GLF

There are two types of tournament fisherman. Those that show up to fish, and those that show up to collect a pay check. I always liked collecting pay checks, so I put my time in on the water. To do well in a tourney you must put in your time. When I was Bass fishing, I was prefishing 2-3 days prior to every tournament. Next year I will get into some of these major tournaments.

Nothing like tutting your own horn Caznik.

Thanks muskybob!

Thanks for the report Darin. Any size to the kings or steelie?

Thanks for the report Frank!

I was glad to see when Dodge got back into racing. There currently are 3 car manufacturers represented. Next year Toyota will enter the field and will have cars competing in the races...if they qualify. There will be at least one Toyota in the Daytona 500. Dale Jarrett is moving to Michael Waltrip racing and will be driving a Toyota. Dale use to be my favorite driver. He is a previous Winston Cup(notice I said "Winston" instead of "Nextell") champion and will be able to use a previous champions provisional to to get in the race in case he does not qualify. NASCAR has always been an "American" sport. I miss the days of seeing Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Pontiacs on the tracks. I would like to see a bigger variety of cars and sponsers, so I am OK with Toyota entering the field. What are your thoughts?

If any of you are in the woods and here me calling...dont shoot me

I have been past this Nuke plant a few times. Yep....Dolly sounds about right

Anything thing you guys can think of you would like to see added to the site? I am not saying they will be added, but I will definately take them into consideration.

I will be on the prowl this weekend. If I happen to put a card on your vehicle, please put it on another vehicle at the ramp that does not have one. Thanks

Wildlife crews finding voracious fish not getting any closer to Chicago or Great Lakes Wildlife managers dreading the spread of the Asian carp breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday when they could find none of the voracious fish closer to Chicago and the Great Lakes than Joliet. The spot where the fish were found, south of the Brandon Road Lock and Dam--about 50 miles from the mouth of the Chicago River and the Great Lakes--still gives the carp access to the Kankakee River, however. Survey teams will continue their annual search for the carp and other invasive species until Friday. While crews Wednesday were finding the oily, fat carp in familiar spots on the Illinois River near Morris, they have so far failed to find it north of the Brandon Road lock. "No news is good news, I guess," U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service project leader Pamella A. Thiel said Wednesday aboard a johnboat on the Calumet Sag Channel, a tub full of common carp flopping at her feet. While searching for Asian carp, the crews also are sampling the health of fish they do catch, looking for a host of waterborne parasites, pathogens and viruses. Among the things they are looking for is evidence of carp virus, considered among the possibilities for an Asian carp die-off noticed May 30 between Havana and Spring Valley. Definitive word on what caused the die-off will come with lab results next month, Thiel said. The annual scouring of Illinois waterways started in 1996, when wildlife managers began gauging the spread of the invasive round goby, a ship ballast-tank stowaway from the Black Sea now working its way from the Great Lakes toward the Mississippi River. The goby was bad enough--in some parts of Lake Michigan, 40 to 70 of the finger-size eating machines crowd areas the size of a bathtub. Then the wildlife managers found the Asian carp working its way north and added the much larger fish to their list of concerns. Since 2000, they've charted the carp's progress up the Illinois River from Hennepin to Morris to Channahon. By 2002, the fish had slipped through the Dresden locks. They have lingered there since. This year, Fish and Wildlife workers, with 13 partner organizations that include government agencies, the Shedd Aquarium and Joliet Community College, are hoping the carp will have inched no farther north than the Brandon Road lock and dam, just south of Joliet. Beyond that, two electrical fish barriers--one not yet working, the other badly corroding--have been strung in the carp's path to the Chicago and Calumet Rivers. A barrier was sunk into the Sanitary and Ship Canal near Romeoville in 2002 to stop the gobies from marching southward, but was placed uselessly behind them. Since then, the barrier has become a last line of defense against the northward advance of the Asian carp. A new barrier three times as big--and much sturdier--was put in next to it recently, but it has not yet been switched on.

