wolc123

3'

Congrats, It is cool that you found a wife who hunts. I am thankful that mine at least likes to eat venison and fish, is a heck of a cook, and does not mind running the vacuum sealer. She did fish with me a couple weeks ago (on NY "free" fishing weekend) and even caught the first one, so I will have to keep her. We are going on half way, where you are now, and I am looking forward to a lot more.

I will have to give them a try some time. When it comes to bird, the only white meat that I really like is ruffed grouse breast. All the rest tastes rather bland to me, sort of like eating cardboard. Turkey beast (especially from mature wild toms) is the worst. My wife and kids do like white meat though. Young, wild hen turkey breast was ok for me last fall, and those drumsticks were very good in the crock pot. I like button buck liver, but I don't care for it from older deer, and I do love baby beef liver. My sister's family raises beef cattle and I can usually score all of that I want because no one else in the family cares for it. I have done Canada goose breast in the crock-pot a few times, and that turns out pretty good. That is probably how I would do the pigeon breasts. We try to live a subsistance lifestyle, getting nearly all of our protein "free", from NY state wild fish and game. Venison always makes up the bulk of that, but I like to mix it up a bit so that the kids don't get sick of it. While I was growing up, chicken was mostly what the folks fed us kids. I still won't order chicken while dining out. I might eat a few wings now and then, but only if someone else is buying and nothing else is available. The nightmares of being handed scalding hot chickens to pluck, from the time I was less than 10 years old, are still too vivid. Every now and then, one would flop into the creek behind the barn, after my dad whacked its head off with an axe on a stump, and I would have to swim after it.

I had my first "garbage plate", the other day (my sister's kid requested that for his birthday party). It was better than I expected it to be, but fell a bit short of "love".

How do they taste ?

Those cheeks are probably about the same size as 3.5 year old whitetail buck nuts. Break out the frying pan, add butter and pepper for a pretty good surf-and-turf.

I am a bit finicky when it comes to eating fish. I can handle the taste of late-summer Erie Walleyes, as long as I use lots of tarter sauce or cayenne pepper to cover up that "algae" taste. Back in the late eighties / early-nineties, when the population was almost as high as it is today, I experimented with different ways of making them taste good. These days, the only ones I keep are those taken "by accident" while we are targeting bass, and most of those are early season when they don't need any "spicing up" to make them taste good. Late summer has long been the easiest time to fill coolers with walleyes out on Lake Erie. The big schools from Ohio would always migrate over here at that time. Now, the native eastern-basin population seems to be at an all-time high. With all those round gobies to forage on, they might stay in the shallows and keep tasting good later into the summer, than they did back in the old days. With the exception of those late-summer Erie walleyes, I agree with you that they all taste the same. I never understood why so many folks think that you got to go way up north into Canada in order to find good-tasting Walleyes. I only caught them up there once, on a Moose-hunting trip in the late eighties. They tasted identical to those we always caught in Chataqua Lake, the Allegheny reservoir, and early-season on Lake Erie. Since discovering how to make bass taste great (use a livewell to keep them alive and fresh, such that the meat is still "twitching" when removed and use a vacuum-sealer prior to freezing), I rarely fish for walleyes anymore. Walleyes, especially caught while trolling, just don't put up enough of a fight to earn much of my time. There are only so many lame pieces of "driftwood" that I can handle reeling in.

Lake Erie Walleyes taste good until they move out and suspend under the zooplankon. That usually starts around mid-July. The meat starts tasting like algae smells around that time. They are very easy to catch by trolling then, but not so good on the table.

My wife and I spent a couple hours out on the Upper Niagara this morning. She has not bought her licence in a few years, but since it was "free weekend", I took her out today, after the neighbor kid cancelled (he planned a late night at his cousin's bachelor party). The wind was contrary (directly in opposition to the river current thru most of the stretches that I like to drift), but we found a stretch with enough current and just enough wind-block, to move the boat. She caught the first smallmouth (a 16 incher) in 20 ft of water on a 5/16 oz bucktail jig. I ended up getting three more including this 20 incher, that took a 1/4 oz jig in about 15 ft depth, plus a 13" and a 15" in 25 - 30 ft depths on the same jig. These bass were not quite as chunky as those we caught last Sunday, out in Lake Erie, and they all still had eggs in them (those caught last week had no eggs in them).

