Well the election season is over and its my turn to rant about it! First of all only 27% of the Erie County residents voted and that’s a disgrace to begin with, especially considering that the 3 term Erie much maligned by sportsmen county executive was on the ballot. After his poor judgement on COVID, 47 people dying in a recent blizzard, his veto of the proposed youth hunt in Erie County {one of only 2 counties out of 50 who vetoed it) etc. This was plenty of reasons to come out and vote him out but it didn’t even come close to happening! Sportsmen had 8 days of early voting plus election day and many of them still did not vote! It seems that sportsmen will not get off their butts to vote until it  effects them directly. I worked 3 days as a election inspector and seen a lot of young female voters but very few men. The only thing we have to fight back with is our vote!!

Did you know that at least 10 gun dealers in New York have closed shop due to the odious ammunition screening process? That is exactly what the bill was intended to do! Yet we continually elect democrats to most positions in New York and the complaint is that downstate controls the vote, this is not true as New York City has about 8 million people and New York State has 18 million people and as stated earlier  a lot of these people don’t vote!!!

I talked to a friend who works at Cabelas and he stated that last year on Black Friday they sold 175 guns, this year they will be lucky to sell 50 guns! This is all because of the new laws regarding purchasing a gun, ammunition etc. If this doesn’t wake up the sportsmen I don’t know what will!!

Joseph Fischer

I recently talked to Dr. Jason Robinson who heads up the Lake Erie Fisheries unit based in Dunkirk New York. We discussed at length the latest fall survey regarding the status of the warm water fishery in eastern Lake Erie. The preliminary results are as follows:

WALLEYES
This fishery, as most of you know, is in excellent shape with an abundant population estimated at over 100 million walleyes in the lake. The good news is that should continue as there appears to be an abundance of walleye fingerlings in the lake! I asked Dr. Robinson whether there was enough bait to feed these voracious eaters he felt that there doesn’t seem to be a problem as their average growth rate and weight is very good with a 3-year-old walleye already legal size. Great news for all you Lake Erie walleye fishermen. The other thing that is different from the earlier super walleye fishery in the 1980’s is that the earlier walleye fishery was predominately a deep water nomadic school of fish that required a larger offshore boat and planer boards etc. to catch these walleyes. The walleyes now are fish that live in the Buffalo harbor area and are shallow water fish.

BASS
The Smallmouth Bass fishery is stable and probably one of the best bass fisheries in North America with bass exceeding 4 lbs. common and some topping 6 lbs. Bass will be the target of a study to ascertain whether the early season bass fishery has a negative effect on spawning. A study recently showed that if a bass is removed from its spawning bed only for a short time the nest is quickly predated by gobies, I will have more on this in the future.

PERCH
The perch population in the Eastern basin of Lake Erie has been stable and continues to be in good shape now and projected to be so for the immediate future. This is great news. The western basin has seen a precipitous drop in perch recruitment in the last couple of years and at this time the reason has not been determined. There is a good population of mature perch (8-14”) in the lake now and as a DEC official told me recently “a great deal of these fish die of old age”. This fish is considered by many to be the best eating of all freshwater fish.

Joseph Fischer