Stinky Finger

Drat! Link not working. Can be seen by going to Capt. Larry's site, "fishing info" the click the top left link, "current fishing reports for the niagara river area", then click on top left link that next appears, "outdoor network forums" and scroll down to "Pennsylvania/ Allegheny reservior, Allegheny river". Posted there by Capt. Red Childress. Sorry I'm a bit computer challenged, if someone can find a workable link that would be great, thanks.

http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/ot...icle306522.ece

zarzycki Yes it is true there are some northern in Chautauqua but very few it seems. Chautauqua is always a great family vacation destination for more than just the fishing, great fishing I might ad. Seriously I think a couple of crash test dummies in a pedal boat could do well on keeper panfish on that lake. When you bring the whole family though, you want a little more than just fishing. Bemus Point has antique shops, restaurants and just up the road is an amusement park geared to smaller kids that has been there probably a hundred years. Try your hand at the famous Chautauqua muskies, might wind up being you that gets hooked- for life. Lots to do down there, tour the hatchery, drive in movies, Chautauqua Institution with big name musical acts all summer long. All of Chautauqua county and parts of Cattaraugus county county (Allegheny river and several creeks) for decades had no closed season on pike and no limits. In other words, if you caught a pike, any size pike any time of year, you were encouraged to keep it (kill it). These days I do not see that expressly stipulated in the fishing regs like it always was, maybe that has been dropped? This was in all waters where muskellunge are present, to give the edge to the muskies and weed out the invasive pike which are viewed as a nuisance in those waters, a direct threat to the muskellunge fishery. Onieda lake is a good destination too. Good walleye, pike and tigers in the canal. Also has a small amusement park at Sylvan Beach like the one at Chautauqua, geared to the little tykes with smaller rides, also been there about a hundred years. A few miles up the road from Sylvan Beach (north) at the northeast area of the lake is the Top of the Hill or Hilltop? I forget the name, great prime rib place owned by the same family that runs the Red Osier on rt 5 by Leroy. Good luck fishin'...

Anyway, getting away from the topic- this was about the New York State record. the 69 lb 15 oz Lawton fish used to be the world record and still recognized only by the state of New York, everyone else has dropped it. After being run through the scrutiny mill ad nauseum it was found to be murky enough to be removed from every record list in existence save for New York's state record list. Outside of New York nobody believes in this fish anymore. Back in the day the record keeping bodies were Field & Stream magazine and the Genesee Beer annual fishing contests, the pet of brewery superintendent Louis Wehle. Both offered cash prizes for winning entries. Quite a string of entries in the muskellunge division for both record keeping bodies were made by Len & Betty Hartmann and by Art & Ruth Lawton. The winning entries went back and forth between the Lawtons and the Hartmanns for several years, that alone should have raised flags. In Len Hartmann's own words during an interview (Ramsell?) he states that fish were routinely padded with wet sand down their gullets to increase their weights prior to being weighed on scales, he implicates Lawton for doing the same. "We did it for the money, like beach bums who would rather surf than work we would do whatever it took for money in order to fish and not work a steady job". "We didn't care about the world record, we wanted the prize check". At least one photograph of Hartmann has been widely circulated showing Hartmann holding a fish reputed to be 65 lbs, later proven to be in the 40 lb class when it was revealed to be a fish caught not by Hartmann at all but by Cubby Kiah of Alexandria bay. Another of Hatmann's capers was passing off a pike as a muskie to a client while guiding. "Two clients came up from New Jersey to catch muskie. One caught a pike and later a muskie. He asked me why they looked different, I said one was male, the other a female" Hartmann pocketed a nice tip and the anglers went home to Jersey unaware. Apparently he would bend the truth on a regular basis to make money off of fish and he openly admitted to doing so in interviews. All of Len's and Betty's fish should be tossed out. The June/July issue of Musky Hunter magazine has an article by John Dettloff on several of the Lawton fish with photographs, very similar to the pic submitted above from a newspaper clipping in '57 showing the 69 lb 15 oz world record. It shows the same pole with several Lawton muskies in Oct. '60 in the same yard displayed exactly as the '57 photo. The Lawtons regularly displayed their multiple catches hung on this pole and several such photos exist. The world however did not know of many these photos until Dettloff launched his vendetta to discrecit Lawton and obtained many photos from Lawton's daughter who was furious after the scandal broke. Apparently Mr. Dettloff told her one thing to get his hands on the pics and did another once he had them. The problem with the photos is they show the truth, these fish are nowhere near the sizes claimed by the Lawtons and like the Hartmann catches were regularly submitted to Field & Stream and Genesee for the prize money that was up for grabs. Dettloff may be a bottom feeder but he exposed the truth about the Lawtons. Dettloff went on and on over the course of several issues of Musky Hunter defending the Wisconsin fish which became the default world record once the Lawton fish was discredited and the angler who caught it, Louis Spray, a shady character by many accounts who was recognized for three world record muskies over the years. Of course Dettloff cannot claim to be unbiased as his efforts were on behalf of the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame for whom he worked, located in Hayward Wisconsin on the Chippewa Flowage, the lake where Spray claimed to catch his fish and the very same lake where coincidentally Dettloff just happens to own a fishing resort and guide service. Dettloff also just happens to have written a book about Spray ( I wouldn't be surprised he if had a life sized velvet Elvis of Spray in his living room surrounded by candles, kinda creepy infatuation). The Spray records, along with others from Wisconsin have been discredited since then by the IGFA and others. But I digress, those were world records and this is about the New York State record and so here we still are- with the Lawton fish, a joke anywhere but New York. It should be tossed and any Hartmann fish that may result by default should as well be tossed. I doubt this would result in the Governor ordering flags to half staff and giving all the kiddies a day off of school in mourning as may be the case in Wisconsin.