I would stick with bluegills and largemouth bass in ponds of that size. I dug one about 50' x 30' x 6 ft deep about 20 years ago. Bluegills got into it somehow, a couple years later (I noticed them hitting grasshoppers thrown in by my bush hog. ) After seeing the nice forage base, I put a 14" largemouth bass in there and caught it 4 or five times over the next couple years. All was well for a few years, until we had a drought and the pond nearly dried up. The herons / coons/ etc made short work of the fish as the water level dropped. My girls had lots of fun fishing for those bluegills while they were little. They even caught a bullhead once (I did not put them in either). Another drought dried it up completely about three years ago, and I got into it with my loader tractor and scraped out all the silt, plus dug it a couple feet deeper, into the clay. I stocked it again the next year, with a bucket full of bluegills and a couple of 13" largemouth that we had caught in a nearby lake. The water level has been good ever since, but I have not tried fishing it again. Our girls are not into fishing like they were before high school sports and smart phones.

I agree for casting the shallows around the walls, as you and your pal have been doing, but 1/8 is too light to get you to the bottom in 20-25 ft, in a good current (like always exists in the area around the round-house). The only 1/4 oz jig that we lost out there on Sunday, was on a cast that got away from my buddy and snagged up high on a wall (while we were trying shallow earlier in the day). We did not suffer a single bottom snag in 6 hours drifting out in 20-25 ft depths. I do make and use almost as many 1/8 oz jigs as I do 1/4 oz, and I have experienced a lot less snags, up at my in-laws place on a rocky-bottomed Adirondack lake, since switching to that size up there. On that small Adirondack lake, the bass move out and suspend over deep water after the shallows get too warm for them (usually by the end of June). At that time, I look for birds or minnows breaking the surface out towards the center of the lake and head upwind of those spots with a small gas outboard (10 hp limit there). Drifting thru and casting that 1/8 oz jig out, counting off 8 or 10 seconds, and then twitching it a little, results in lots of action over water that might be 80 to 100 ft deep. Those bass are usually spitting out minnows as I am reeling them in. Since learning that trick a few years ago, mid-summer has become my favorite time to fish up there. There is no deer hunting to distract me then, the swimming is great, the bass are super aggressive, fight real hard, and there is absolutely no danger of loosing jigs to bottom snags out over the deep water. Those jigs only cost me 10 cents to make, but they take some time and I don't always have enough buck (or doe) tails to make a lot.

The king is the lesser of the two catches for sure.

I am still waiting for TF to get back to me with the lengths of the ones he weighed so I can be a little bit more accurate with my weight estimates. So far, he is not cooperating. Eventually someone will, just like Stueben Jerry and Buckmaster did with the whitetail/PA chest-girth, field-dressed weight chart. Until then it is just pure WAG when it comes to estimating the smallmouth bass weights.

I was using natural (I never use dyed) light brown on Sunday. Most of the deer around my place (on the NW corner of WMU 9F) have real dark brown, almost black tails. Both of my deer last year were from my folks place (on the SW corner of WMU 9F) where their tails tend to be a lot lighter shade of brown. The two deer that my buddy gave me, from the town of Centerville, had medium-brown tails. It seems that a light to medium shade of brown usually works best for me on smallmouth bass. I suppose that probably looks the most like a real crayfish. I use a 1/4 oz medium-brown, powder-coated round jig-head about 90 % of the time on Lake Erie, the Upper Niagara, and the St Lawrence River. If it gets tough to hold on the bottom in deeper water or windier conditions, I sometimes go up to a 5/16 oz head, but lighter is always better for getting good hook-sets, and keeping the fish on the line. At my in-laws place, up on a small Adirondack lake, I usually go with a 1/8 oz jig-head. The clearer the water, the better those bucktail jigs work, especially if they are on flourocarbon, 8-pound test line. I was surprised how clear the water was on Sunday, considering all the rain we have had this year.

