Stinky Finger

The alcohol test kit I mentioned in my post was not a NAPA thing, fuzzy memory. It is a Briggs and Stratton product, part number 100023, $5.00 kit. This will tell you how much ethanol (alcohol) is in your gasoline beyond any doubts, just because the sticker on the pump at the station says 10% etc, it doesn't mean it is not actually higher. Apart from neoprene rubber fuel hoses on kicker motors (or anything else) there may be other parts to replace with ethanol compatible parts such as carburetor bowl O rings, needle tips, gaskets, anything the ethanol can come in contact with. The man I learned this from has a friend who lost a '59 Chevy to a neoprene fuel line which failed due to ethanol eating it, the resultant engine fire consumed the entire car, total loss. Equally detrimental to older outboards are modern motor oils containing detergents. Not all that long ago these oils did not contain the additives they have today which can prove lethal to your old motor.

Docks are still in the water as of today, nothing posted on the shack to indicate a date. Lake was very flat today, just a slight chop and no wind to speak of just breezes. One guy out on the whole lake his rig was at the launch. Picture postcard pretty, east bays were glass, that guy had the entire lake to himself. It doesn't get much better than that. I think the launch is run by the NYS department of parks & recreation. Somebody somewhere, maintenance chief type I presume, has a clipboard with a date written on it concerning when those docks get pulled. I honestly don't recall when they have been pulled in years past because I launch the cartopper or the canoe from the DEC access or Longpoint until the weather gets too nasty, pretty soon. -Dan.

Great. I can't figure this guy out, unless I look at it from the perspective that he is doing everything he possibly can to foul everything up as much as possible, the he begins to make sense. I am gearing up for a rebuild over this winter of an old outboard I bought some twenty years ago and put into storage. It's a 1954 Evinrude fleetwin aquasonic 7.5 hp that I plan to put on the Stinky Finger for the '11 season on Silver and Conesus. My research tells me in the rebuild I'll have to replace all the rubber fuel lines on it because the alcohol in today's modern fuel will eat it, the ethanol which is a fancy name for corn liquor, really that's all it is. Back in '54 when this outboard was new it was not recommended to run automotive gasoline from the corner gas station, "leaded" gas in those days. Marinas sold a grade of fuel known as "marine white" which was simply unleaded gas, what we have today with the exception that in those days they kept the corn liquor in the bottom desk drawer where it belonged and there wasn't any in the gas. Up until now apparently the regulations (in NY at least) was 10% maximum ethanol in gasoline but I have been warned that gas sold in NY can routinely test much higher (up to 18%) and it is easy to determine with a test kit sold at NAPA for about 5 bucks. Sorry I don't know the part number off the top of my head but if anyone wants it I can find out and post it on here. With all the thousands that folks have into their fuel burning machinery and toys it would be a shame to see ruination brought by this ethanol crappola. Darn shame what these shameless politicians will do to turn a buck for their pals. It has been proven that ethanol production is a money pit, gives no useful advantage to fuel and serves only to drive up grain prices. Just another Washington sham to make our lives "better" and all that.

I can take a roll by there on my way home from work tomorrow around 3:00 pm and have a look see. If there's a guy in the shack I'll see what the word is. -Dan.

One did just exactly that so I was told by a friend of mine who lives in Belfast, Art Kellog. Art is no BSer either, I believe him. He claims he and his brother were coon hunting in Caneseraga in 1979 when their hounds treed a cougar. He says they gathered up the dogs and left, they wanted no part of it. Another man I knew when I lived there was Frank O'Brian, if he is still alive he would be in his 90's now. Mr. O'Brian was the county historian and quite a wealth of knowledge about Allegany county. He told me about one of his neighbors, a farmer in Scio who entered his barn one day and surprised a mountain lion inside that ran out the back as he came in the front, "Bobcats don't have four foot tails" is what the farmer said about it, that was 1937. My Dad is big in the family tree geneology stuff and I read a passage in a book he had on NY units of the Civil War when he was researching my Great Great Grandfather who was a Union Brigadier General from Franklinville. The unit was mustered into service at Belmont in Allegany county and marched to Salamance where it was to join with a larger group and march to Pittsburg where they were to board trains for Washington. The Cattaraugus county boys wanted no part of walking throught he wilderness of Pa and instead built rafts at Salamanca and rode south to Pittsburg on the Allegheny river "because of all the wildcats in the area". Apparently the region had quite a reputation for people disappearing and this was attributed to cougars. 1861 was quite a while ago but still, the area was known for these big cats. I have a theory about these sightings and the rumors that these cats are being released, I don't think they are being released. It is claimed that the eastern mountain lion was completely extirpated from the southern tier of NY and northwest Pa by 1890, how could anyone know for sure? The cougar is a mighty slick animal and I'm guessing a few hung on and learned out of necessity to keep a very low profile. They do exist in Va and WVa so I don't think it is so far fetched to think a very few may still be out there. Stranger things have happened. -Dan.

