GLF

FWS & DNR culling Cormorants of Lake Erie St. Marys population to be thinned out Cormorants have been devouring fish, officials expect to remove most of them by summer ST. MARYS | — By summer, Ohio wildlife officials expect to thin out most of a booming colony of cormorants that has taken hold at Grand Lake St. Marys. Biologists say the population of hooked-beak waterbirds has doubled every five years and the birds are moving into new territory and devouring freshwater fish. In Grand Lake St. Marys, the state's largest reservoir, a tiny island is jammed with more than 80 nests, up from zero a few years back, and a handful ashore in cottonwood trees. The cormorants raided an Ohio DNR fish farm, and scooped up walleye, catfish, perch and fathead minnows. "It's kind of freaky. They'll come in, and I guess one will go back and talk to their buddies," said Morton Pugh, a hatchery superintendent who has dealt with the birds for years. "So one day you'll have five, the next day 12, then 30." The USFWS the state DNR began killing cormorants last month and have culled more than 5,300 from three Lake Erie islands. Ultimately, about 7,200 birds around Ohio will be shot.

CAPE VINCENT -- State officials are investigating why an invasive species of fish is dying off by the thousands in the Saint Lawrence River and eastern Lake Ontario. Thousands of round gobies have been piling up on the shorelines over the past two weeks. The state Department of Environmental Conservation says the agency doesn't yet know what's causing the die-off. Specimen samples have been sent to Cornell University in Ithaca for testing. The state College of Environmental Science and Forestry's Thousand Islands Biological Station on the Saint Lawrence River is also investigating the fish kill. Experts suspect the first gobies to reach the Great Lakes hitched a ride in the ballast water of European freighters. The fish were first seen in Lake Ontario and the Saint Lawrence River in the mid-1990s. They have displaced native species by breeding faster and eating their competition's eggs and young.

ERIE, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania officials may have a bigger question than whether a 54-pound carp caught this week qualifies for a state record. The Fish and Boat Commission is wondering how the grass carp got into Lake Erie to begin with. Dennis Russian, 59, of New Alexandria, shot his grass carp May 9 with a bow and arrow. Unofficially, it weighed 54.4 lbs, which would break a state record. "It's a little troubling, because they're not supposed to be in there," spokesman Dan Tredinnick said. The species was introduced from Asia and is used in ponds to control vegetation, as its name suggests. People can apply to the state to get a permit to use them for weed control, but they must be sterile, Tredinnick said. Nonetheless, grass carp have wound up in many U.S. waters. Roger Kenyon, a fisheries biologist, said the commission has known grass carp were in Lake Erie for a number of years, but no one at the commission had seen one until Russian nabbed his. When the commission came up with the carp category for records, it was only thinking of the common carp, Tredinnick said. The record for the largest carp caught in the state was 52 pounds in 1962 in the Juniata River. Tredinnick said the commission hasn't gotten Russian's record application, but expected to and commission officials then would consider whether the grass carp qualifies under the carp category.

HARRISBURG (AP) - The black, fish-devouring bird has targeted catfish hatcheries in the South, angered anglers in the Great Lakes and killed every tree on a Vermont island. Now, it has made the mistake of elbowing out two birds on Pennsylvania's endangered list. Double-crested cormorants practically disappeared 35 years ago, but have returned with a vengeance - with Pennsylvania the latest state to put the shiny black bird on a hit list. Pennsylvania authorities will take their first stab at killing cormorants on Wade Island in the Susquehanna River, where they want to stop the birds from stealing nesting space from great egrets and black-crowned night herons. The herons have been in sharp decline and the egret population stagnant since cormorants touched down a decade ago on the three-acre island, the largest nesting spot in the state for the two endangered birds. "It's a means of trying to give the great egret and black-crowned night herons some breathing room," said Jerry Feaser, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Game Commission. In the coming weeks, federal wildlife sharpshooters will head out to the state-owned island, near Harrisburg, and use air rifles and .silencer equipped 22 rifles to kill up to 50 of the more than 120 cormorants nesting there. Vermont will be shooting cormorants for the third straight year in an effort to regenerate cottonwoods, white pine and other trees on Young Island in Lake Champlain. The cormorants now shelter amid nettles and thistles on the ground of the six-acre island after killing the trees by stripping them of twigs for nests. In Great Lakes states, the cormorant population has exploded, competing with anglers for fish such as perch and walleye and hurting tourism. Minnesota is killing cormorants at one of the state's most popular fishing spots, Leech Lake, where the birds are blamed for making the prized walleye harder to catch in the last few years. In the Great Lakes alone, the cormorant population has rebounded from 89 nests to more than 110,000. "Cormorants went away for a generation of people and now they're back," said Diane Pence, a Fish & Wildlife Service biologist. "And so we have a generation that hasn't experienced the number of cormorants that used to exist." Pennsylvania wildlife officials tried and failed to lure egrets from Wade Island to a neighboring island two years ago before deciding to kill the cormorants.