The same topic came up at a Chautauqua Musky Hunters meeting about what to do with a sub limit fish that fails to revive and the DEC officer there answered that one- leave it for the birds. If the limit is 40" you can't keep a 39". A 44" limit in the statewide regulations would cover all of the Chautauqua strain 'skis wherever they are now found in the state, Chautauqua, Bear, Waneta/Lamoka, Cassadaga, southern tier rivers and creeks and also the Great Chazy and Champlain and ensure a better fishery which would be more self sustaining. A 60" limit on great lakes fish would effectively place them into a catch, photo & release status, just a notch below sturgeon which are a no-no and cannot be removed from the water for a photo. "Throwing back" a belly up 53" fish on Lake Erie would be heartbreaking but limits is limits and them's the rules and in the long run the higher limits are ensuring the existence of a great number of fish that otherwise might be in some yahoo's frying pan. BTW, almost forgot- Dr. Casselman at a NMA meeting said he studied the O'Brian fish from the Moon river (65 lbs Canadian record) and determined the fish to be in its thirtieth year when harvested.

I hear ya Zack. Been wondering about the size limits (lack thereof) for years. Granted, the Chautauqua strain lacks the size potential of the great lakes strain but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have better protection, especially in light of the fact that muskies do not mature and spawn for the first time until they are 5 to 7 years old and their first year of spawning is often unsuccesfull (Crossman). If a 36" Waneta female is kept she likely has not spawned even once. If the state subscribes to the notion that the Pendergast hatchery and its Chautauqua muskies are no different than its other hatcheries producing trout and long standing annual tradition of "put and take" fishing with crowds of people chasing the hatchery trucks, it needs to stop. Muskellunge (native species, BTW) are not rainbow or brown trout (both non native species). I subscribe to the Dr. Bernard LeBeau school of thought, that we have two species of muskie, not just one. The Chautauqua or lucastrine sub species and the great lakes or riverine sub species (LeBeau, doctoral thesis). My Great Uncle Warren (1900-1994) spent his whole life on Chautauqua, was a muskie fanatic and fished it hard up to the 70's when his health prevented it. His best was 53" which says a lot about Chautauqua, that's about as big as they get. He had literally dozens upon dozens 48" or better but they seem to top right off at 50" and anything past that is a rarity indeed. I would love to see the statewide size limit upped to something like 44" and the great lakes limit set at 60".

I certainly don't want to see "a whole new round of kills", especially on the Larry which has made an amazing comeback from where it was in recent decades. The big girls are back it seems and the last thing I want to see is a repeat of the horrifying "Hank's top twenty" days on the Niagara where I walked past a dumpster once at Aqua lane and there must have been two dozen dead muskies unceremoniously tossed in there, stench and flies swirling around. Disgusting senseless loss. There must of course be records in existence, perhaps in the Genesee beer contests or Field & Stream which are close to the Lawton mark yet bearing enough legitimacy to finally warrant dumping the Lawton fish -which most in the muskie fishing world feel is bogus- and awarding the laurels where they are truly due. If the Lawton fish IS bogus, which is the most plausible assessment arrived at by many who actually know what they are talking about professionally in ascertaining the evidence then that can only mean that some one who deserves the recognition has been gypped all these years. With the implementation of higher size limits in recent years (thank God) such as the 54" mark for Lake Erie I very seriously doubt that a string of dead fish is in the offing. In fact I have not heard of a single kept muskie from Erie since the higher limit was set. There are very very few fish of that caliber encountered and very few anglers are on the water in the late season when the largest fish are caught. Raise the limit. Is the current size limit on the St. Lawrence enough? I say bump it up to 60". I am not for "wiping the slate clean" and starting from scratch because that of course would see a slaughter unfold. I am for tossing the Lawton fish for the next record verifiable which no doubt exists, it simply has to be determined, the who, when, where it was and give credit where it is due and in so doing remove the fetid aroma surrounding the current record.

