Walleye is on my list of Fish to catch. We dont have them here in So Cal and id like to take a trip someday to go catch em.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Fishing Club?
- Thread starter Fishheadjoe
- Start date
Walleye is on my list of Fish to catch. We dont have them here in So Cal and id like to take a trip someday to go catch em.
Well, if you are ever able to make it to Lake Erie, you will have no problem (except weather!) catching them, recent year classes are now in the 5-8 lb range. Limits (5 per person) in just a couple of hours. They aren't really known for their fighting prowess and much as they are as table fare and fine table fare they are!
Trolling with planer boards, dipsey's and deep diving cranks get 'em. Mann Stretch 20 in "Dr Death" in one of the pics.
Fishheadjoe
Sorry, i couldn’t find the fishing club thread so i posted here.
after tiring of chasing my tail trying to acquire a decent grip lathe, LSS, i couldn’t get what i wanted and what I could get wouldn’t do what i wanted so i Lost patience and just rigged up a homemade setup. The glue on the grips is set enough to start wrapping.
Guides are Fuji titanium frames w/SIC rings If i get finish on the wraps by midnight I can take it with me to Florida this weekend.
My brother just got a new 19’ CC and an air BNB at Mexico beach for Friday through Tuesday and we will be in the bay at St. Joe and maybe some inshore trolling if it’s flat enough.
The specks reds spanish, pompano And (hopefully) blackfin, are nervous.
after tiring of chasing my tail trying to acquire a decent grip lathe, LSS, i couldn’t get what i wanted and what I could get wouldn’t do what i wanted so i Lost patience and just rigged up a homemade setup. The glue on the grips is set enough to start wrapping.
Guides are Fuji titanium frames w/SIC rings If i get finish on the wraps by midnight I can take it with me to Florida this weekend.
My brother just got a new 19’ CC and an air BNB at Mexico beach for Friday through Tuesday and we will be in the bay at St. Joe and maybe some inshore trolling if it’s flat enough.
The specks reds spanish, pompano And (hopefully) blackfin, are nervous.
Have a great trip... tight linesSorry, i couldn’t find the fishing club thread so i posted here.
after tiring of chasing my tail trying to acquire a decent grip lathe, LSS, i couldn’t get what i wanted and what I could get wouldn’t do what i wanted so i Lost patience and just rigged up a homemade setup. The glue on the grips is set enough to start wrapping.
Guides are Fuji titanium frames w/SIC rings If i get finish on the wraps by midnight I can take it with me to Florida this weekend.
My brother just got a new 19’ CC and an air BNB at Mexico beach for Friday through Tuesday and we will be in the bay at St. Joe and maybe some inshore trolling if it’s flat enough.
The specks reds spanish, pompano And (hopefully) blackfin, are nervous.
View attachment 4019166 View attachment 4019167
Sorry, i couldn’t find the fishing club thread so i posted here.
after tiring of chasing my tail trying to acquire a decent grip lathe, LSS, i couldn’t get what i wanted and what I could get wouldn’t do what i wanted so i Lost patience and just rigged up a homemade setup. The glue on the grips is set enough to start wrapping.
Guides are Fuji titanium frames w/SIC rings If i get finish on the wraps by midnight I can take it with me to Florida this weekend.
My brother just got a new 19’ CC and an air BNB at Mexico beach for Friday through Tuesday and we will be in the bay at St. Joe and maybe some inshore trolling if it’s flat enough.
The specks reds spanish, pompano And (hopefully) blackfin, are nervous.
View attachment 4019166 View attachment 4019167
I always liked those old Penn reels.
It was a really good weekend. Not a lot of variety but there was plenty of redfish action. We didn’t keep any because they were all outside the slot limit. Here’s one of the smaller ones. They were schooling and swarming trolled cigar minnows in 20~30 feet of water. There were three of us and it was not unusual to have three on at once. all in all it was a serious hoot, perfect weather every day and almost nonstop action.
After an 8 hour drive north of Toronto, a 16.5 mile boat drive to the island we camp on, here's a pic of the first nights catch. We managed to get out for a couple of hours and were rewarded with these beauties. We ended up with about 8lbs of fillets, which meant that regardless of what we had planned for our dinners, fish was always on the menu.
Fishheadjoe
Fishheadjoe
Nice!
