Dec 5th Fish Report

[Scott Kitchen]

Jo Jo and I spent most of the day (from about 7 AM till around 3 PM) in the cold west north west wind on the Ontario side of the upper.  The water looked nice, about 5 to 7 feet of visibility and a warm emerald green, but the fish did not want to play.  There where white caps in the triangle for most of the day and we did not see another boat at all.  Still nice to fish with Jo Jo for the first time (he brings cookies and sandwiches, yea me!).

[Frank Stachowiak]

Tony, this should be required reading for all anglers. 

[Joe Z.]

I agree with Mr. Scime 100%. Back in the day when we had a choice between the fish or the fishermen; we would always err on the side of the fish and the fishery. The sacrifice of 15 days in December doesn't seem much for the the sake of a healthy fishery.

This is soley the humble opinion of a non-relevant former Conservation Director.

[jojo wilczewski]

Good Day

All club members opinions are relevant especially an ex-president. It is the non-members I worry about???

Well said Tony, if only everyone lived through the "Great Depression".

"If it ain't broke don't fix it"..............

Happy Happy Holidays

ALA BALA BALA jojoout

[John Pensyl]

It's hard to look at the harbor musky fishery as "healthy" or "unhealthy" because for the most part the fishery doesn't even exist anymore. Most of you have long given up on it for the most part and now that a new idea has come up your protecting something based on results and memories from the past. Unless one of you is willing to put up the money to turn those coke ovens back on and give us a warm water discharge to draw in fish its hard to believe the fishery will ever exist as it was. Let's look at it in a new light, as it exists today and will probably exist in the future. We're going to have to depend on environmental conditions to align just right to draw bait and muskies from lake Erie into the harbor each fall. They're out there, roaming the lake and if we're lucky 15 extra days in December might provide us with 4 or 5 fishible days and maybe if we're really lucky 1 or two with the right conditions to pull in these giants and get them to feed.

[Capt. Larry D. Jones]

I agree with Tony on just about everything he is saying,but there is one problem global warming.The water temps are getting warmer on Lake Erie every year and the fall fishing has been pushed out to the end where there are only a few days at the end of November where you may get a chance to catch a big muskie from Lake Erie.This year was the first year in about 7 years where we got 45 degree water temps before the end of November.So if the warming trend continues we can say if we leave the season finish date set at Nov 30th,we will never have a chance to fish for the big fish at all.There still are big muskies in Lake Erie that only show up when the gizzard shad come in,gizzard shad stay out no muskies move in.Even if December 1st to 15th were open there may still be to warm of water conditions on most years or total brown water conditions,fishing pressure would be very little,next to no one fishing the West river now but 5 of us.

[Tony Scime]

But....

When we first started fishing the harbor many years ago, we caught muskies all year round. Some great nights in July and August. And great days - up to 12 fish in September. And big September fish. Same with October. I don't think it had anything to do with water temps or warm water discharges (which helped the "shooting the fish in a barrel" effect of the coke channel - real sporting!).

It had everything to do with reproduction, spawning success and fish population numbers. But it may have been just a once in a generation type of event. A couple super year classes generated 15 years of incredible musky fishing. And there were only a few of us,  who were fishing it at that time. The first few years only about 5 of us, but the numbers of anglers gradually grew...

I'm going back over 20 years - pre NMA. It may never happen again in our lifetimes. Well, maybe if you're under 30 ....

[Stephen Glassic]

Tony

Was that before the zebra mussels?  Could it be partially because zebra mussels cleaned up the algae and therefore the food chain moved out of the harbor?  I know there was still muskies in the harbor in the fall well after the zebra mussels were in the lake.  The coke channel had the warm water discharge but we were also getting good numbers of fish in the in the north gap.  It seems like there are multiple factors involved in the change of the fishery in the harbor.

[Stephen Glassic]

Another thing I was wondering about is if the spawning grounds in the harbor have gone through any negative changes.  Has there been any monitoring of the spawning grounds for spawning activity?

[Tony Scime]

Zebra mussels didn't start having an effect until the mid or late 1990s. So the good spawns and muskie populations in the harbor were generated pre-ZM. 

I don't think that the spawning grounds have changed much. There was never much there. The only concern I've always had was the weed cutting in both the SBH and Erie Basin Marina. I think it became much more aggressive. And there were eye-witness reports of a lot of YOY pike and/or muskies being harvested with the weeds. That probably still goes on.

I think Cornell did a study which showed that weed harvesters kill incredible amounts of fish life. In the SBH and EBM that may have been future musky populations? No specific study locally. That is a subject we should really focus on for the harbor, along with the habitat improvement projects that are in various stages.

And yes, the North Gap had as many big muskies as the south - a distant of 3 miles. So I'm not sure what effect the warm-water discharge really had. I doubt that it was significant. I think other factors caused the demise of the harbor.

[Capt. Larry D. Jones]

The Buffalo Harbor was always best when at 45 degrees with gizzard shad present.Doesn't get there most years now.I can remember 51 degree water in the 1st week of October.Everything in the Harbor keeps getting later every year.

[Stephen Glassic]

I wonder if studying all the data from catch and release reports (catch rates, temps, locations, weather), fisheries studies (including other species), environmental studies, habitat changes (including weed harvesting and other human interventions), invasive species, any significant changes in aquatic vegetation, etc. would reveal any significant information.  It would be a daunting task to gather all the information and put it all together in a timeline, but it might reveal some significant information which could then be used to determine what could be done to improve the harbor in the future.

[Josh Ketry]

It has been in the low 40's for over a month and there are gizzard shad everywhere.  The Great Lakes systems is a complex and every changing system, as is our atmosphere. Mother nature will cope, and in our end of Lake Erie she seems to be doing so just fine under the current regs. Why mess with it?