GAMBLER

Here are two of the ones you can’t find Rick. 2010 Fall was the first on the new website. Anything older than that is not on there.

Congrats Mallory! Awesome trip for both of you!

Good luck today guys! Congrats on the buck Tommy!

I would think there are tons of factors. Length of winter, health of YOY alewife going into winter, strength of the bottom of the food chain going into winter, predation and who knows what else!

She does know we use guns to hunt? I'm shocked!

I ran years of temp data and compared it to the State of the Lake meetings trawl assessments and there were warm winters with great survival and warm winters with poor survival. There were also cold winters with good survival and cold winter with bad survival. What we all know is winters like 2014 and 2015 survival is horrible. Those winters, we had issues with frazzle ice in our intake. Schreksoff is the man and hopefully he chimes in.

Good Luck Tom and Mallory!

Brayden shot his second deer this evening. 75 yd shot, deer quartered to us as he shot. Here is the story: We have been seeing deer pour into a cut bean field every night and figured it would be a good way for Brayden to shoot his second deer. We got set up in a hedgerow on the South side of the field. Wind was NNE all afternoon so it was perfect. At 4:25, I see a nice buck step out of the hedgerow at 75 yds. Brayden slowly swings the .270 in the tripod onto the buck. He asks me if he can take him and I have him the thumbs up. As he clicks the safety off, the buck raises his head and bolts into the hedgerow! Ten minutes later, I see a tail flicker in the same hedgerow in the same area. Out steps a button buck and a doe. He slipped his hearing protection on and I told him to shoot the deer on the right. He didn’t hear me and pulled the trigger on the button buck.🤦🏻‍♂️ I watched the doe run off uninjured. Brayden pulled off his hearing protection and I asked him which deer he shot. He said the one on the left. After a call to the neighbor to get permission to go on his property, the track job was pretty short but into the thickest brush on the planet. We recovered his second deer in his second season of deer hunting! I will get some better photos tomorrow in the day light.

the BH209 is a great powder. Hard to find and a little pricey but worth every penny.

Carp, catfish, trout, salmon, bass, pike, walleye, panfish and sheepshead all are fun to catch. As long as they are biting, I don't care what I'm catching. I really enjoy taking my kid and his buddies to the canal for a day of carp fishing. Big strong fish on light tackle is a blast.

I have used a 20 gauge brush before. Let me look in my kit Chad. I may have an extra 50 cal brush I can send you. I found them a couple years ago and scooped up a couple of them.

If you are using clean burning powders, I just use the same solvents I use on my shotgun. I use Blackhorn 209. If you use any kind of solvents, make sure you store your gun muzzle down or with the breech plug out. I have had solvent residue run into the breech plug and cause misfires.

I had a conference call with Adam and Jeremy the other night. They were telling how much bait they had. It's good to see Lake Michigan on the uphill swing.

I will have to look back and see which winter it was but there was a winter that we only got below 37 degrees for a couple of days. I believe it was the 2011-2012 or 2012-2013 winter.

The fish cleaners I see on facebook said the run on the Salmon River was huge this fall for kings and coho.

I will be posting the data after each month goes by and then an overall for the winter. I think the data is easier to see trends in the winter when the water is only a couple degrees difference. Most winters, there is a very short window when temps get below 37 degrees,. Long cold winters (2014 2015) the temps were 33-34 degrees for a long time.

Actually, strong South winds at this time of the year brings warm water in. If the surface has been cooled by cold temps and strong West or NW winds, the South will draw warmer water in. You can see on the graph how the temp dropped and then rebounded. That drop was from the cold snap and winds around opening day of gun season. We had some SW winds and South winds and a warm up and the temps rebounded. Totally different once the water cools and the density of the water are closer together. It's amazing to watch how easy temps change in July and August when the temp is in the 70's on top and 39 on the bottom. The slightest wind changes and temps change drastically. In the winter when temps are very close top to bottom, it takes huge winds to change temps. Constant W / NW winds all winter sometimes sends our intake temps as cold as 33 degrees. Switch that wind around to strong South for a couple days and the temp will rise to 37 degrees or possibly more. Strong NE will also bring warm water in during the dead of winter. It's not as drastic as a strong South but it does change things. I will do graphs for December, January, February, March, April and then an overall as they go by to see how we match up to other winters.

Me too! Hopefully early kings and a good survival for the YOY alewife!

I just ran November of 2019 and the average temp was 47.1 degrees for the month.

Taking our intake temps for the 30 days of November in 2020, 2021 and 2022, I averaged the temp for each day (we take intake temps every 2 hours every day), adding up all the days temps and finding the average temp for each November, I came up with the following data: November 2020 - average temp 49.9 degrees November 2021 - average temp 51.3 degrees November 2022 - average temp 49.7 degrees. I will get this onto a graph when I have time.