Snow melting in yards and in the fields of northern Ohio's farms is a leading culprit in creating the low-oxygen "dead zone" in the central basin of Lake Erie, researchers have found. Four of the 10 snowiest winters to hit the region have occurred since 2000. While summer storms also wash fertilizer into the lake, it's those big winter snowmelts that deal the heavier blow. "We always knew weather was important but were not able to document it," said Gerald Matisoff of Case Western Reserve University, who headed a U.S. team of Lake Erie researchers. "Now we're seeing a connection." Scientists are finding that oxygen levels in the lake rise and fall depending on how much phosphorus entered the lake the previous year, Matisoff said. How much phosphorus enters the lake depends on the weather. The findings by the international team of researchers will be presented at a Great Lakes conference that starts today in Windsor, Ontario. Storms flush phosphorus into drainpipes, creeks, then rivers and finally into Lake Erie. Once there, phosphorus causes extreme growth, especially in algae. As algae and other organic matter decompose in the water, they suck oxygen from the water, which creates an area devoid of fish, worms and clams on the bottom of the lake between spring and fall. This in turn hurts commercial and recreational fishing. The loss of oxygen shows up first in the central basin, an area between Huron and Erie, Pa., because of its characteristics. The central basin is not as deep as the eastern end of Lake Erie, which has a thick layer of oxygen on the bottom. It is not as shallow as the western basin, which receives oxygen from natural wind mixing. Scientists have seen phosphorus concentrations in the lake at the highest levels since the early 1970s. Adding to the problem are zebra mussels, which first appeared in the late 1980s, and their more dominant cousin, the quagga mussel. They are thumbnail-size shellfish from foreign waters that are altering Lake Erie's food web and bolstering the dead zone. Normally, phosphorus in the lake would bind to a solid, sink to the bottom and be buried under the mud, said Dave Culver, a professor of biological sciences at Ohio State University and part of the research team. But the mussels eat the algae and secrete nitrogen in the form of ammonia and phosphorus in the form of phosphate. That keeps the phosphorus re-circulating. It's also bad news because the mussels are a source of ammonia and phosphates that Lake Erie did not have before, Culver said. "We're a lot better off than we were 30 years ago," he said. "But it appears to be getting worse. A lot of convenient things [that] we can fix have been fixed. That's why I'm concerned." During the 1970s and 1980s, state and local governments spent billions of dollars to improve sewage treatment plants, which were the No. 1 source of phosphorus in the Great Lakes. Phosphates were removed from detergents. By the mid-1980s, Lake Erie phosphorus had been cut to 12,100 tons yearly, which was believed to be an acceptable level. Then the zebra mussel arrived. Since then, phosphorus levels have gone up. Zebra and quagga mussels have disrupted the food web as well. Tiny phytoplankton, the start of the food chain that once hung in the water column, are being removed by the mussels. That allows sunlight to penetrate deeper, stimulating growth near the bottom. More of the aquatic life in Lake Erie has moved to the lake bottom, where the mussels are, research has proven. "Clear water where you can see real deep does not necessarily mean things are better," Matisoff said. Researchers estimate that two-thirds or more of the phosphorus entering Lake Erie comes from runoff during storms. "We will need to focus some of our land management issues toward trying to keep the soil on the land and the nutrients on the land," Matisoff said. The team of 27 government and academic researchers has written more than 20 papers on their work, which started in 2003. They will be published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research in June, he said.