Maybe the NFTA feels sorry for folks launching boats, having routed a bike/jogging path at SBH, right across the top of the launch area, so they no longer charge the $8 or $10 that they were getting the last few years. We missed the big morning fisherman rush, by not arriving at the ramp until about 8:15 am (the fish are in the lake all day). There were no attendants there at that time. There were 4 or 5 blue-shirted attendants there when we pulled the boat out around 3:00 pm. The ramps were a bit more crowded then, but they had things operating very smoothly, and there was no delay in getting our boat out. One of the attendants even hooked up the winch strap and cranked it up onto the trailer for us (I probably should have tipped the guy, but that would have added to our cost per pound of fish). I enjoy the fishing and hunting hobbies a lot more when they do not cost me an arm and a leg. I always shoot for keeping the cost per pound of meat at less than a dollar. I got pretty close to that on Sunday, with my buddy using his truck to pull the boat over there, and myself only on the hook for the boat gas (about 3 gallons used). I never use bait and I tie my own jigs, so my only cost for tackle is for the hooks (around 10 cents each). My buddy did loose one of those jigs on a snag, but the one I used all day is still on my rod and ready for next time out. I re-tied a couple of times thru the day because those heavy sheephead were putting a pretty good strain on the line. Normally, they bother the jigs a lot less than live crabs. but they were outnumbering bass by at least 2:1 on Sunday. The bass were not fighting all that hard early, but stepped up their game a bit as the water warmed up in the afternoon. Our freezer is in decent shape now, with those (5) fresh packages, each of which will make (5) meals - one each for the wife, kids and myself plus leftovers for me at work the following day. I try to get most of our fish from Lake Erie, because it is relatively healthy, when it comes to "health advisories", compared to most other waters in the state. It would be nice if Lake Ontario were a little better in that respect, because that is a slightly shorter drive for me. They are still saying that woman and children especially, should avoid eating most fish from that lake however, especially the larger trout and salmon. They might be fun to catch, but they are not much good to me if I cant feed my family with them.

Just guessing on the weights. I am thinking the were all females, recently finished dumping their eggs. The skinnier ones, in shallower water, are probably males, still guarding the nests. I don't like pestering them at that time because the round gobies (and other nest-raiders) likely clean out a good portion of the fry/eggs while you are fighting, landing, and photographing them. Did you get the lengths of those two in the photo's ? That might help verify the accuracy of the weight estimates. I have a ruler with a walleye weight conversion on the back of my boat. It measures from 10 to 25-1/2 inches and shows that a 25-1/2" walleye weighs 6 pounds. The walleye we got out there Sunday hung a few inches over the end, but it was kind of thin,so I doubt it was much over 6 pounds (the filleted meat all jammed into a quart-sized freezer bag packed very tight). It would be nice to come up with a Lake Erie, smallmouth weight/length chart, similar to that walleye rule or the beloved PA chest girth chart for whitetails that G-man found for us. As it turns out, the findings of myself and 2-3 other forum members, who actually weighed and measured their deer last fall, indicate that chart grossly underestimated the weight of Western NY deer.

No, they are completely different species. It would be the same as a grizzly and a black bear cross breeding - ain't going to happen. It all goes back to the pairs that were on Noah's ark (I don't buy the "evolution" BS).

How did it go down there ? I have not fished that lake in the last 20 years. Back in the day, we use to do well on walleyes in the north end, mostly around Dewittville bay. I can not remember catching any fish in that lake, south of the bridge at Bemus point. The farthest south that I ever caught many, was the deep hole off Long point where we took our limits of just-barely keepers, during a severe cold front on opening day of walleye season in 1989. Since learning how to grill, bake, or broil fish, I rarely target walleyes anymore. Bass, having more oil in the meat, are much better cooked that way, plus they out-fight walleyes by at least 2:1 pound per pound.

We went out there for the first time this year on Sunday also. We got a late start because my buddy and his kid were out late at a party on Saturday night. It was about 9:00 am when we reached Seneca shoal and the kid got a 28" walleye as soon as we started a slow drift, on a bucktail jig in 28 ft. No bass action whatsoever out there, just that walleye and a sheephead, so we moved in by the south gap, but just a few more sheephead there. I am not into walleyes because they fight like a piece of driftwood and I prefer eating the bass. We found our first smallmouth bass, drifting bucktail jigs in 20-25 ft depth, starting a couple hundred yards upstream of the round house and drifting thru between that and the little island farther out towards Canada. We got at least one smallmouth (and multiple sheephead) on (7) consecutive drifts. The shortest was 16", and two tied for longest were 19". Not a bad haul of fish for minimal cost (we only lost one jig and the boat launch was free at small boat harbor). The bass were very heavy with the 19 inchers around 5 pounds each, and nothing under 3 pounds. We ended up with (4) quart-sized vacuum packs of bass and one of walleye fillets (the 28 incher was a little thin, maybe 6 pounds and really stuffed the quart pack). We had planned on going out there last week but delayed our trip a week due to weather, which was awesome on Sunday. The bass action was off a little, but the average size was way up compared to what I have seen out there in the past. The round gobies seem to be doing wonders for their growth rates.

