Fishing South of the Border

[Grey Ghost]

Planning a trip to some of the rivers and creek on the US side of Lake Erie, probably the Cataragus Creek. Anybody had any experience fishing there or tips?




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Someday they'll name a lure after me

 

[FrankTheRabbit]

I've only seen videos on YouTube. There are quite a bunch. I've seen a few uploads of Walnut Creek.

From the looks of the videos, they seem to be drift floating with bagged roe. Spinner gear with 6lbs test. The steelies in the video avg'ed 5lbs - 8lbs and some would tip in at 12lbs.

I came across a neat formula for calculating the weight of a steelie;
Length x (girth)^2 / 800=weight of a steelhead.

Sorry I don't have first hand experience.

 

[float^drifter]

never been sates fishing but i wonna go so bad, i heard nothing but good news on pretty much every creek that flows into erie. they get huge runs of steelhead not like us here on ontario imao . But half of their fish are not wild so that plays huge role as well. On credit i get happy hoking into on steelhead and if i'm lucky i get 2 over there u can easly nail 20 fish in one day without even trying. Roe bags are most popular over there.

 

never been sates fishing but i wonna go so bad, i heard nothing but good news on pretty much every creek that flows into erie. they get huge runs of steelhead not like us here on ontario imao . But half of their fish are not wild so that plays huge role as well. On credit i get happy hoking into on steelhead and if i'm lucky i get 2 over there u can easly nail 20 fish in one day without even trying. Roe bags are most popular over there.

stocking

 

[float^drifter]

never been sates fishing but i wonna go so bad, i heard nothing but good news on pretty much every creek that flows into erie. they get huge runs of steelhead not like us here on ontario imao . But half of their fish are not wild so that plays huge role as well. On credit i get happy hoking into on steelhead and if i'm lucky i get 2 over there u can easly nail 20 fish in one day without even trying. Roe bags are most popular over there.

stocking

yeah i wish we had more stockin here 2 mybaee then stocked fish can get with the wild fish and make more fish babies for us.

 

never been sates fishing but i wonna go so bad, i heard nothing but good news on pretty much every creek that flows into erie. they get huge runs of steelhead not like us here on ontario imao . But half of their fish are not wild so that plays huge role as well. On credit i get happy hoking into on steelhead and if i'm lucky i get 2 over there u can easly nail 20 fish in one day without even trying. Roe bags are most popular over there.

stocking

yeah i wish we had more stockin here 2 mybaee then stocked fish can get with the wild fish and make more fish babies for us.

LOL have u seen how much fish they keep on Lake Michigan? They stock like crazy and keep like crazy I guess Ontario's way is to just keep it natural.

 

[float^drifter]

nahh ontario is cheap but bumped up our licanse fees promesing us so much and they havent done shit.

 

nahh ontario is cheap but bumped up our licanse fees promesing us so much and they havent done poop.

bumping the fees, not stocking and decreasing angling opportunities is not my idea fishing LOL

 

[Kestrel]

never been sates fishing but i wonna go so bad, i heard nothing but good news on pretty much every creek that flows into erie. they get huge runs of steelhead not like us here on ontario imao . But half of their fish are not wild so that plays huge role as well. On credit i get happy hoking into on steelhead and if i'm lucky i get 2 over there u can easly nail 20 fish in one day without even trying. Roe bags are most popular over there.

Hitting numbers on every Erie creek is a little of a stretch - At least for NY. PA has the Elk which gets a stocking of roughly 1 million rainbows (Inbred mutts I might add). The other streams beyond the Catt in NY are comparable to what you'd find in Ontario. Numbers wise, I wouldn't be surprised if the Credit receives more fish compared to some of the NY Erie tribs (Factor in the numbers of fish stocked in the Credit - which is comparable to what NY stocks their rivers with - And on the base, there's a growing number of wild steelhead returning to the Credit.

The Catt's wild population of steelhead is roughly 25% or so. On my trips down there, I've caught the standard naturalized salmon river strains (or the Chamber's creek strain that has naturalized to the salmon river), PA strays as well as Ohio's stray Manistee strains. For the most part, Erie tribs are spate rivers mostly dependent on rain and snow melt - with exception to a couple which have reservoirs at their highest reaches. We have the Oak ridges morraine here in Ontario to supply our rivers with cold water throughout the summer months...NY tribs lack similar groundwater.

When the conditions are prime, you can get 20 fish days there...But you can also get 20 fish days (of wild fish) here in Ontario as well if you know where to fish. When the fish are pressured or the conditions are poor, the stockers there behave just like any wild fish here...They aren't suicidal eating machines.

As for roe bags, they aren't very popular over there...At least from what I've seen...Most people fly fish or use jigs.