We were supposed to run out in the gulf saturday and troll for kings but weather was too iffy for a 19’ skiff so we spent the day in the mouth of the massive St. Joe bay. Like our last trip here, not a lot of variety but we had nonstop mostly juvenile blacktip shark action with a sprinkling of reds and hardtails. Don’t let their size fool you, these dink blacktops fight waaay above their weight. We troll for kings with 8 pound mono and king dusters made from 17 pound sevenstrand and have taken 30 pound kings that way, but these little sharks destroyed our terminal tackle all day.
Great area down there. I've never been but have heard nothing but good things. You live down there or just vacationing? Jealous if it's the former!
Don’t live there. I’m about an hour and forty five minutes north, nine miles from the state line in Alabama. It is a nice place though. My brother spent four years at the Coast Guard station in Panama City and loves that part of the coast. I lived in FWB for a few years and it’s my favorite part of the NW Florida coast. It’s a killer place to fish and play on the beach, just avoid Pensacola beach and Panama City beach, unless you like tight packed beaches and jammed up streets.Great area down there. I've never been but have heard nothing but good things. You live down there or just vacationing? Jealous if it's the former!
The panhandle is a truly great area... and some towns and beaches there are especially fantastic. Prettiest sand in the U.S. if you ask me... and some superb eats, too!
Every bit true. I love to spend the day on the water and go have a nice fresh bit of seafood for dinner that night. If you like nightlife there's plenty of that as well.
A few years ago, my family met up between Santa Rosa Beach and Rosemary Beach for a Christmas gathering. Even in the middle of winter, it was so much fun... just a great corner of the world.
Santa Rosa Beach has several outstanding restaurants!
Santa Rosa Beach has several outstanding restaurants!
The northwest Florida gulf coast is one of the best kept secrets in this country. World class inshore and offshore fishing, miles and miles of sugar sand beaches, tons of family friendly vacation activities, and great fresh gulf seafood, all very affordable.
I've posted earlier in this thread how my brother and I rent space at an RV park that's on a fantastic fishing lake in central Wisconsin. We've been going there on available weekends every summer for about 15 years.
The lake has lots of trophy bass and northern pike and is overflowing with blue gills, crappies, and perch.
At least it used to be. Four years ago, a coalition of homeowners with lakefront property decided to spray the lake with herbicide to get rid of all those pesky weeds. It seems there was no way to stop them because the lakefront is 100% privately owned and the Wisconsin DNR had no legal justification to prevent it.
Within 3 weeks of spraying, there was no vegetation left anywhere, and the water chemistry from the mass of dead weeds changed so much that it killed thousands of fish. The surface of the lake had piles of rotting, smelly, fish carcasses on it until the October lake turnover.
Since then, we've still been using the RV, but have been taking our boat to other nearby lakes with good fishing.
Last summer we've noticed some weeds returning on the lake, along with some respectable size game fish. Our first 2 trips to the lake this spring show that the lake is on it's way to recovery. Left to itself, the lake will be back to full health in another 3 or 4 years.
Except, the same homeowners who poisoned the plants and the fish 4 years ago, are talking about spraying the weeds again, and making it a regular occurence.
Their justification is that none of them fish. The only reason they vacation on the lake is to spend the weekend put-putting around the lake endlessly at 1 mph on their pontoon boats, drinking Bloody Marys' and Tom Collins' and other old fashioned drinks mixed from their floating bar. They hate it when weeds get tangled up in their outboard motor propellers because it interrupts their drinking routine, or something.
If the lake was turned into a giant hole filled with water, with absolutely no life in it whatsoever, they'd be happy.
The lake has lots of trophy bass and northern pike and is overflowing with blue gills, crappies, and perch.
At least it used to be. Four years ago, a coalition of homeowners with lakefront property decided to spray the lake with herbicide to get rid of all those pesky weeds. It seems there was no way to stop them because the lakefront is 100% privately owned and the Wisconsin DNR had no legal justification to prevent it.
Within 3 weeks of spraying, there was no vegetation left anywhere, and the water chemistry from the mass of dead weeds changed so much that it killed thousands of fish. The surface of the lake had piles of rotting, smelly, fish carcasses on it until the October lake turnover.