We all know the story- in September of 1957 Art Lawton is reputed to have caught a muskellunge in the St Lawrence river, vicinity of Clayton N.Y. that is said to have weighed 69 lbs 15 ozs, one ounce shy of 70 lbs. No small amount of controversy surrounds this catch. It held the slot as all tackle world record muskie for decades until its fall from grace and being stricken from the records of the world fish record governing bodies, both the International Game Fish Association and the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame. The State of New York still recognizes this catch as the official state record. Do you think it should be tossed and the next heaviest muskie which can pass scrutiny and be positively verified, documented, certified, etc. be handed the crown ???

I can remember Gov. Cuomo (King Mario the first) when the state lottery was in the process of being created and that was his big selling point, that the monies would go to the state education fund and at first it did. The last figure I heard on that was 11% of lottery proceeds are what then (about five years ago) went to education, the rest, 89%, was going into the general fund. Come to think of it I remember another program he got us into at the time, the 5 cent deposit on beverage containers. That was also harped as being reserved for the education fund and like the lottery it was at first but then went the same way as the lottery, wasn't long. After the big carp die off on Chautauqua I attended a Chautauqua Musky Hunters meeting where DEC fisheries biologist Paul McKeown was a guest speaker. One of the big topics was of course the recent carp fiasco of earlier that summer. He told us in the group that the source of the koi herpes virus in Chautauqua lake had been positively identified as being an ornamental koi pond at a private residence on the shores of the lake. The outlet of this koi pond emptied into Chautauqua. That is exactly the opposite of what I read in an article about it a few years after, that DEC had no idea where it came from but that was after the state answered the crescendo of whining from the cottage association to clean up the big smelly mess. Somebody had to pay for it and for those who don't know who foot the bill it was you, the guy that bought a fishing license. That's right, the state raided the conservation fund. If you are discovered to have caused a massive environmental disaster like say starting a forest fire, aren't you liable ??? The state has shoved its fat greedy hand deep into the conservation fund in the past in order to bail out its other problems, it will do so again.

This was in Chaffee NY near the Waste Management landfill, Erie county.

Today, Nov. 30 is the feast of St. Andrew, patron saint of fishermen. (I think he liked golf too).

I hear you slimeyfish and I agree completely. Frustrating when all I want is to pick up a half dozen original Rapalas in the tried & true black back with white belly and I find 57 different flavors to choose from -oh so pretty- in every wild color of the rainbow. Everything but what I wanted.

Cool. There is another bad azz critter worth mentioning, this one local. I recently heard through the grapevine of a Livingston county bowhunter who upon approaching his tree stand found it to be occupied by a black bear. The bear was actually sitting in the seat in his tree stand. I think that demonstrates a certain amount of attitude on the part of the bear !

Semper Fi and Happy Birthday to all my Marine brothers and a hearty Happy Veteran's Day to all and most especially to America's gold star mothers.

"Stinky Finger" comes from being snowed in at the hunting camp near Holiday Valley/ Ellicottville one February on a weekend skiing excursion. Snowed in, no food, no snow plow on the road for three days and after running out of what food we had all that remained was Grampa's jar of limburger left over from deer season. I got hungry so I ate the whole jar off my finger. Not bad actually, despite the rancid smell. Of course as soon as I finished it a plow roared by and whisked away the four foot drifts that kept us stuck and we were free at last. We all piled into the Suburban to head into Great Valley for some chow and no sooner than the doors closed somebody yelped "what the hell is that stench" !!!??? I was now known as "Stinky Finger". Great. A few months later I was back at the camp and had scored an aluminum boat at a nearby yard sale. I had it out on the bass pond there when the ski trip crew arrived for the turkey opener the following morning. "What are you gonna call it" somebody yelled out to me but before I could say anything they all said in unison "Stinky Finger" !!!

Not making fun at all, I have a great reverence for the traditions handed down to us through time. Just citing the advances in technology. My favorite time on the water is fishing alone in a 12 ft rowboat, no outboard, just oars and one rod, an old True Temper solid glass trolling rod with a wood handle, Penn 209 or an Ocean City reel, 36 lb Cortland dacron, a six ft twist weld leader and a wooden jointed husky Pikie minnow in pikie or perch pattern with glass eyes on Chautauqua, perfection.