The problem of invasive species flooding into the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence Seaway is now drawing the attention of some of America's top scientific minds. The National Academy of Sciences today will convene a committee of transportation, economic and environmental experts to explore ways to stanch the flow of unwanted creatures into the world's largest freshwater system while enhancing global trade in the region. The meeting is part of what could be a two-year project to solve the seaway's invasive species woes. The Great Lakes are home to at least 180 foreign species, and a new one is discovered, on average, every 6 1/2 months. The overwhelming majority of the invaders since the 1970s, including the quagga mussel, zebra mussel and round goby, made their way into the lakes in the belly of overseas freighters carrying contaminated ballast water. Ballast water, used to stabilize a ship on the high seas, is often taken on at one port and dumped at another. The shipping industry acknowledges the problem, and the race is on to develop a technology that will decontaminate ships' ballast water tanks. Conservation groups are encouraged by that prospect, but they are getting anxious. They note that while the research goes on, the gates to the lakes remain essentially wide open to invasive species. And they are beginning to question the overseas shipping industry's economic value to the region, given the ecological problems it is causing. That tension could take center stage during the two days of presentations by various experts called to Washington, D.C., to advise the academy's committee. Two such experts are John Taylor and James Roach, who recently released a study that pegged the transportation savings tied to overseas shipping in the Great Lakes at about $55 million a year, a paltry sum compared with the economic and environmental costs associated with invasive species. One estimate, for example, put the total cost of just the pipe-clogging zebra mussel to regional industry at about $2 billion over the past two decades. Taylor and Roach reached their estimate by tracking what overseas cargo moves on the seaway and projecting the cost of moving that material to the region by rail, truck or Mississippi River barge. Shipping advocates contend that their study, funded by the Joyce Foundation of Chicago, was an oversimplified assessment of a complex system. The academy's Jill Wilson said Taylor and Roach were invited to make a presentation precisely because their study is so controversial. "Obviously, it (the study) presents some information that could be useful for the committee in assessing future options, but considering how much controversy it has generated, it's important for the committee to get a feel for how reliable the numbers are," said Wilson. Some members of the shipping industry are already suspicious of this new academy effort, which is funded by a grant from the Great Lakes Protection Fund, a non-profit corporation established by the Great Lakes states governors to finance projects to improve the region's environmental health. Steve Fisher, executive director of the American Great Lakes Ports Association, said now is the time to press on with ballast treatment research, instead of spending $850,000 to take a sweeping look at the way the seaway operates. "These dollars could probably be better put to use in helping join with all the others who are looking at shipboard treatment systems, to help find the technology that needs to be developed to solve this problem," said Fisher, who will attend the meeting as a representative of the shipping industry. University of Notre Dame professor and invasive-species expert David Lodge agrees that treating ballast is the ultimate solution, but he said the problem has been making headlines for nearly 20 years and no remedy is yet in sight. That, he said, might mean taking a hard look at locking out overseas ships until the ballast water problem can be solved. Such a move wouldn't necessarily preclude overseas shipments, but it could require transferring cargo from overseas ships to a Great Lakes-specific fleet at some point downstream from the Great Lakes. "Until a solution is implemented, we should continue to explore all possible cost-effective ways to further reduce or eliminate the introduction of aquatic nuisance species into the Great Lakes," said Lodge, who is also scheduled to make a presentation at the meeting. "Because of the high financial and environmental cost of invasions, it is reasonable to include among the options considered that the seaway be closed to ocean-going ships." Tony Earl, former Wisconsin governor and Department of Natural Resources chief, also has been invited to speak. He says the issue reminds him of trying to get industry and municipalities to comply with the Clean Water Act. "I can tell you, the reaction from the surface water polluters back then is similar to the shipping industry now," said Earl. "First of all denial, then resistance, then grudgingly acknowledging something has to be done."

What brand of downriggers is everyone using? What do you like about them? What dont you like about them? If you did it all over again, what would you get?

I find it very hard to believe, that hemi gets close to 22 mpg.

With the way the fuel prices are, I was wondering what everyone is using for a tow vehicle. Myself I have an F250 with a V10. This gas guzzler gets a whopping 10-12 mpg. It sits 95% of the time unless I am using it to tow. I wish I would have picked up one with a diesel instead of the V10 What are you using to haul your rig with?

This should be done at ANY port you fish!

Welcome to the site! We have a few charter captains on the site who charter out of Ludington. We look foreward to seeing you around.

Great Job! Thanks for the Great fishing report!

Thanks for pointing this out. I corrected it.

Thanks for the report! I went out of there on Thursday.

Thanks for the report Matt!

The new fishing reports will not be out till Thursday unless someone post's a personal trip.

I can untangle that

Good news....I received a call from Fisherman's Landing last night. Looks like the pavilion is ours after 5pm. This means we have a roof over our heads in case of rain. There are picnic tables at the pavilion and should be enough seating for 60 people. There is a LARGE(aproximately 5' long) grill and a small grill that we can use. I will be starting another thread for what dish everyone will be bringing.

How do you work paying your 1st mate? Is there a set price, or is it based on the tip?

How many, if any, fish without a first mate?

How long do you wait for your customers to show? Whats your procedure for no shows?

For those that don't know where Mt. Baldy is, its just South of the piers at Saugatuck.

I know where you are not. You are not on Lake Michigan

I assume you are talking about having the boat heading down wind and with the waves? Thanks Rick

Nice job Terry! Was the fly one that Heavy Action tied up?