ifishy

if your going to sit on your bait bucket make sure you have a lid that doesnt seal prying the lid off with cold fingers everytime you need bait gets old quick. advice I give the kids repeatedly everytime watch where you put your feet stepping in holes sucks if your fishing tip ups as your primary make sure to set up your shelter or yourself so that you can easily see them without looking into the wind. I have a tendancy to not line them up to my windows and that is no good. hand carry your bait bucket over the snow bank or down the hill to the ice. spilling on the way out ruins a day. bring a drink producing heat sucks a lot of moisture out of your body and you can get dehydrated without knowing it. second vote for fish with a partner. even on thick ice problems happen cracks and holes form and get covered in snow gas pockets and soft spots are not always visable having someone to help or at least call for help could save your life

glad you did well I had the chance to get out wensday and after lots of internal debate went to the north end and spent 3 hours with nothing to show for it only marked a handful of fish and no bait. I've never seen it that empty up there. I should have gone to hemlock like i was thinking just for something different.

i think the sturgeon tend to spawn in the deeper parts of the river (may be wrong) and that will hopefully prevent them from being seen and snagged by the less aware. i will say there tendancy to breech gives them away. I will continue to shy away for them from now but maintain my dream that i can one day fish them with my grandkids heck 20 years i might well have a couple greatgrand kids to take fishing

looks good i know what you mean about low sided I mounted a board across the back for the riggers and it doubles nice as something to brace my legs against. I took up trolling again 5 years or so ago after not doing it for 15 years or so and this site helped shorten the learing curve a ton. and its always nice to find do it your selfers willing to share experiences.

in this case i think its okay that it is about money the result is imporved environment and healthier more dirverse thereby more stable ecosystems and if there is money coming out of it there is reason to put money into it to keep it healthy.

thun thats funny that dukedog thread came out as I was buying fittings and tube. so i had all sorts of questions for him at the time. I have a smaller boat so I thought the 1.5" would look out of place i ended up using 1" OD tube and so far it has held up very well plus there are a lot of clamp on mounts for 1 inch rail out there i tested the streangth by hanging off of it and I am not skinny it held up well so if I ever do get the money for a larger boat I'm gonna use the same set up having lots of holders up front is key to get rods out of the way when fighing and landing I used to not have enough and had to land fish around rods stored in back it led to issues.

going by the ariticles the goal of the stocking program is to get them off of the threatened list. If that were accomplihed that would open them up to angling i think it would be irrisponsible to not have some sort of managment plan in place for that with a closed season and possibly catch and release only fishing. in areas outside of NY there are places where you can keep these fish and in some waters you can spear fish them through the ice. a viable fishery could be promoted and generate money for the state and dont think they wont jump on that opportunity. i dont think anybody is advocating targeting them at the moment or really anytime soon but personally i have a lot of optimisim that I will be able to target them sometime in my life time. it may be 20 years from now or longer but things are looking up and the environmental improvements that go along with there restoration will only benefit the other fish we love to target a well

Thun that is exactly what I used to build my planer mast set up. I am working on upgrading it to a rocket laucher I just have to attach railmount rod holders on the cross beam. lakebound for what its worth i bought 2 of these to trial http://www.rivermarinesupply.com/xcart/catalog/product_12625_Taco_Light_Tackle_Aluminum_ClampOn_Rod_Holder.html i put them on the cross bar and they were perfect for rod storage and net holding i plan on getting 4 more to complete the set and they are well within my budget. I wouldnt run a dipsey out of them but thats not what i was looking for they are solidly built for the price and can be mounted anywhere on your arch system at an angle of your choosing. my other option is the old stand by piece of pvc and a couple hose clamps but it would be a shame to ugg up your new ride that way.

there is a definate long term possibility of fishable populations of them around NY but it is still a way off the long slow growing nature of them is the deciding factor. incidential by catch is going up all over the state and many of the stocking efforts over the past 20 years are just now coming to a point where sexually mature fish are appearing. a couple of very strong early year classes could set up a limited season catch and release fishery in a few choice places around the state my estimate is 10-15 years. that is based on conversations with several biologist and various people with fisherys degrees. that being said i do not know that a fishable population is part of the DECs plan but there is definatly some money in one if you can get it

had to take a break from trolling for a bit so hit up I bay on sat 9/27 perch were everywhere ended up picking spots based on boat traffic. fished in the middle of the day and had no trouble catching. proably a 2:1 dink to keeper ratio but still kept 60 over 8 inches lots of fish in that 9-10 inch range that were real skinny but lots of meat for the fryer. also ended up with a dozen blugill in the 9-10 inch range as well found the best fishing was in 12-20 foot of water. was a nice change from trolling and easy fishing is always nice. we found the fish were in groups of similar sizes so when we caught dinks we would move or drift untill we found something bigger than stay there and get several keepers out of the spot.

if nothing else i love seeing the pics of your rig. the fish storys are nice to I get such limited time on the water thats its nice to have some recent reports to at least give an idea of a plan to start with.

if you get the scales and skin under a microscope (yes i'm a bit of a science nerd) youll see there is a difference in the way the pigment is concentrated that causes this.

excellent info from lakebound88 on that. the end of the jaw is always the dead giveaway when you see them next to each other youll always look to that first. another good tell is the spots a browns will be well defined and round no matter where they are on the body. With an atlantic as they get lower on the body nearer the mid line they tend to be more slash like and rough edged more marks than spots. Back in the 80s we (an uncle of mine ) would always tell guys to look for the X's in the spots once you key into it you'll see it every time.

gotta love the newbie net move. i had a fish once jump and spit the hook close to the dock (jigging) and the tension in the rod caused it to swing up and around and peg me right between the sholder blades this was a 1/4 ounce lead head i felt that for days and had a bruse the size of a baseball from it. I swear that fish practiced that move. he didnt fight at all till the last second as i was getting ready to lift him up. glade you got the hook out without any major damage keep an eye on it for infection