I hope that in the end it works out in favor of sensible regulations for you salmonid chasing guys. I fish muskies & pike mostly but I've pretty much done it all here in western New York's fantastic fisheries, everything from salmon trolling on Lake Ontario to walleye on Lake Erie, flinging flies for stream trout in at least a dozen counties in the state to drifting the Mowhawk for walleye & tigers to Chautauqua's fabled muskies and the Larry too, New York is likely the single best region to fish for freshwater trophies in the world, bar none. It is all very diversified. Likely nobody is using the old "Seth Green rig" anymore or "pulling copper", one man in a rowboat with a handline of copper wire run over one thumb while that hand also works an oar. Times change. Tactics change. The 15 hookpoint rule came from the Seth Green rig and nobody is fishing blind like that anymore with today's electronics. Very scientific these days but still the mood of the fish is what it is, no guarantees. We are incredibly successful these days as compared to times past, more often fish in the box and regular limits are the norm. The fishery is what it is, it is not limitless. Do we need more lines really, many run cheaters anyway and still look for more to satisfy their paying clients. When is enough enough? Muskie fishing is not salmon fishing, what I consider enough lines out is how many can be realistically managed when a big fish hits without tangles and breakoffs. With muskie I put out one whn alone in the boat, two if more, no matter how many more, two lines. Can you manage multiple lines when the fire drill is going on and you have a boatload of people who are unfamiliar with being in that situation? What is all boils down to is conservation over anything else.

Beauty!!! Went ice fishing up there once several years ago, tried to anyway. Bottomed out the jiffy without reaching water

Four more years huh? My timeline is eight more years, once my youngest is off to college WE ARE OUTA HERE, goodbye Vampire State. The only thing that would keep me here is if Western New York does in fact secede and become the fifty first state. There will always be the cottage at Chautauqua, in the family 103 years now since my Great Grandfather bought it in 1907. Lifetime licenses on the way out and we are GONE...

If it was easy it would be called bass fishing...

If Prince Andrew is seated upon the throne in the palace in Albany, and unfortunately I think he might be, I am all for Mr. Paladino being the first Governor of Western New York, the 51st state. Barring that is it o.k. if we just saw off everything south of the Tappan Zee bridge and set it adrift on the Atlantic ???

Wow Johnny, impressive! I hope you had a valid moose permit... Walteye I have done o.k. on Oneida when things get tough by slowing way down and sizing way down. Usually me & the father in law split our time between trolling the canal (we stay on Fish creek) with crawler harnesses with 80 ft of line at 1.5 mph and heading out to the first bouey out from Sylvan beach and jigging with crawlers on round head jigs, they always seem to like plain lead more than anything, sometimes white. That's when they are agreeable. When things get tough because of a week of crap weather/ east winds or in years with huge rafts of bait we switch gears and go slow and small. Trolling is out, drifting & jigging is out. We break out the stuff usually reserved for spring crappie on Chautauqua and even some ice fishing teardrops. Crawlers are out, fatheads are out and we go with red worms on crappie jigs and anchor over hard structure like rocks and drop offs. What constitutes a drop off could be just a one foot break, so long as there is a well defined edge. Rocks could be gravel / cobble (so long as you're not over muck) in 30 fow, for some reason 30 fow seems to be the charm in the rain on Oneida for us. We work slow, this is more like ice fishing. You are putting the bait on their nose and leaving it there, spoon feeding them. Moving to another spot means taking up one of the two anchors and letting the boat swing around one length to move a bit along the structure and drop the anchor again, one fore, one aft. Usually when it gets like this we can't see any marks on the graph, just trust that we are on good spots and inch along hoping to pop one here & there. If it looks like we are riding with a skunk in the boat we aren't ashamed to head into Fish creek and fish chicken livers in sac mesh in the deeper outside bends for channel cats. They always deliver and after a couple are in the box we usually declare victory then and head in for a sheet pizza and a 30 pack of Genny Cream. Hey, when it gets to be too much like work... The only time we head out to Oneida is usually the last week of July or the first week of August so I'm not up on fall patterns for that lake but our bad weather tactics might pay off for you. Another trick we use is in the canal when the sun is glaring down on hot afternoons and the wallys are shying away from the boat. We run one planer board off the port side with a harness & crawler so it hugs the drop off that is a few feet out from the bank. It does produce when those blue bird skies are making things tough. When all else fails there is always pizza, Genny Cream and NASCAR