I lived in Allegany county for a few years but I'll spare you the "me too" stories, there were quite a few. Check this out if you are interested in NY mountain lions- www.trackincats.com -Dan.

Hey, that's my back yard 5 minutes from here. Gorgeous pics you've got there Slayer... That last one is the very spot (inspiration point) where me & the wife were married back in August '06. Peak colors right now and great weather all this week

Sweet !

Nice muskie. It happens, they are aggressive predators and sometimes really slam a bait. Some wind up getting a bit tweeked. Have seen leaders cut gill rakers, rip upper lips off, one treble in the mouth and one outside dangling winds up in the eye, it happens. Don't feel bad. Bad is rare but it happens. All we can do is get them back in as easy as possible and hope for the best. At least on the whole we are a far cry from the old days when the way to go was a big plastic red & white tennis ball bobber with a sucker or chub and once it went down wait a half hour before setting the hook. It always meant deeply hooked fish and the mentality of those days -backed up by what was printed in the DEC regs- was to "cut the line, the hook will dissolve". Fortunately now we know that is false and it means dead fish. Musky Hunter Magazine ran a series of articles documenting in depth studies done in Wisconsin and Minnesota about ten years ago that bore this out with radio tagged muskies that had been gut hooked. Every case was the same, fish caught, fish released and "swam off real strong and healthy". The series proved a real eye opener and changed muskie fishing with live bait on the whole. ALL of those fish turned up dead on the bottom within days, every one of them. Your fish might have looked real bad in the boat but I'll bet she's o.k. becase it was hoked in the mouth and not ingested. If her gills weren't really gauled she is probably gonna be waiting for you next year. Dan.

Joe check out what is going on in Europe. Over here everything is about fishing with lures from a boat. In Europe, specifically in England, Scotland and Ireland, also Finland and Germany, shore fishing is the predominant method because it is the only choice. Here we are blessed with options and can fish just about anywhere. Over there things are very limited. If you are an angler in one of those countries you pretty much have to belong to a club to fish. Everything is private and behind locked gates. You need a pocket full of licenses and permits plus pay huge sums for tackle. How does $150 for a basic spinning rod / reel combo sound ? Apparently they don't have Wally World. There is virtually no boat fishing, there is but that is reserved for a very few. Americans seeing videos of fishing in Europe won't grasp what is going on because we are unfamiliar with he class system prevalent still in Europe and take for granted that we can go fishing just about anywhere we see water. About a gazillion people want to fish over there but like I said, all the waters are private and there are waiting lists to get into a club that owns rights on any given water. Nonetheless, check out videos on YouTube of pike fishing in Ireland, England, Germany, etc,etc. It can be somewhat confusing because there is a whole different terminology being used, i.e. what we call a leader is called a trace, what we call a sinker or a weight may be a bomb and not quite the same thing. Confounding when you are trying to watch these videos and gleen some info from them and understand what they are doing. There are a lot of videos of pike fishing on YouTube in Europe and many are in other languages than English but you can see what they are doing. I have cousins in County Armagh in Ireland and it can be frustrating just having a conversation with them because they shift between Gaelic and English and i have seen the same in videos on YouTube where there are Irish, never mind trying to follow what they are saying, just look at their gear and how they are using it. Out of necessity European anglers have taken pike fishing from shore to a high level and you can learn a lot from them. Pay attention to the terminal tackle they are using and the fact that they are using dead bait more often than not. Most big pike are taken on dead bait. I'll leave you with that, go delve into some research. Sorry but that's awhole can of worms I've just opened for you! Nobody is doing this stuff here in the states but pike are pike and over there they have got the shore fishing thing down.

Billy I wish you luck on your trip. I'm planning a Chautauqua muskie mission myself for Oct 22nd on the full moon. My best advice for you regarding Chautauqua is to get ahold of Capt. Larry D. Jones (MostlyMuskiesCharters) and ask for some pointers, he will do you right and make sure you aren't going out there blind. I suggest for everyone interested in muskies to join the Niagara Musky Association. Even if you are nowhere near the Niagara River, Buffalo / Tonawanda area and can never actually attend the meetings you will learn a lot from the newsletters and hook up with some very seasoned muskie hunters and learn a ton of how-to. Those getting into muskie fishing for the first time should seek out proper handling / release methods and the tools required. It means everything.

