of the main reasons it was thought the canals were the means of migration. However- -That the lamprey have become a nuisance in the Finger Lakes in recent times is due to other changes in the lakes caused by human activity. Other invasive species, loss of species, intentionally introduced species, whatever- the long-running balance in the Finger Lakes between lamprey and prey got knocked out of whack and has never come back. (And never will.) Also relates to the Seneca strain laker. -They explain the discrepancy with the historical record by the previous low populations (shown by genetic bottlenecks) and the fact that people didn't write a lot down back then, and records are very spotty to nonexistent. So the lamprey happily co-existed with the lakers, original atlantics, cisco and whitefish, and only became a problem after we mucked things up. -This study did not sample any Finger Lakes other than Cayuga, but since migration between the Finger Lakes is easier than between the other bodies of water mentioned, I would guess the lamprey are likely most similar to Cayuga's but have minor differences. -Another interesting fact, not really related- lamprey don't 'home' on a birth stream like salmon do. They follow pheromones in the water from the young still in the stream to find the spawning grounds. I remember reading something within the past few years about how they may use these pheromones to lure and trap adults returning to spawn. Source: Bryan MB et al, 2005. Patterns of invasion and colonization of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) in North America as revealed by microsatellite genotypes. Molecular Ecology, vol. 14: pages 3757-3773 edit: added link to previous post edit 2: minor but embarrassing confession... I knew all this already and forgot it. The pics in the article started looking familiar and I looked through my email and files on an old computer- and found this same article from back in '05 and some conversations about it! It was even discussed here on the board, though perhaps on the part that was permanently erased. Crap my memory sucks.... damn you whiskey it's been 10 years...

Instead of hijacking I'll start a new thread... but they actually are native! Amazing.

Oops, okay. Got rid of the extra parenthesis in the text but not the link. Will fix it now. It doesn't say much more than what I posted as it's just the abstract. OKAY... can't actually fix the original post! I changed it twice but for some reason it's not actually doing it. Bug? Anyway, the correct link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16202094 Also, I can see calling Ontario lamprey native if they came up through the St Lawrence, but not the Finger Lakes or Champlain lamprey- if their only means of access was due to the canal system, then that's caused by us. Not sure if they get into that in the article or not, I'm trying to get ahold of it and will post more at some point if there is anything interesting.

Sk8man, very interesting! I had previously thought the lamprey came from the Erie Canal via the Hudson River system and this was indeed the line of thought for some time. Seeing your post made me go looking for information, and I found that in 2005 a paper was published to support the Lake Ontario theory. The authors did genetic testing to determine the origins of lamprey in the Great Lakes, Cayuga, and Champlain. They go so far as to claim the lamprey in Ontario, Cayuga, and Champlain are 'native' and came through via natural migrations up the St. Lawrence into Ontario, then spread through the canals to the Finger Lakes and Champlain. Also, they are genetically distinct from upper Great Lakes lamprey. Cool stuff and thanks for the more recent info! edited for typos + a little info edit 1000: see below for link

Hey I've been away a bit and missed this conversation but just had a thought. First nice fish lakerchaser! Fatties! Sounds like a fun day. Since color has a lot to do with diet, and a lot (but not all) of the wild fish have the orange color, then they probably learned to eat the different foods (shrimp) as young and kept up the habit when older, while many of the stocked fish may not have ever learned to eat the shrimp but some did. As for store bought fish I don't remember what we buy these days but I know we've gone back and forth between the wild and farmed. There's always some news telling you to eat one or the other!

It's nuts and we got more rain than I've ever seen in Enfield. Driveway washed out by the ditch, completely revealing the culvert and undermined the road. Enfield Creek was over our road and one of its tribs washed out a bridge on 327 just down the road. Ditch out back re-routed itself to go down the outdoor stairs to the basement (and under the door) and more... here's a few of the pics. I had a one quart mason jar in the garden and it filled to the top. Be safe on the water! Driveway: Neighbor's backyard and propane tank that washed out and moved: Repaired 327 bridge. That lump in the middle is all gravel they brought in to fix it: Upstream debris on bridge: Close up: Neighbor who had the water from the washed out bridge go through his yard: Neighbor down the hill who stole our driveway gravel:

Thanks for the Cayuga report! Sounds fun, it was a beautiful day.

I have the 5x Pro and don't like it. It's a step up from your old unit but it's not ideal. If you absolutely have to stay under 200 bucks then it's either this unit or the similar Humminbird model. The dual frequency is nice, I usually run them side by side, sometimes one will pick up fish when the other doesn't. Also if there is a lot of bait around the narrow cone can be a big help, otherwise you won't see the fish for all the bait. But it's not very good at tracking the jigs past 80 feet or so. My old discontinued Fishmark 480 was better and it was in the same price range. More power like bulletbob suggested would be a big plus. Also a color screen is another big plus like zackblain said. It's not so much the color as it is the brightness, with a grayscale unit it's very hard to see in bright light and I find myself bending over to get close to it all the time. The color units are much easier to see. I would strongly recommend a more powerful color unit if you can swing it, if not, the 5x Pro is serviceable. I'm sure the Humminbird equivalent is just as good or better also. I wish I had spent more for a better unit myself.