It can be hard to find a good processor who does a very good job consistently, even under pressure when things get really busy. I think that's the difference right there, someone who cares to maintain professional integrity for the sake of providing his customers with quality because he cares about his customers and wants to do a good job. I am going to rant a bit, sorry. I take a lot of ribbing because I pass up bucks and big does, I don't want them. The best venison comes from yearlings, they have done nothing but eat the best feed of the year since their momma dropped them and haven't been through a winter yet, prime. I'm not bashing buck hunting, just not my preference and I do try very hard to make sure I'm not looking at a button before I take the shot. A dead button will never be a twelve pointer and the other guys in camp ain't so pleased so I strive to pick out that trailing doe fawn. It helps the local herd management wise and in the long run means more racks for the other guys to shoot at which goes over pretty good in camp. I don't care that I get only about 35 lbs of venison out of it, it is the best there is. The last thing I want is a buck that has been running himself ragged, all pumped full of testosterone, not eating, not sleeping, chasing his girlfriends 24/7 fighting all the time, pissing down his legs, a nasty old billy goat. Anybody can tell and appreciate the difference in the venison. So my gripe with some butchers has been, like others have said here things are best in archery season when he has less deer to do so you get better service, that once things get busy and now the guy has 30 deer to get done well of course the quality is going to dip a bit. Working a 16 hour day is tough on any job. What grates me is when I bring in one of my black lab size deer and what I get back is some tough old run of the mill crappola that some other guy shot and I know that's not my deer. Add a bunch of hair stuck all over it and that's just icing on the cake. Here's a good one that got a lot of laughs from everybody at my expense- Was the morning after opening day one year of shotgun in the southern tier. We took eight deer to a place that does a lot of deer, hundreds every season. They have a platform scale and one by one everybody got their deer weighed. 220 lbs, 145 lbs, 160 lbs, etc etc. Mine was last. 74 pounds field dressed. The butcher looks at me and says "you want me to wrap that or are you going to eat it here". Ya I know, har har, but that is exactly what I want so I'm happy and I know what I get back out of it, about 35 lbs every time. Well the last time I had someone else do my deer I got back a box that was a little heftier I thought, paid the man, tossed it in the truck and went home. It looked like it was a lot more than usual when I opened the box so I stood on the bathroom scale with the box and then without it, The difference was 55 lbs. The deer wasn't any bigger, usually about the very same size every year. Hair. Lots of hair all over the venison. Pissed me right off and most definitely not yearling venison. I've done my own ever since which ain't hard because I don't get fancy with it, mostly stew chunks, wrap the neck roast and slice the hind quarters into steaks. The rest gets piled into a heap and that goes in a box to a guy who makes the best summer sausage on the planet. O.K. so I get like three of 'em out of it, so what. The bottom line is if you have got a really good butcher treat him like royalty, take him fishing in the summer, show up and wash his truck now & then, marry your son off to his daughter, you get the picture. These guys are few & far between and worth their weight in gold.

Art is the man !!! Will never disappoint, keep ahold of your receipt so you don't get a ticket from your friendly neighborhood ECO. Good luck !!!

Mystic lake is a pond alongside Tungungwant creek in the town of Limestone bordering Allegheny State Park to it's west and the Pa / NY border to the south. Tungungwant creek is a tributary of the Allegheny river. There are a lot of ponds. oxbows and "borrow pits" along the Allegheny river and its tributaries in this area which blend with the river when levels rise in late winter/ spring. The borrow pits were gravel quarries when I86/Rt17 was constructed in the 70's. Walleyes find their way into these backwaters during their spring spawning run and some of them stay behind after the river recedes, trapping them in the ponds. I've caught walleyes, pike and channel cats in the pits near Onoville on Kinzua when I camped there (Onoville Marina Park has cheap camping, great docks/launch and is right on the reservior just north of state line bay on the west shore). Be warned, there was quite a spate of outboard/ downrigger/ tackle thefts from moored boats on the reservior during the years I camped there through the 90's. I'm reminded of another big walleye from when I lived on Rushford lake back in '03 or '04. The story was a man and his 8 year old son decided to get into fishing so they bought a boat and began fishing Rushford lake. The man claimed he caught a 18 lb 3 oz walleye on Rushford. The fish was weighed at a local store. Great story about it in the paper at the time. Then DEC wants to see/ weigh the fish and the guy says he already cut it up. As days go by more comes out as several people claim to have seen the fish floating on the lake that day, apparently it had been hit by a jet ski and the guy finally had to admit he just netted it as a floater. After that it pretty much got forgotten but the fact remains that Rushford lake produced an 18 pound walleye, the guy was a shyster but a big fish is still a big fish.