Sk8man

Hi Dre, I think we may have just "grazed" it on the way out of the ramp too.

Cool! Nice going.....perseverance pays off once again They certainly are an elegant fish....

Eye Spy....I have heard of it but thus far haven't looked into it...thanks for reminding me I'll have to take a look at it. Mostly Muskies - I guess if you have a method that works ...that is all that is important in the final analysis - not the technicalities.. and I sure wasn't criticizing you personally in any way so I want to make that clear....I was reacting only to the details of the comment itself. My comment may have come off more strongly than intended now that I look back at it. I guess underlying my comments is that fact that I feel that a lot of the time we are much too reliant on the technology itself and make a lot of assumptions (myself included) about it that may or may not be accurate.

Mostly Muskies I'm not sure how you came up with this "formula" but it makes no sense to me. (see the earlier post I made here). Unless you have something that can accurately measure speed right at the lure you are still stuck with an "estimate" at best. All these things (measuring devices) are doing is measuring what your boat and downrigger are doing. Even what the Sub troll (or a Fish Hawk) are measuring is the speed at the place the probe is located on the wire. The water resistance measured there for example as well as the resistance measured at the lure can be significantly different depending on the lure type, size, distance of lure from the weight (or probe), whether it is on the "outside" or "inside" of the turning radius of the boat, changes in density of the water down deep or shallow (depending on lure etc.). The most important thing is whatever you are using to gauge "speed" you need to return to that "relative" setting to help with consistency...and even that doesn't account for undetected changes under the surface as you troll along (changing current speed and direction especially with changed structure to the sides or underneath.... although admittedly the Fish Hawk or Sub Troll may help if closely monitored).

Unfortunately it isn't just the algae that concerns me...it is eColi from sewage and related human pollution as well.

I wish I knew the answer for sure but I don't. My grand kids live right there and I talked about it yesterday with my son and he said he doesn't keep any fish from there anymore althogh he still fishes there. I have fished it since the 60's but I think this year I'll be spending my time ice fishing on the other lakes. Someone mentioned to me a few days ago that Conesus has similar problems but I don't have any verification of that.

Admiral Byrd and I had occasion to launch at the newly refurbished launch a couple days ago with his 19 ft Penn Yan and although the docks are a definite improvement and the fact that they have extended the concrete part of the ramp out (nicely beveled at the end) ....they didn't dredge the depth out far enough and for those folks with larger boats whose motors draft some water (esp. IO's where you can't get the lower unit up as far as most outboards...use caution when launching....this will become even more of a factor in lower lake level times. There is a bottom area (mostly muck but not all) straight out from the center of the launch that comes up pretty good so you may have to get your lower unit up aways to clear it.

Good idea for a thread Pap. It would be nice if some of the charter guys would "pipe in" on this one....I'd be interested in their "take" on it.

Thanks lavarock64.

In the old days before the electronic stuff was either here or affordable we used to use a gizmo (can't remember the name) that clamped to the side of the boat with a weight on a wire that hung suspended in the water and at the gunwale it had a metal scale in color bands going from green to red (slow to fast I think) to measure RELATIVE speed of the boat through the water. It was better than nothing (e.g. waves and wind directly affected it)...but not that much better . The principle was this: you trolled until you connected with a fish and immediately looked at the color and exact position on the scale on the gunwale of the "needle" (used to put a piece of tape on the spot to mark it). You triedto return to exactly this position (much as using line counter function on a reel (same principle)to continue trolling. The relative part of this is important to understand because whether you are measuring the boat speed over "ground" as in a GPS (from satellite signal) or depth/fish finder (with impeller gauging the speed) it is still a relative (not an absolute) measure related to your lure at depth for the very reasons mentioned (currents and current direction, water density, waves and wind etc.). My GPS and depth finder readings for speed vary by a couple tenths when run together too. Lures of different types at different depths run very different from each other as well as from your boat speed but until the recent development of probe sensors attached to downrigger to measure absolute speed at the ball we were stuck with that. It should be noted though that speed at the ball may not be the exact absolute speed of the lure itself either because of factors like the type of lure and water resistance, distance back from the weight, line diameter etc. The point I'm making is that unless you have a measurement taken right at the lure itself it is still pretty much a relative measure of the lure speed and the object still is the same return to the last successful measure). The Fishhawk TD may come a little closer to actual lure depth....but still the same principle - a relative measure. The important thing to me is being able to replicate as closely as possible what you were doing speed-wise (regardless of measurement method) when you caught the last fish....there will still be undetected changes going on with varying conditions like currents

I think Vince has it right......before the Bills (since they started)....going back to the days of Charlie Connerly and Y.A. Tiddle it was Giants all the way

I hope things improve too panfisher.

I've fished Honeoye from the shore, on the ice and from the boat for many, many years but this year I am reluctant to do so now after this summer's problems there (water pollution and toxic blue/green algae reported). My son lives just about 200 yards from the lake and he indicated during the summer that people there were talking about the fact that 2 dogs had apparently died from drinking the lake water when the water problems were going on. I don't have any first hand proof of that but it was enough to make me "rethink" my ice fishing plans for this year.