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Posts: 777
| I hear fishing is horrible on both Big and Little Bay in the last month.... anyone care to enlighten the group here on their results. |
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Location: Menasha, WI | Sunshine is up there right now. I'm sure he'll have some info when he returns. |
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Posts: 777
| Reports from our fishing group and my friends are not good. 25 MPH winds out of the south make it impossible to fish right now. Been a tough week for the group with just a few fish caught.
Dominic |
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Member
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Location: McFarland, WI | I just got back from a terrible week of Little Bay fishing. We had nine boats that caught 26 walleyes but weather was terrible also. Something sure changed over the last few years. Locals told us some horrible stories about netting. I heard from several locals that they will be having a trial next month for two illegal netters for 10 tonsof illegal fish, but total fish killed over the entire netting period varied from 24-35 thousand tons. I find that number hard to comprehend. Seems there were two groups. DNR is very quiet about numbers. We were also told that the gill nets froze in at Big Bay and were there until ice out. When they pulled them it was massive dead fish. Females were not seen in the river this spring either. I know that walleye chunks are no longer everywhere in the fish markets.
The fish we did catch were in the weeds and the bite was about an hour long. Northerns bit all night long. I've fished this same week for 20 years and when angler pressure was the highest the fishing was still great. Now there are few anglers and fewer fish. We've made a lot of friends up there in 20 yrs and we all planned on returning for the comradarie. A sign of age I guess. We did fish with Sunshine Friday and it was our best day. He is like a lucky charm. |
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Location: Manawa Wiscowsin | I was with another group that fished the Bays De Noc this last week. A few guys were there the whole week but I didn't get up there until Wednesday. The walleye bite wasn't except for about an hour Saturday night when the moon broke through the overcast. That hour long bite wasn't much of a bite. One of the guys did boat a 28 inch 9 1/4 pound eye. We did have some luck on northerns even though we didn't fish for them. The smallies over on Big Bay were hitting on suckers and red tails. We (other members of the group, NOT me) boated six smallies over 20 inches with the largest being 21 1/2 inches. The weather was a pain. Fishing Little Bay north of the narrows was possible most of the time but fishing Little Bay south of the narrows and Big Bay was impossible a large amount of the time.
LarryS: I was in the Starcraft, three red and three green lighted boards.
Purple Skeeter: Bottom Feeder was with our group.
Edited by BD 11/2/2009 2:02 AM
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| These are our fish from my boat from Thursday and Saturday. Not to good, but from all the guys we talked to, we seemed to do OK.
Thursday: 21.5, 21, 21, 20.5, 17, 16
Saturday: 23, 17, 17, 16
Attachments
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 BDN-2009.jpg (117KB - 1 downloads)
BDN2-2009.jpg (71KB - 1 downloads)
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Member
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Location: McFarland, WI | BD:
You had a hardy group, I saw you guys launch Friday. We played tourist instead. We were out with you on Thursday and we did get 5 fish in about 45 minutes that night and then it was Northern exposure. Prior to that our best was two. We stayed with Fish hunter, Hodag, and crew. Thumper, we'd take those fish any time. |
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Member
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Location: Manawa Wiscowsin | Hardy? It's just that some of these guys are gluttons for punishment and the rest of us are too stupid to stay in camp. We do have some hard core fishermen in the group including one of Purple Skeeter's fishing buddies.
The last two years it seems as though we were too early for the fall bite. We're considering going a week later next year. A couple of the guys, after hunting deer opening weekend, go up on Thanksgiving if the landings aren't blocked by ice. Years when they could launch, they did get some good action (and froze their butts off) the end of November.
Another member of our group, a guide, couldn't make it this year. He had too much other stuff going on. I fished muskies with him on the way up last year. I had ten strikes from muskies that day, hooked five of them and landed four (all released).
Edited by BD 11/2/2009 10:46 PM
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Location: Waukesha Wisconsin | Returned on Monday so this is a late report.
I feel that Larry and others have said it all above. (thanks for the complement Larry)
LBDN is just a normal fishery now. As Larry said, many locals feel that the netting has done more major damage. than we imagined. It will be a few years for this great fishery to rebound to its greatness. Our group has decided to fish other locations for a few years and let the fishery rebound. There's still fish there but not the numbers there once was.
Sunday was our best outing with 6 fish caught during the day. We fished South of Escanaba (and North of Cedar). The fish measured between 19" and 28". Leadcore with 3 colors was the program.
I love the area and the people up there and I will miss heading up. But after 3 years of watching the decline, it is time to move on to other fall locations for awhile.
It was really sad to see the number of businesses (hotels and restaurants) already closed.
If I were the Chamber of Commerce I would be pushing the GREAT smallie fishery for awhile. There are giants out there and numbers. |
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Location: Waukesha Wisconsin | In case you missed this.........
Sunday night the DNR caught 3 white people and 1 tribal member using ILLEGAL nets in Big Bay. They collected 1100 lbs of Whitefish. They watch them in a stake out set the nets at around 6:00pm Sunday night and busted them when they pulled the nets about 5 hrs later. I think there should be a press release soon with some more info.