A large die off of muskellunge in Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River in May was attributed at first to above-average spawning mortality caused by unusually warm weather in April followed by unusually cold weather in May. The Department of Natural Resources now says that the stress on the fish may have been exacerbated by a disease called viral hemorrhagic septicemia, which caused a huge die-off of freshwater drum and bluegills in Ohio waters of Lake Erie at about the same time. "I know some people reported seeing 200 dead (muskies) in a day, but I think that was mostly because they all lay on the bottom until the water got warm, then they all filled with gas and floated to the surface at the same time," said Gary Towns, a DNR fisheries biologist. "We did an aerial survey, and our best guess is that there were about 2,000 dead muskellunge. We know from other die-offs that only about half the fish usually float to the surface, so figure that total was maybe 4,000. That's still only about 1-to-3% of the muskies in the lake." One muskellunge carcass has tested positive for the disease, and Gary Whelan, the DNR's fish production manager, said he hopes to get results on others in a few days and that the disease seems to have died off.

Call it the return of the green slime. Back in the 1960s, foul gobs of algae along Great Lakes shorelines made swimmers and sunbathers miserable before a crackdown on phosphorus pollution repelled the invasion. Now the algae are mounting a comeback, and controlling it may be a tougher this time. "The nightmare may be poised to repeat itself," the Michigan Environmental Council said in a statement accompanying a report released Wednesday. Algae blooms have been on the rise since the mid-1990s in parts of all the Great Lakes except Lake Superior, whose icy waters aren't as hospitable to the slimy aquatic plants. The problem has worsened more recently and is particularly severe on shallow, warm Lake Erie. "It's very much the same story on our (Lake Michigan) coast," said John Berges, a biologist with the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's Great Lakes Water Institute. Out-of-control algae look bad and smell worse, but there are more serious dangers, the environmental council's report said. Swimmers who accidentally swallow algae-choked water can get sick; so can their pets. Algae blooms can reduce oxygen levels in the waters, causing fish kills. Some clumps are thick enough to block water intake pipes. The surge four decades ago was blamed on excessive phosphorus, an essential plant nutrient. A single pound of phosphorus can stimulate growth of up to 500 pounds of algae, the report said. Legislatures in Michigan and some neighboring states imposed limits on phosphate laundry detergents in the 1970s that were credited with significantly reducing the algae buildup. But phosphorus continues flowing into the lakes from other sources, the report said. Also, while Michigan was among the first states to virtually ban phosphorus in laundry soaps, it exempted dishwashing machine detergents — a loophole the environmental council wants the state Legislature to close. But Berges said he was skeptical that dishwashers are a primary culprit in the green slime's return. A more likely cause, and the reason the problem may be harder to solve this time, is the arrival in the 1980s of two exotic species: the zebra mussel and its cousin, the quagga mussel. Mussels filter water, making it clearer. That may seem like a good thing, but it allows sunlight to penetrate deeper into the lakes, possibly enabling algae to thrive at greater depths than before.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has announced that an outbreak of viral hemorrahagic septicemia (VHS) has been detected in southern Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands area of the St. Lawrence River. The outbreak poses no human health threat but has caused a minor kill-off of muskellunge, an important trophy game fish in the St. Lawrence River. VHS presents itself in a number of different ways including hemorrhaging, lesions and neurological symptoms, most of which cause extremely high mortality in any species it attacks. While the disease is fairly common in Europe, according to DEC officials, prior to 2005 in North America it was limited to salt water species in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Then in 2005, a die-off of freshwater drum and round goby in the Bay of Quinte on the northern shore of Lake Ontario and muskellunge in Lake Michigan were both attributed to the disease. According to a DEC press release dated June 13, the virus was first detected in New York last month in round gobies found dead in the St. Lawrence River. This was the first time VHS was detected in New York. Round gobies are an invasive species very likely introduced by ocean-going ships from the Black and Caspian Sea region in Europe that very likely used the St. Lawrence Seaway during the 1990s. Round gobies continue to be found dead along the south end of Lake Ontario, eastward into the Thousand Islands area. Because this is spawning season for both the gobies and muskellunge, it is a period of high stress. This makes them vulnerable to the VHS and other disease. If the disease attacked just gobies, the outbreak would not likely raise many eyebrows. Unfortunately, some strains of VHS can effect trout and salmon such as rainbow, brown and lake trout, and Chinook and Coho salmon. Should that strain of the disease appear on the scene, it could threaten the all-important trout and salmon population in Lake Ontario. However, to date there is no indication of an active threat to those species. What is not yet known is how the disease entered the Great Lakes, or how long it has been there.