Joe- You definitely can do well on pike without a boat. Just like the saying about real estate, Location, Location, Location where you are is everything. This time of year we are seeing the warmest water temps and if you know how that impacts pike then you will know where to go. Well, until turnover that is but most fisheries aren't quite there yet so the late summer pattern is still there. Pike like it cool, big pike that is. The hammer handles will be right up shallow in the warmest water because their metabolism is higher, they feel safer there and have plenty of prey. Think teenage girls, busy busy busy, zooming around the mall yackity yackity yackity, they are little live wires, bursting with activity and never idle, those are the small pike. Hyper. Ever catch one on a lure almost as big as them? The bigger pike get the more they like cooler water. The big girls are more reserved in their behavior, like women the older they get the more sophisticated their surroundings. They have needs, comfort zones. Like when you were 16 if your mind was on girls you went to the mall because that's where they were. I'm guessing you aren't going to the mall because you don't want hammer handles, you are cougar hunting. So where to go? Ivy lane, inground pools, Hummer parked in the driveway... That's where. So how does that translate into big pike lairs? Generally it means deep water with shallow weedy feeding areas in close proximity. With a boat, no problem. From shore you are limited but not at all out of the game. Rule number one is deep water within casting distance from shore so this is pretty much the whole game right there. Find deep water you can walk right up to. This means reserviors with dams mostly because natural lakes tend to have shallow water near shore and very limited public access. On reserviors, even if they are totally ringed with cottages you can still fish from shore at the dam, usually the only place in such a situation but tha'ts o.k. because that is exactly where you want to be because it usually is the deepest water with the sharpest breaks. I grew up in Clarence near Buffalo so I'm not that familiar with shore fishing spots around Rochester but I can offer two spots that I know will produce, with a shot at big pike close enough to Greece that are worth the drive. 1.) Glenwood lake, north of Medina on the Erie canal. Access is Nymo rd. of of N. Gravel rd. (county rt 63). Park and walk down to the dam. Use slip bobbers and set your stops at 15' at least, then work deeper if you don't get bit within twenty minutes. Don't waste time, move a bit if you don't have any customers. If they are there and you put meat in front of them they will hit it. I caught a 41" pike here in '94 that went 16 lbs. It looked snakey and I'll bet it would have gone 18 or 19 lbs through the ice. 2.) Waterport pond / Lake Alice. The water from Glenwood lake finds it's way here on it's way to Lake Ontario. I have fished a spot there from shore with good results, consistent results, plenty of times (walleye too) I have never been skunked here. Access is at a bridge, boat launch next to the bridge at Oak Orchard rd (rt 279) and Eagle Harbor Waterport rd (rt 31). It is a public boat launch. Have caught pike there to 36" and walleyes to 5 lbs. Further upstream there is a dam most definitely worth checking out but I have never fished it. I fished the bridge / launch because it was near a relative's cottage. The dam is likely better. If you are fishing from shore and want to know where the big pike hang out then the best thing you can do is travel around during ice fishing season and find those spots where there is no ice, or "bad" ice because those are the places where springwater is entering and it remains the same temperature year round. THIS IS THE PLACE !!! This is where big pike are in summer, lying right in that colder water. Likewise on streams / creeks / rivers, where you find a tributary of colder water entering you have found a goldmine, THAT is where you want to go. It might only be a trickle but if it enters where there is little current it can collect and offer pike a sanctuary of comfort. Cougarville. Good luck.

FX that's exactly what I was thinking, for some reason this thread crossed my mind today while at work and it dawned on me seems like this guy spent all day trying to catch a 'cuda and now he's finally got his fish so time for pics! 1.) Knife to the fish's head- check. 2.) Get the girl to the hospital RIGHT NOW- fail. What a schmuck.

OUCH ! That is brutal. I really feel sorry for this girl. I saw this happen once before back in the 80's when I was in the marines stationed at Kaneohe Bay Hawaii. Apparently this happens fairly often around salt water. I was headed down to the little fishing pier they have in K bay, walking from the barracks carrying my spinning rod. The base ambulance screamed past me headed straight for the peir. When I got there a minute later they had loaded a guy in the back and taking off already. Seems there were a few guys swimming next to the peir and one had a silver bracelet on his wrist (his Dad was shot down in Vietnam, MIA) and the barracuda went for the silver flash and shredded his hand. NEVER wear anything shiny when swimming in salt water!