That is good because whitetails are tastier. I have heard that blacktails are better yet, but I never had the chance to try one. I will not hunt or eat mule deer again, because those that I have had, tasted like sage-brush smells (at least those from the Colorado high-desert region). I could never understand why elk from the same area taste so much better, definitely on par with NY farm-country whitetails. Maybe the mule deer eat the sage-brush but the elk do not. The guy who we hunted elk and mule deer with, out in Colorado, liked to hunt whitetails in NY, mainly because they tasted so much better than the mule deer back home. It looks like now he may be able to find some whitetails to hunt out there (He is from Steamboat Springs). The only problem might be, If they get into the same foul tasting browse that the mule deer eat, they might end up tasting just as bad. I have heard folks complain about the flavor of central-Adirondack "bark-eating" whitetails. The (2) whitetail bucks and (2) does, that I have killed up on the NW corner of the Adirondack park, tasted the same as they do in WNY. There is a bit of Ag in that area and some oak trees, and that might explain the difference.

On the bright side, it might reduce traffic congestion, as more able-bodied folks are pushed out of the state by the nonsense. That evacuation will reduce the competition for our fish and game. At least there is a "silver lining" to this misguided action.

Hmm, why can't I see most of the posts on this thread ? I like big-game better because less ammo is required per pound of meat and it as ALL about the meat for me and my family.

What about Doc ? I have not heard from him in a while. I hope he is doing ok. I am thankful that crossbow still has the very best two weeks to deer hunt in the Southern zone of NY state. Fortunately that has been enough for me to get a buck with one on all but one year since 2014. A little more than the current (3) days before the guns come in, including some weekend time, wound have been nice up North. I am also thankful for a little more time to fall turkey and squirrel hunt, and that I do not need to upgrade my cheap, entry-level crossbow. What I have now is plenty good enough for 17 days of legal hunting.

There are many who consider a shoulder shot a good one, and it don't matter much what the bullet is if it hits there, the odds of an exit are low. I normally prefer a behind the shoulder shot, unless it is on a doe with a "group". In that situation, the anchoring shoulder blade shot has led to a few "doubles" for me. The heavier and slower the bullet, the less the meat damage from that hit. Would you consider yourself a "killer" of a "fighter" ? You make some valid points and I agree on the range time which is why I try and get in several thousand "practice" shots on targets between seasons. I hope you have a great season this year and thanks for all you do with the Field to Fork program.

It all comes down to if you are a born "fighter" or a born "killer". One way to tell these types apart is by watching them fish. The fighters are into "catch and release", which I consider to be mostly just "senseless maiming" of a fine food source. Sort of a waste, similar to blooding up a bunch of venison and making it un-edible, by hitting it with a high-velocity, light weight bullet. The fighters thrive on challenge and competition, while the killers seek to minimize each, seeking only a fast, clean kill with minimal wasted meat. The good news is, here in NY we have plenty of game and fish for both types. The main sticking point on the whole deal for me is I don't like the idea of using living animals to "challenge" myself. I do like to cook and eat them. I don't mind others wanting to challenge themselves, and I recognize that the "fighters" are in the clear majority, probably outnumbering "killers" by about 4:1. I don't think they are "dumb", just "different". For me, it would be dumb to use a smaller caliber bullet because it usually ruins more meat and it is almost ALL about the meat for me. Hunting with a compound bow was too challenging for me and I am very thankful that my days of using it are over. I don't know of any weapon much better for efficient killing, with minimal meat loss, on a whitetail deer than a crossbow. If we were all "born killers", it would be a lot harder to live off the fat of the land, getting almost all of the protein your family needs from wild game, as is it is relatively easy to do these days (thanks in part to 17 legal days for crossbow before guns open in NY). That makes me very thankful for all the "fighters" out there.