Well, the weather ended up being beautiful after a few rainy/cold weekends previously. Saturdays temps were in the low 60's and sunny! Couldnt ask for a nicer day. Anyways, I headed out from NY and Ed headed up from the Pittsburgh area and we met up just south of Meadville, PA around 10am. After I realized I was in the wrong meeting place, he found me and we got going. The first place we hit were some marsh areas, that had produced very well in the summer, but after about 45 minutes of dipnetting, we only snagged 2 small Mudminnows. Alot of the vegetation was dead, but we knew they had to have gone somewhere.



We then hit up a boat ramp just down the road, hoping to have some better luck. As we pulled up our first seine haul, we were pretty shocked at the enormous sized Mudminnows we were catching, we stayed there for about 45 minutes and found Grass Pickerel, Eastern Newts, Green Frogs, Mudminnows, Bluegill. So after we got Ed's seine untangled from one of the floating docks and got enough Mudminnows for both of us to have full schools we headed off





We tried a few creeks, but the water was too high to get in, (this happened quite a bit due to the rains in previous weeks). So with Ed in the lead, we pulled out the maps once again and went to a small creek that had produced some nice catches in the past. We jumped in almost chest high and worked our way up seining the limited vegetation along the shore. And doing a few drags along the creek bed. We found, Mottled sculpin, Fantail darter, Greenside darter, Jonny darter, tons of common shiners, Hogsucker.

Right from there, we checked out a few more areas, once again the water was too high. We did find a nice stream with good shoreline, vegetation, stumps, and roots that was shallow enough. We got in and dis some kick seining at first which produced some beautiful Male Rainbow darters, fantail darters,banded darters,common shiners. Then we worked the shoreline and found smallmouth bass, , green sunfish, brown bullhead.

Now it was getting a bit late so we wanted to shoot north and try to get a good hour of seining on lake Erie. We arrived and found a beautiful bay where if we had the time could have walked out a couple hundred meters in waist high water. We drove around checking out out different areas of the bay, but most had absolutely no vegetation. After about 20 minutes of driving around , Ed pulled down a dirt road and we knew this was the spot. It was a secluded corner of the bay that was surrounded with reeds, cat tails, and submerged vegetation. We pulled the seine out and got to work due to the fact we pnly had about 30 minutes of sunlight left. We worked the reeds, one of us holding the net , while the other trudged through the cattails, getting covered in white fluff. This area produced Banded Killifish, Hundreds of Bluegill, Rock bass, Largemouth Bass, Darters, common shiners , Round gobies which Ed was tossing on the shore ,and an 8 inch Northern Pike, he was a sight to see!





(Note:The LMB was not aquired from this trip, I got him from a local hatchery)

After sorting our days catches by flashlight on the edge of the lake, we went to Quaker steak and lube for some chicken wings and cold beers. All in all it was a great day and will definately be back again in the spring.

Edited by NYnativekeeper716, 08 November 2009 - 11:35 AM.

Nice trip! Sounds like you two had a blast.
If you guys got as much rain as we did in the past month, I can't imagine how high the water was during your endeavors.

Nice trip! Sounds like you two had a blast.
If you guys got as much rain as we did in the past month, I can't imagine how high the water was during your endeavors.

Yea, it hindered some of our attempts to get in some creeks, but it also gave us reason to explore and find some new ones