JUST FOR THE RECORD THESE WERE NOT (I REPEAT NOT) THE SAME PEOPLE AS THE ONES THAT WERE CAUGHT IN LITTLE BAY LAST WINTER!!!
Some people never learn. Hang 'em from the balls! |
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| Sunshine....you hear numbers of lbs fillets/fish that were seized and thats one thing. If they admit they were doing it for 2 years they probably were doing it for 6 years. If they said they seized 10,000 lbs there was probably 50,000lbs. Just examples of course but obviously the damage has been done. What a shame what greed/money do to people. |
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Location: Waukesha Wisconsin | This doesn't answer your question about the new find but here is info about the March bust..........
Conservation officers last week seized 256 pounds of walleye that had been snagged in nets planted in the bay. They also removed 1,200 feet of illegally set gill netting.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009 at 11:30 a.m.
LITTLE BAY DE NOC -- State wildlife officers say they will seek charges against six Delta County men accused of running an illegal commercial fishing operation on Lake Michigan's Little Bay de Noc.
Department of Natural Resources law enforcement chief Gary Hagler said Tuesday more than 20,000 pounds of walleye may have been taken illegally from the bay in the past two months.
Conservation officers last week seized 256 pounds of walleye that had been snagged in nets planted in the bay. They also removed 1,200 feet of illegally set gill netting.
Hagler says investigators became suspicious when a DNR conservation officer noted that an unusually high number of walleye were being sold on the wholesale market during the past several winters.
An old report from "The Bait Shop Guy" (CHRIS WAHL - BAY VIEW BAIT and TACKLE).........
I talked with one of the C.O.'s involved with the case. He threw a lot of information at me in a short amount of time, so I may not have all the details right. All this was happening well after midnight, down near the red buoy on the south side of Black Bottom. I believe he said there were several nets involved - around 2000 total feet. He also felt they hadn't found all the nets, so there are probably a few still out in the bay "fishing" :swear: When legally fishing, they can string several nets together, but there has to be a 50 foot gap separating two nets. These illegal nets had less than 10 feet between them, virtually making them one big net. A day or two before the bust, they (the DNR) had pulled the nets and implanted many of the fish with micro chips. When the C.O.'s went to the commercial fishermen in Garden, there was no way they could deny the fact that the fish had come from LBDN from illegal nets. If I remember right, (I really do hope I'm wrong,) he said the commercial fisherman's records showed they had bought 22,000 pounds of fish from these guys the year before. THAT'S 11 TONS!!! All we can do is hope the tribal courts realize how bad these few people are making the rest of them look and hang them out to dry, (basically, that's what I said to the press.)
here is a link to a web page conversation on the subject where I pulled the "old news
http://upangler.com/forums/index.php?topic=883.0
Edited by Sunshine 11/4/2009 11:24 AM
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| The illegal netting is nothing. What the tribes have been removing from the bay through the ice is what has done the real damage. They have a factory shack set up on the ice in the narrows and they have nets that run the entire east break. Have you not noticed the new net stakes. One is about 1-2 feet below the surface on the north end. I snagged it a few years back with my drift sock. It has been going on for 3-4 years now and they have removed tons. The DNR has pictures of the carcus piles and they will blow your mind. The state made a deal with the tribes sacrificing the Great Lakes to preserve the inland waters. Bottom line is they threw the people of the communities like Escanaba, Gladstone, Kipling, etc... under the bus.
Remember this when you are voting... This happened on your watch. Maybe someone up there should talk to Stupek the local liberal rep. Where was he when this happened.
Who cares about the fishing, what about all the families that were supported by the sport fishing and tournaments up there. That who is seriourly injured.
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| It pains me to read all of this about LBDN. I have noticed the fishing drop off the last few years. It looks like it it will continue to head in the same direction.
I guess I should thank you for the information as I was going to head up this coming weekend and fish LBDN. We usually head up the weekend Michigan's deer season starts as the boat traffic really drops off. I think we'll go somewhere else this weekend - probably the Mississippi, Lake WI or Sturgeon Bay. That'll be a loss to the local Escanaba economy - $$ for 3 nights hotel, gas, bait, license, food, drink and, of course, tax revenue. I guess Michigan doesn't need our money right now, but I'm sure the place we end up can use it.
Heading elsewhere |
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| Sunday night the DNR caught 3 white people and 1 tribal member using ILLEGAL nets in Big Bay. They collected 1100 lbs of Whitefish
Sounds like the whitie guy finally got caught . Everyone wants to blames the indians for everything for a few bad apples but this has been going on for awhile and why doesnt Mich DNR do more about. Also the taking a big fish has been going on for long time by anglers too . We locals see them at the launch at night with 4 guys in a boat and having 4- 27" plus there cutting up to eat |
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| Fished this past weekend for a few hours Friday and Saturday night (from approx. 5p to 8p). Had 6 bites trolling gold deep reef runners near center reef in approx. 22FOW. Biggest was 26". |
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