Catch and Release Report

[SEAN LEARY]

I’ve admittedly fallen of the wagon when it comes to reporting. Doing the tagging study was initially exciting years ago, but I found I dreaded recording the data after a catch. Just wanted to get right back at it.

I didn’t report a single release this year, and it was one of my best years. 49.5 jigging, 48 jigging, a 48 casting. Would have loved a hat; but it taught me a valuable lesson.

My “new season,” resolution is to contribute to the goldmine of data that is held by Mr. Scime. 

By not including my data, I realized I’ve robbed this club of valuable info. I heavily favor jigging and casting, and saw the catch rate was highest for trolling in the recap. Can’t help but wonder how differently a complete data set would have read had I not neglected reporting. 

One of the interesting patterns I haven’t seen explored is the time of day on the catch. We all see how well the summer night troll works; and I wonder what patterns we could see if we sorted by time of catch. Obviously with changing sunrise/sunset throughout the seasons this is a moving variable- but I still think there’s a lesson to be learned by time of day as well. 
I watched a nature documentary on animals at night- that described certain normally diurnal animals adapting to night due to human pressure- I wonder if the same has happened to our fishery during the dog days of summer with increased boater traffic.

Im almost certain I won’t be able to fish as much this upcoming year, but I’ve committed this post as a reminder to myself to step up and start recording my data. I’m always glad to share with any of you that talk to me about my time on the water, but I hope a renewed commitment to reporting will benefit all.

[Tony Scime]

Good to hear Sean.

We do keep time of catch. I have them on the excel file which have been posted on this site, but I don't always put them on the pdfs due to space restrictions. But when I look at the anglers who are catching muskies trolling, and the time of day and year in which they're catching, I'm quite sure that most of the trolling fish are caught at night (other than those caught in the harbor).

[Scott McKee]

On those rare occasions when my boat catches a musky, i jot down the specifics of the catch via text message.

If I'm with a partner I rattle off the truly important specifics (length, time, location, wind direction, depth, water temperature, maybe line out if we're trolling) and they text them to me. Bait and color I remember. Our online release form, because of the ranges set, allows for some guesswork regarding air temperature and time. If I'm solo, I text the info to Carrie. When I get home or whenever possible I use the info to submit my fish on our site.  Texting someone an audio text (if there is a term for this, I don't know it) might be a great way to record release information.  Pick a recipient and hit the little microphone button and blab away.

When I first looked at our 2020 Release Report it was evident that the extremely warm temperatures of last summer reduced angler hours. That's a good thing.

What was also evident was lack of participation by some of our members. That's a not so good thing.  I'd like to thank you, Sean, for coming forward and admitting you didn't submit fish this year. I understand. When the fish are biting, they are biting.

I hope your post inspires others to participate in our release database in the future. Also, winning $50 in a release drawing makes you feel good all over.

[John Pensyl]

Anybody not keeping logs/journals for personal use in this game will always be behind the ball when it comes to recognizing patterns. In 10 years on the niagara one thing is very apparent and that is every bite I've ever experienced is repeatable based on moon phase, time of year, water color and most importantly, water temp. It's real easy to know what the fish are doing when you can fish it every day. Its another thing to be able to predict exactly what will work with consistency based on prior success. Thankfully 30 years of NMA data to analyze and 10 years of my own journals allow me to narrow things down before I ever hit the water. I love comments like "wow I cant believe they are already down there" or "i cant believe they are already eating this". The data is 100% repeatable year in and year out and because of this I am more suprised when I dont boat a giant then when I do on a daily outing these days.