FishinHank

CDQ are you guys still rearing some to fingerlings in the Mueller ponds?

This in spades! I have seen entire incubators that were solid fungus. Not much survival in that kind of situation. Hate to see a lot of work go to nothing. Been there done that.

I am curious too. I have used formalin, hydrogen peroxide, and saltwater to help control fungus up here in AK.

I passed this info on to John Foust at FLCC, he runs the fisheries program there. Would be an awesome opportunity for some of his students to get some hands on experience. I raise salmon for a living here in Alaska, but if I was in NY I would definitely volunteer.

My guess is $$. They wanted people to come fish the lake, dropping the size limit to 15" from 18" would attract more fisherman. NY has a pretty good record of making bonehead decisions when it comes to DEC regulations.

I remember going to FLCC and helping Foust put radio transmitters into a few walleyes. Was pretty fun. Glad to see this program is up and running. We did horizontal tows 3 days after the state would stock 7 million fry into Honeyeye and we didn't find ONE walleye fry. A whole lot of perch fry though. Lots of males due to being early in the run? Are you guys going to hold some males in case the fun loving ratio switches?

You hit the nail on the head Stan.

Here is a laker I caught in AK for comparison. Very similar. This was also caught in the spring, not sure if that makes any difference or not. Here is one out of the same lake but off the spawning beds in the fall. Go figure.

I see messed up fish all the time working at a salmon hatchery. I have seen fry that are bent 90 degrees before and they do survive for a while. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy came out of the hatchery like that, as it happens all the time. Here are a couple of freaks I have pictures of. Seen a lot of cyclops but this was the first triclops. This smolt was about half as long as the rest of the others in the round pond, a tiny little football. I have seen this also with browns at the NY hatcheries.

I work at a salmon hatchery in alaska and you would be surprised how many freaks we get. I have seen lots of fish like that at the fry stage, some are even at a 90 degree angle. Here was a triclops I found- We see a lot of these guys too, tiny little footballs-

80# would be a stretch for a NY coyote. A big one might weigh into the 50's, but not up in the 80's. I have trapped coyotes in NY and I have seen dead wolves in alaska and there is no comparison sizewise. It most likely was a coyote but there is no way it was anywhere near 80lbs.

It is pretty fun. I have caught mostly coho mooching but I don't see why it wouldn't work well for kings too.

There used to be a lot of rainbows in cayuga before the diesel spill. I have seen some slabs come off the wall at taughannock.

Thanks, it was caught in SE alaska. I thought you fellas might like to see what they look like when they come fresh out of the salt. I didn't think it was that big until it saw the dock and just about spooled me. It ran out under our netpens and I was worried it would get grabbed by a seal or get hung up in our nets. I caught him at low tide throwing an NK28 off our dock. It was the first fish of the year (caught mid may) and was also the biggest caught by any of the hatchery workers. It tasted pretty good too. That was the only fish caught on a spoon that year. Most guys up there don't know jack about fishing spoons, they fish all flashers with either cut bait or hootchies/flies.

Suttons bright neon green Jr Thunderstick NK28 we call the Money Bait NK28 we call the purple **** (my ex gf picked it out, but it does catch fish) the old black and purple spoon we call Barney is my dino a firetiger R&R and of course Ol Faithful. Even though I have a couple hundred spoons in my box these are the ones I run the most.

What do you think?

I mooched with a 9ft medium action rod with a bunch of 60lb powerpro on a medium sized baitcaster with a levelwind. All you do is either troll very slowly or drift with the wind/current. Put a 4-8oz banana weight on your line and run a small flasher with a hoochie and a chunk of herring. The scent of the herring gets into the water and the kings will track them down, and the flasher will get their attention. They make specialty mooching rods/reels but I haven't ever tried using them. We would drop them down and let them sit at different depths until we found the fish on either the sounder or picking them up. The hits are pretty spectacular, your reel will usually just start screaming. When I drifted on Cayuga we would run a #3 or #4 split shot about 4ft above a sawbelly hooked through the back. I used to use a 9wt fly rod with a spinning reel with 8lb mono, keep your bail open and put a small rock or something on the line to keep it from going out too far. Throw the sawbelly out, set up your line and sit and drift with the wind. The sawbelly will swim around in a circle and the fish can see them from a long ways of because they are flashing pretty good.

Why is it you never see many guys mooching/drifting for kings on ontario? I bet it would work really good. We mooch with 6-8oz banana weights with a small flasher and fly with herring about 5-6ft away from the weight. We slay the silvers and I have caught kings with it also. I used to drift sawbellies on Cayuga and we did well on browns and landlocks.

I used to ice fish a little bit south of the college and got a few atlantics through the ice. Some huge perch in that lake too. I only fished it once in the summer and we drifted floats with sawbellies. The darn salmon were hitting my floats!!! Finally got a nice one to take the sawbelly.