No boaters have been knocked simple by running into a leaping silver carp while motoring on Sandusky Bay or the Sandusky River – yet. Ditto for Maumee Bay and connecting waters. But evidence continues to mount that something is afoot in the trouble department when it comes to a dreaded invasion of fisheries-wrecking Asian carp, especially the bighead and silver…
Better late than never is a way of sending a left-handed compliment to the Kasich administration and state lawmakers for enabling the renovation of the lodge at Burr Oak State Park and lodges and cottages at Hueston Woods and Shawnee state parks. The renovations are being done by U.S. Hotel and Resorts, a private operator that won the management contract…
The recent completion of a five-year review of endangered species in Ohio and subsequent downlisting of several keys species by the Ohio Division of Wildlife mostly is a positive sign when it comes to the cause of conservation. Rather than being obstructions to so-called “progress,” endangered species need to be regarded as nature’s proverbial canaries in the coal mine, critical…
One can only hope for failure in the current combined efforts of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and Michigan Department of Natural Resources in their concerted effort to detect the presence of dreaded Asian carp in western Lake Erie. A year ago, four samples from Sandusky Bay tested positive for bighead carp eDNA, while…
Lake Erie has dodged a bullet this summer – a backhanded thanks to the drought – and the seasonal bloom of toxic blue-green algae “pea soup” is expected to be minor. But that in no way is any reason to fold the campaign tent and go home when it comes to a long-term fix to the ugly, toxic condition that…
When the Ohio Wildlife Council considers rescinding the controversial, questionable new rule requiring that a skin-patch be left on fish fillets for identification, it instead should consider fashioning one that makes legal the widespread practice of keeping boat limits. As it stands now, for example, a daily summertime limit of six Lake Erie walleye is enforced only when a wildlife…
Funny thing, isn’t it, how sport fishermen in Ohio aren’t allowed to average their catches the way big business and industry will be able to average their water withdrawals from Lake Erie and its vulnerable tributaries. You keep more than six walleyes a day from Lake Erie this summer, or five bass from Ohio Brush Creek and you gonna get…
Ohio Gov. John Kasich missed the boat this week in signing House Bill 473, which sets water withdrawal limits from Lake Erie and its tributaries. He vetoed a supremely industry-friendly, ecologically insensitive version a year ago, but supports this one, something of a half-way measure. It makes him seem Solomonic, a master of compromise, collegial, reasonable. How politically convenient, and…
Few of us here in the Buckeye State would admit that anything good could cross the northern border from WolverineLand, at least when college football tensions are strung high. But it says here that the Michigan DNR is moving along with a program that the Ohio DNR’s Division of Wildlife would do well to adopt. It is the Michigan Pheasant…
The Ohio Wildlife Council needs to rescind its recent controversial rule requiring that fish be kept in the round or with skin attached to fillets till reaching home. The DNR Division of Wildlife has been backpedaling on this one since news of its approval first began circulation this spring. Now Scott Zody, division chief, has issued an advisory to his…
It is 5 a.m. on a mid March morning and I find myself stumbling through the trees along the banks of the Maumee River, my chest waders catching a twig or a rock here or there in the wet sand. Or I catch the tip of my spinning rod on a limb or get smacked in the face with a…
I am not an every-tree-is-sacred sentimentalist, having chain-sawed, split, and fed my wood stove with many cords of maple, ash, hickory, and oak over the past 30-odd years. But I am compelled to say a few words in parting about the demise of a certain green ash tree that stood just down the road. It was one of those lone…
The remaining efforts of a handful of cold-hardy bowhunters aside, the Ohio deer seasons are over, except for the shouting. No doubt, as sessions of the winter’s Hot Stove League convene, deer management doubtless will be fodder for the woodburner. I have gleaned some of the debate points already, aired during the shotgun and muzzleloader seasons in overheard conversations at…
It was a too-hot summer’s last blast, those days leading up to Labor Day weekend, and I sought the meager shade of a little sapling in 90-plus degree mid afternoon sun in which to set up.Cool weather – perhaps too cool for the activity in which I was engaged – was due within 72 hours. So setting and sweating had…
If, in the first week of June you had bet me that my pond would be down three feet by the end of July, then you would own the family farm. Back then, following a frog-drowner of a spring with rain-rain-rain, the pond was as high as I had seen it come first of June in 37 years. But it…
I just got done collecting beer and pop cans – mostly beer – that the litter-pigs tossed from their car and truck windows during the winter along the rural lanes where I take my daily constitutional.My hike-route for years has covered three familiar miles’ worth of roadside ditches. And just since the first snows covered the landscape the first week…
The zany forecasting of Punxsutawney Phil, the storied Pennsylvania groundhog aside, you can count on hunkering down next to the wood stove for another six weeks of winter.Or you can get outside on the backside of a snowstorm, on one of those glorious winter days when the sky is crystal blue and the sun hurts if you are not wearing…
The new year this time around brings a new political administration in Columbus, and it is an opportune time to talk about the 600-pound gorilla in the living room – how to fund the Ohio DNR. This subject seems dry as a corncob left too long in the sun, but it inevitably is tied to your hunting fishing, camping, hiking,…
PCRs – pistol-cartridge rifles – are not P.C., politically correct, in Ohio for deer-gun season and it is time to rethink that.In fact, the time is past due to revisit the entire issue of what arms are legal for deer here, given the tremendous changes in arms and ammunition in recent years. What we have now is an aging set…