Welcome to the site Julie. Thanks for taking the time and doing an introduction.

I have heard of turkeys gobbling to car doors being shut, horns being honked, etc, etc, etc.... Here is how I discovered my new turkey call. Today was one of them days. I stayed over 30 minutes at work getting the project finished I was working on Then it was off to the bank, only to find out that their computers had been down all day So I had to go to another branch to take care of buisness. I had been craving some fresh salmon, so I fired up the grill when I got home. I had just got the grill fired up when the phone rang. It was work, wanting me to come back in to program a box pattern into a palletizer(machine that packs boxes on a skid). I told them I would be in when I finished dinner. Some time from when I fired the grill up to when half of the fish was finished, I realized the other half of the grill was not on I pulled half the fish off and moved the fish over to the hot side of the grill. The other half of the fish was finished cooking and I proceeded to put it on the plate on top of the other fish. The first piece flopped over the plate and onto the deck I let out a loud "AHHHH CRAP!" I have to small boys so I try to keep it clean. As soon as I finished my ahh crap, a turkey in the woods gobbled I am thinking next turkey season, I will leave the rest of my calls at home and head in the woods and let out a loud "AHHH CRAP!"

Thanks for the reports Levi!

Wait a second....if she is part of the crew, do you still need to count her?

Ludington gets my vote. I believe more fish are caught out of Ludington than any other port.

Now there's an idea

I would rather see our military get a 2% pay raise. They probably will not get a raise this year.

Thanks for the invite Frank! Wish I could have made it. I accidently hit edit instead of quote on the other post. This is why it shows "edited by GLF"

Thanks Larry!

Hundreds of spectators turned out to watch the implosion of the Lakeview Generating Station's smokestacks known as the Four Sisters, which have dominated Mississauga's waterfront for more than four decades. At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, the four smokestacks came tumbling down in a controlled explosion. Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion was among dignitaries who gathered in a nearby park to watch the demolition. "This has been a landmark in the city of Mississauga. It has been a landmark for sailors, for boaters, especially for the fishing boats," said McCallion. The generating plant was built on the shores of Lake Ontario in 1961. At the time, it was the largest coal-fired power plant in the world. But while the four smokestacks have been a part of the landscape for 43 years, the generating plant has also been a major pollution contributor. McCallion said she hopes that if another generating plant is built on the site, it's a cleaner-operating one. Ontario Power Generation, the utility that generates most of the province's electricity, has not yet announced what the site will be used for in the future, though it will remain industrial. Now that the smokestacks have been demolished, crews will begin dismantling the remainder of the generating station on the 21-hectare site.

I would like to thank fishchallenger, Mike, Priority1, The Dog House, and slipknot for offering their time to help out, to pass out buissness cards. I started out putting them under the windshield wiper. I think I have better results by putting them on the drivers side, between the glass and the window molding, above the door handle. I also put the cards upright so they can read it while they are unlocking the door. I am still looking for members who are willing to take a day or two(it only takes 10 - 15 minutes per ramp), to go to a boat ramp near their house to put cards on vehicles. If you are interested in helping this site grow, send me a private message. Thanks, Mike :KevorkianSpook: