GLF

No walleye in the mouth of the river as of this report. Yellow perch are hitting well on shiner minnows or perch rigs. Northern pike have been caught using suckers under a bobber.

Steelhead are still hitting below the dam at Flat Rock and at Rockwood. Flies or small jigs with wax worms have worked well. A few crappie can be caught in the backwaters.

There are plenty of walleye in the lake but boat anglers haven’t been targeting them. Good perch, bluegill, sunfish and crappie fishing in the Metro Park Marina and near the mouth of the Detroit River.

I may have to work now My supervisor is suppose to call me tonight and let me know.

On Monday the doors will be locked tite

I always got the jumbo's in April.

I have added a neat little hack that adds random photo gallery images to the home page.

Thanks Terry.

Does anyone know what the fee for using the ramp at South Haven this year?

Thanks for the reminder Jim. I had forgotten all about that. Sheesh....

I hope to see everyone tonight. There is going to be a break in the weather this weekend so many of us will be hitting the big lake this weekend. Stop by and share your early season tips.

I read Ricks post on another site. He is heading to St. Joseph.

I am guessing you will be heading out of Port Sheldon?

Thats 1, still need to get 4 more to get the price break.

Looks like the lake is suppose to calm down Thursday. Hopefully it will remain calm for the weekend. Lets get out so we can get some new fishing reports.

Here is one manufacturers break down on colors. 1 - Gray 2 - Lt. Blue 3 - Yellow 4 - Brown 5 - Green 6 - Orange 7 - Black 8 - Red 9 - Tan 10 - Dk. Blue

Fines of $160,000 the latest in the sting of rogue harvesting of Lake Erie gold COLUMBUS, OH - A Port Clinton commercial fishing company and its owners, Richard Stinson and Orville (Lee) Stinson, were ordered to pay $160,000 for their part in a racketeering ring that illegally netted thousands of pounds of yellow perch from Lake Erie, according to the Ohio DNR, Division of Wildlife. "We're halfway home," said Kevin Ramsey, head of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Lake Erie enforcement unit. "We expect to bring more cases within the next month or two." The guilty pleas concluded a two-year investigation by Ramsey and his team that started in 2002 and resulted in the indictments of five fishing companies and 14 commercial fishermen on racketeering, theft and money laundering charges. Ramsey expects an even bigger Lake Erie poaching case to be presented to the Grand jury later this year. Port Clinton Fisheries, Inc. Wholesalers entered a guilty plea in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to charges of engaging in corrupt activity a felony of the first degree and theft a felony of third degree. Judge Brian Corrigan subsequently ordered the company to pay a $160,000 in fines and restitution to the state for the stolen fish. The judge placed the company under sanction for five years and ordered it to donate 250 lbs of yellow perch to a community food bank. Richard Stinson was found guilty of theft, a misdemeanor of the first degree; Orville Stinson was found guilty of theft, a misdemeanor of the first degree. This latest case and the pattern of corrupt activity demonstrated by other convicted commercial fishing operations has resulted in proposed new regulations by the Division of Wildlife that will tighten the rules on the industry. With all this illegal commercial harvest activity going on in Lake Erie by both Ohio and Ontario commercials, the buyout of the netters is taking center stage, and furious angling groups are banding together to effect a buyout. Even if possible it will take years, but it won’t deter determined these conservationists seeing their beloved resource manipulated and stolen by rogue commercials.

Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin virtually shut down their commercial perch operations in the late ‘90s, after Lake Michigan’s perch population plummeted. But now, a decade later, that perch fishery is recovering dramatically. There are more and bigger perch now spreading throughout Lake Michigan. "The reason we are seeing this is that the commercial guys are not out there lopping off most of the bigger perch," said Paul Allen, a research biologist at Ball State University and the chairman of the Lake Michigan Yellow Perch Task Group. "There was excessive harvest going on back then and the fish couldn't get past that barrier." The barrier, Allen explained at the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Grand Rapids, was 40 million feet of gillnet set by commercial fisherman in Indiana waters. What's coming, Clapp says, should be even better. "The 2005 year class is the best in the last 10 years," said Dave Clapp, the head of the Michigan DNR's Great Lakes Fisheries Research Station in Charlevoix. Clapp also attended the fish and wildlife conference.

When Lake Michigan fishermen someday look back at the heyday of chinook salmon fishing, odds are the focus could be on the early years of the 21st century. "These last four years have been absolutely phenomenal," said Paul Peeters, a state fisheries biologist based in Sturgeon Bay. "It's hard to believe we can keep this kind of fishery going at such a high level." Anglers caught an estimated 418,918 Chinooks, a state record, in 2005. That topped the previous best, from 1987, by more than 20,000. The four-year total of more than 1.4 million Chinooks smashed the previous high, set in the mid- to late 1980s. Even more remarkable, the record-setting catches have come despite two substantial salmon stocking cuts, one in 1991 and the other in 1999. A third is set to start this spring. Wisconsin will be stocking fewer than half as many Chinooks as it did in the mid-1980s. Stocking peaked at more than 2.7 million Chinooks a year three times between 1984 and 1989. However, all those salmon almost ate themselves out of their favored food; the alewife, an oily, exotic forage fish. Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan began stocking salmon in the late 1960s to control exploding alewife populations. But when alewife populations declined in the late 1980s, Chinooks began dying of bacterial kidney disease. Fishery managers cut chinook stocks to 1.5 million to 1.7 million fish a year beginning in 1991, then to 1.4 million to 1.5 million in 1999. The reduction in the number of salmon produced at hatcheries meant better conditions for fish: more room, better water quality and less competition. Those fish have been able to feed on a large year class of alewives produced in 1998. A number of state records have since been set, including the Coho salmon and brown trout leaders. But declining salmon body weights in recent years have biologists again concerned that salmon are having a hard time getting enough to eat. Chinooks averaged 13 pounds in 2001, according to creel census clerks; last year, that figure dropped to 8.6 pounds. Smaller-than-usual salmon are winning fishing contests. Peeters said the average weight of a 30-inch chinook fell to its lowest level last year at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' Strawberry Creek egg collection facility. Peeters said an increase in natural reproduction on the Michigan side of the lake makes it difficult for fish managers to keep salmon numbers in line with the forage base. Also, a decline in alewives in Lake Huron in recent years resulted in an unknown number of salmon migrating into Lake Michigan. Last year, fishery officials from the four states surrounding Lake Michigan agreed to collectively decrease chinook stocking again by 25 percent. Wisconsin's share of the decrease is 21 percent, or about 300,000 fish. Michigan will take the biggest cut, 30 percent. "Alewives appear to be just kind of holding their own at a low level," Peeters said. "That's why I think it's important that we took action to cut back on the number of salmon we stock into the lake." Kewaunee County was tops in the rainbow trout — or steelhead — catch, with an estimated 15,023. Manitowoc was second at 6,435 and Sheboygan third at 5,756. The total rainbow count of more than 48,000 nearly doubled 2004 but is still well below the long-term average. The brown trout harvest of more than 27,000 was the best in the past three years, but also well below average. Milwaukee led the ports with nearly 14,000 fish; Green Bay waters were second at more than 3,800. Coho salmon fishermen saw a decrease of more than 17,000 fish from 2004, at 59,244, but that was about 9,000 better than the 2003 catch. Port Washington was tops with more than 15,000 cohos, followed by Kenosha and Racine, both with nearly 10,000 each, and Milwaukee, with more than 7,500. The lake trout catch dipped to a record low estimate of 14,139. Manitowoc County was first with more than 2,600 lakers, followed by Port Washington, Kewaunee and Sheboygan, all with more than 2,000.

This fish is worth millions of dollars. Why would you not keep it in your live well and get it weighed on a certified scale?

Largemouth tips scale to 25.1 pounds, then is released back into Dixon Lake Well, what do you expect when you notify the media that you boated a potential world-record bass? That was the story at the home of Mac Weakley, who early Monday caught a mammoth largemouth on tiny Dixon Lake in southern California that he and his long-time fishing partners Mike Winn and Jed Dickerson weighed out at 25.1 pounds on a hand-held digital scale. If that weight stands up it would shatter what is considered to be the granddaddy of angling records — the 22¼-pound largemouth bass taken in 1932 at Georgia's Montgomery Lake by George Washington Perry. Read the whole story here. Record Largemouth

Take a look at the Fishdog specials here. http://www.greatlakesfisherman.com/forums/showthread.php?t=542 Those are some great prices for NEW equipment.

How many of you have ever been on a charter boat trip before? Would you go on another one?

Ever notice when you purchase a new reel, the drag is backed all the way off when you get it?

How many of you know that you should back your star drag off when you are not using it? By not backing it off, it weakens the spring.