Since then, we've still been using the RV, but have been taking our boat to other nearby lakes with good fishing.
Last summer we've noticed some weeds returning on the lake, along with some respectable size game fish. Our first 2 trips to the lake this spring show that the lake is on it's way to recovery. Left to itself, the lake will be back to full health in another 3 or 4 years.
Except, the same homeowners who poisoned the plants and the fish 4 years ago, are talking about spraying the weeds again, and making it a regular occurence.
Their justification is that none of them fish. The only reason they vacation on the lake is to spend the weekend put-putting around the lake endlessly at 1 mph on their pontoon boats, drinking Bloody Marys' and Tom Collins' and other old fashioned drinks mixed from their floating bar. They hate it when weeds get tangled up in their outboard motor propellers because it interrupts their drinking routine, or something.
If the lake was turned into a giant hole filled with water, with absolutely no life in it whatsoever, they'd be happy.
Last edited:
Rotting vegetation will suffocate fish and all marine life in it. It uses all the oxygen in the water to decompose, killing breathing things. I must say that I am surprised that the authorities can't stop this, regardless of who "owns" the lake. Most lakes are part of a watershed so there "should be" some kind or recourse available to stop the action and stop it's spread.
Regardless, it's a shame and I feel for yah @hbarcat
Fishheadjoe
Regardless, it's a shame and I feel for yah @hbarcat
Fishheadjoe
We're looking into it. About a dozen of us who rent spaces at the RV park are fisherman and the owners of the park have been made aware of the situation. They stand to lose tenants if the lake has no fish in it.
It gets complicated by the fact that the DNR was fine with the first spraying of herbicide because the lake had been overrun with an invasive species of weed called "Eurasian milfoil". That was the stated justification for the first spraying.
Those nuusance weeds are now gone and the new population of weeds seems to be entirely native, so if the locals intend to spray again, with the intent to destroy that native weed growth, they just might run afoul of conservation laws that would overrule any claim of private property rights.
Just because you own the land, doesn't mean you get to destroy entire ecosystems that are on it or next to it.
Here in Ontario, you can own the land surrounding a lake, but with very few exceptions, you cannot own the body of water. I would think that in your particular situation, any number of local conservation groups would take on a project like this, in order to protect the environment. And yah, that milfoil stuff is nasty and will choke off a lake left un-attended.
One of the problems we have are people dumping their aquariums into lakes. Typically, any vegetation they have in those aquariums are obviously not domestic, but some kind of foreign plant that will thrive un-checked, in a non native environment.
I hope you are able to affect some change with your favourite lake...
Fishheadjoe
One of the problems we have are people dumping their aquariums into lakes. Typically, any vegetation they have in those aquariums are obviously not domestic, but some kind of foreign plant that will thrive un-checked, in a non native environment.
I hope you are able to affect some change with your favourite lake...
Fishheadjoe
That's true here, as well. But my gut feeling tells me that "local attitude" is often more influential than what federal environmental law dictates.
This is a small, 40 acre, lake, where nearly all of the land owners are retirees from the cities in the region, and they really just want to relax and sit on their screen porches in the morning and putt - putt endlessly around the lake on their pontoon boats in the evening, drinking liquor.
There are dozens of other lakes in the county that require constant attention from the DNR. If those lakes get out of balance and it ruins the fishing, the fishing tourists will leave and take their $$ with them, so the locals want the DNR closely involved. That includes encouraging homeowners to keep vegetative buffer zones along their shoreline, which most gladly do, because they understand how essential it is to the lake's ecosystem.
The grannies on our lake want manicured lawns right up to the shoreline, with a stone or other hard barrier at the water's edge. They want the water to have a clean sand bottom, with no weeds or muck. These are horrible conditions for the health of the lake.
Our Eurasian milfoil problem is mostly caused by fishermen moving their boats from lake to lake. By law, they're required to hose off their hulls with clean water before they launch their boat in one lake after fishing in a different lake. Most people don't bother, so invasive species spread all around.
Our lake doesn't have any public access at all. We have to keep our boats in a designated area on the shore that's only accessible via a ¼ mile hike along a path through the forest. This is good because it prevents irresponsible public visitors from ruining the lake. Now we just need to convince the local landowners to change their attitudes away from their personal comfort and convenience, to long term environmental health.
