After a one day hiatus from fishing to track, Hedrik and I were back at things today. We hit the road shortly after 7AM and ran into VERY heavy fog. In fact, this was possibly the heaviest I've ever driven in, much less fished in. I figured navigating through the fog couldn't be THAT difficult... Boy was I wrong. A short drive to our first spot that should have taken us five minutes under normal conditions now took us almost 30. I finally had to use the hand-held GPS to fix our last waypoint and navigate us to that location. Even then, the shoreline was barely visible and maintaining the proper heading was a task to say the least. It was very creepy as the fog began to lift and boats began to appear seemingly out of nowhere.
We knew our window of opportunity was small as the fog gave us "artificial" cloud-cover despite being bright and sunny beyond the fog. We made a couple passes through the spot and turned around again to work it a bit more slowly. I chose a zig-zag glide bait and popped it over submergent weeds. Sure enough, right in front of a guy bass fishing a nice 41 inch muskie hammered the glider and made SEVERAL powerful runs. These powerful runs were evidenced in this fish's lactate values which were higher than normal.
As a side note, this particular fish had a previous Floy tag in it from an unknown source, though the area code is from my home state of Illinois (Naperville/Wheaton area). This is unfortunate as unless this individual (and another whose tags I've pulled from other fish) is working with the Canadian government (OMNR) or another research institution, they are not allowed to Floy tag muskies without permission. It is my knowledge that the OMNR does not issue permits to individuals. Very disappointning to see such behavior. Laws are put into the books for a reason, and for a handful of people to operate as if the law does not pertain to them is deplorable. If whoever is doing this tagging is reading this, please email me a copy of your permit so I can put this issue to rest and squelch anger amongst the local fishermen. Thanks, gentlemen...
The picture at the top of this post is intended to illustrate how little most of our fish have been moving immediately post-release. From the far left orange buoy to the far right yellow buoy is less than 50 feet. The middle yellow buoy is where the fish was tracked 10 mins post-release, the far right was at 30 mins, and the far left at one hour.
Well Done Sean (& Hedrik)- nice to see your efforts are paying off. The average size for your study must be in the ... low 40's???
ReplyDeleteVERY sad to see continued, unauthorized tagging of fish in the Ottawa R. It is hard to believe that some folks feel they are entitled to use the resource this way. NOT cool.