Ray I think maybe I was at some of your parties These days I tell my kids when I was their age (early 70's) I could go to the store with a quarter and get a Charleston Chew candy bar about 18" long, a handful of foot long pretzel sticks, half a dozen fire balls AND a Coke in a glass bottle - ALL FOR 25 CENTS- and they just look mesmerized. I started collecting beer cans when I was ten in '77 which was real big back then. Me & my buddies thought nothing of getting on the school bus with a big bag of cans and having a trading session on the bus all the way to school. If a kid did that today the parents would be hauled into family court and the kid would be in the custody of child protective services. Sometimes I would ride my dirt bike to school ('75 YZ 125) and just park it by the bike rack in front of the school. Never a problem so long as I walked it to the edge of the schoolyard before kickstarting it and taking off down the side of the road. Video games did not exist. We had one T.V. in the house and it was a black & white until I was 12 or so, even after we got a color T.V. there was still only 4 channels (not counting the Canadian ones) and there still wasn't any cable anyway, it didn't exist yet. Me & my buddies could walk down the street with our .22's and shotguns and head into the woods and nobody ever called the cops. Miss those days...

They might not be the prettiest fish but you're right about the fight, they are scrappers! BTW- I recall reading an article years ago (by a Canadian fisheries biologist I think) which was about some otoliths (ear bones) found in Lake Erie which showed that 800 pound sheepsheads once swam there. That was not a typo, eight hundred pounds. Yikes!!!

Wow, A.C. I must say that is just about the perfect boat for New York, I've had something like that in mind for quite awhile and that design sure seems to offer a lot. You hit the nail on the head in listing the criteria you like in a boat, warm & dry, relatively light weight, diesel (reliable plus low maint. & operating costs), Fairly small, easily launched and trailers nicely. We are so blessed to have such fantastic fisheries here in New York and so many of them. I would be hard pressed to cite any other region anywhere on this planet that has anything close to the level and diversity of our freshwater fisheries. Why limit ourselves to staying on one body of water all the time when we are surrounded by so much? This new boat of yours is just the ticket. You could be on Chautauqua one day, lake Erie out of Dunkirk later that afternoon, Niagara tomorrow then jump over to the Big O off Rochester next and wrap up the week on the Finger Lakes- PERFECT !!! What I like most about this vessel that so many lack is the "warm & dry" part. That is so important, especially since much of our best fishing comes late in the season and on big mean water. No matter what outdoor activity you are enjoying if you are cold and wet or subjected to the wind you are just not having fun any more -game over. Thanks for sharing, she's a beauty!

Beautiful pike, stunning really, a real trophy. Also that has got to be the biggest sewer trout I have ever seen...

UPDATE- Today was Monday, took Friday off so I havn't seen the guy since last week when he mentioned this fish to me on his way out the door. He was going off third shift, I was coming on first. This morning I got more of the story in greater detail. The fish was not caught "off Oak Orchard" as he first told me. It was caught well up into the creek, far inland from the piers, so not in Lake Ontario at all but up the creek. Supposedly a thirty pound class muskie (I hope a picture of this fish is out there if it is a 30#). So, supposedly this is how it played out- There is my friend and his Dad in their boat, the boat that caught the fish and also another boat, the DEC and all three boats are close enough that they can all yell back and forth to each other, so pretty close. The fish is landed and hoisted up level, with both hands by the guy that caught it and he yells over to the DEC boys "what the hell is this, a gar"? They yell back "that's a muskie, lot of them coming out of Braddock Bay lately"... So there you have it, a fish story that should be able to pass scrutiny and be backed up if anyone really interested wants to ask around. I think the moral of the story is yes, there are some muskies around, always have been. I just hope they are staging a comeback and spreading out into areas they have been pushed out of by pollution for decades because if that is true it bodes well for the lake on the whole and that would be pretty freakin' cool.

Hmmm... Gee, Ray I'm thinkin' maybe it's not such a good idea to leave the beers out in the sun on the dock all morning before you head out ?

Has anyone ever seen any UFO's while out on Lake Ontario ?

Just found this website tonight, great site! Anyway, was reading through the posts and coincidentally a friend of mine from Avon who fishes Lake Ontario with his Dad for salmon an awful lot tells me last week during a salmon tourney one of the boats landed a muskie off of Oak Orchard. Also have heard of a few being caught by the guys in the Southtowns Walleye Association every now & then on Lake Erie, usually on worm harnesses and sometimes as far south as Dunkirk, deep water, miles from shore. Weird, but it happens. I don't know of anybody specifically targeting muskies on central Lake Ontario, probably just a big waste of time. Irondequoit Bay was historically a muskie hole of some repute but pollution put an end to that by the 1960's. Perhaps today with the improved water quality a stocking effort could restore a once fine fishery? Being close to an urban population center it may well be worth the effort. I do know of a small group of Canadians that deliberately target muskies along the northern shore of Lake Erie from Port Dover east all the way to the Niagara but they are tight lipped about it and if they find this post I'll probably have a hit put out on me...