For the 2007-2008 ice fishing season, Golden Drake Outdoors and the Circle Hook Conservation Group will be collecting more circle hook performance data. We still believe ours to be the first and longest running data collection effort regarding ice fishing and circle hooks. We are dead serious about this.This year we plan to be sweetening the pot for those who will be willing to help us in this research. On a selective, limited, and case by case basis:

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“That’s a fish”, I said as I slowly swung the rod tip up.  I was daydreaming, thinking, you know, watching the rod tip as the pencil sinker bounced along the bottom, when the familiar tap-tap-tap of a fall steelhead interrupted everything.  The world changed, and life was exciting and wonderful - if only for a few minutes.

It was my second attempt at fishing the great Ausable river after becoming aware that the steelhead fishery there was in decline.  That day I landed one fish and lost one right at the bank.  I thought things were not so bad until I took a closer look. 

Something still bothered me.  The fish that had gotten off fought for 10 minutes, but no typical steelhead runs, jumps, or “ass over teakettle” cartwheels.  It felt like fighting a big largemouth.  This is not a steelhead fight.  Something is wrong.

The second fish fought the same.  I landed this one, kept it, took pictures, took it home and cleaned it.  Then it hit me.  I couldn’t shake the voice in my head from the old grizzly local guy who told me Lake Huron is “sick”.  They fought like they were sick. The one that I cleaned looked sick.  It had a disproportionately large head to body ratio.  Upon cleaning it, I noticed that the fillet was very thin and ended far before the tail fin section.  Far unlike the one or two fish for the grill I had cleaned in the past that looked like someone had put a needle in them and inflated them.  I opened up the stomach and intestinal tract only to find it packed with vegetation.  Really.  A magnificent predator like a steelhead grazing on weeds? 

They’re starving.  So this fishing trip is bitter-sweet.  Yes there are some steelhead returning to the Ausable, but there are only a few fish and they are starving.  Can I possibly fish for sick fish on purpose?  Does it mean anything if you catch one?  Won’t it just be sad again?

Yes, it is and will be sad.  It ends here.  No more complaining, no more philosophising, no more initiatives.  I don’t have any more energy left to expend on this problem, or proping up a long standing and tremendously meaningful steelhead fishing tradition and everything that has wrapped itself around it for the last 30 years. I’ve got to move on, as it just hurts too damn much.  

I’m just going to cross my fingers for the Michigan DNR and hope they can crack the shells of the zebra mussels and quagga mussels which have locked away the billions of pounds of baitfish protein.  But how could that possibly happen?  They have certainly got their hands full at a time when the State of Michigan will be putting almost zero money importance on this considering all the social objectives which are far more important to legislators. 

Time to look for another tradition.  Of course it will be fishing.  I just hope what happened to Lake Huron is not a wake-up call to all fisheries.