What a difference 9,000 days could make in Michigan’s Great Lakes fisheries with new consent decree
Things don’t usually change rapidly in the Great Lakes. Change takes weeks, months, decades or more.
Changing water levels of the Great Lakes: Understanding tides, tsunamis and seiches
I was sitting on a Lake Michigan beach with my daughter, granddaughter, and other family members when my son-in-law asked if Lake Michigan had tides that raised or lowered the water level on a regular basis.
Jeff isn’t from Michigan and hasn’t spent much time on any of the Great Lakes, so the question wasn’t illogical. He’s been to the ocean several times and experienced tidal flows there. The view from the beach looking across the lake is very ocean-like.
Most people familiar with the Michigan’s Great Lakes would answer Jeff’s question with a simple, “no.” That would be the wrong answer.
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Try this orange test for sticking fish hooks
What seemed to be half my “off-season” free time used to focus on sharpening my fishing hooks.
I sharpened all my old hooks and as I stocked up with new lures for the next season. Each of the hook points on each of the fresh-from-the-factory hooks got a few strokes on my whetstone to get their points finely tuned and ready for spring. The technology used to manufacture fishing hooks that were “sharper than a tack” didn’t exist, at least for the stock hooks many lure makers used to finish their products.
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Tribal gill netting bad news for Michigan fisheries
Several years ago, I was fishing for walleyes on an inland lake with a well-seasoned guide (meaning he was probably 20 years older than me) and in casual conversation I learned he’d come from a family with a long history of commercial fishing in Lake Superior.
He told me he’d started accompanying his dad, uncles and cousins on the netting boats in the 1950s. One sentence in our conversation stayed with me through the years.
He said, “Once we switched to nylon gill nets, our catches were incredible. If they (the Michigan DNR, then Conservation Department) hadn’t shut us down, we could have caught the last fish in Lake Superior – they were that effective.”
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Great Lakes river mouths are transition zones for salmon
It’s easy to understand why Great Lakes salmon and trout gravitate to the places where streams or rivers flow into the Great Lakes in late winter or early spring.
The lake’s water may be hovering near the freezing point while the water flowing into the lake is often warmer by 10 degrees or more. It’s more comfortable for both predators and prey.
So why, in late summer and early autumn, do salmon gravitate to the waters near Great Lakes pierheads and the mouth of some Great Lakes tributaries? The water temperature in these nearshore waters is seldom salmon-suitable and even if there are baitfish in the area, the salmon are no longer actively feeding.
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Making sense of GPS lingo among Great Lakes anglers
Due to the unprecedented spike in the birthrate after World War II, the next decade or so after the war was called the “baby boom.”
It could be that the boating industry someday will view the years starting with the COVID pandemic and immediately after as America’s “boating boom” due to the unprecedented numbers of newly minted boats and boaters that were an offshoot of the upheaval caused by the virus and the attempts to bring it under control. The boating boom has resulted in a surge in Great Lakes boating and fishing, as well.
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Bulging costs cloud carp plan outlook as threat to Great Lakes continues
It’s nearly unanimous.
Invasive Asian carp shouldn’t have ever been allowed to be imported into the United States. Once they were imported, safeguards should have been in place to make sure they couldn’t escape. Sadly, now that they’ve escaped, something needs to be done to curb their expansion.
Something must be done! The problem is that the word “something” seems to have different meanings.
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Here’s how to rig up double duty diver reels
Anytime I can get dual service (or more) from any of my fishing tackle, I’m a happy camper.
If I can use the same rod to troll using planer boards and then switch it to trolling with downriggers, great. It saves money (rods are expensive), and it reduces clutter on my smaller-sized boat when my rods are multi-taskers. The same thing goes for the reels I use for fishing with directional diving planers, like Luhr Jensen’s Dipsey Divers, Dreamweaver’s Deeper Divers, and other brands.
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Big groups, big fish, big fun on Michigan’s Great Lakes
Fishing is many things to many people. That’s one of the allures of the sport.
For some, the solitude of the game is what’s important. It’s man against fish. The angler chooses when, where, and how to fish, and success is a quiet joy.
But occasionally, fishing can be the star of the party and even become the party. With a little work and planning, a summer fishing outing on one of Michigan’s Great Lakes can be a memory maker.
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