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: Hi Robert,
: I checked out your site-pretty cool. There was an article titled "The
: Days of the Blue Pike in the Erie Times-News from Erie, Pa on the last
: page of last Sunday's Sports section".
: My father would take me to Erie, PA from Pittsburgh in the 50's and we
: fished the party boats that went out from the State Street public dock
: for Blue Pike. Boats like the Kathleen, Flying Duck, and the Nellie II
: are a few of the boats I remember going out on. We usually went out on
: the 7PM trip that came back around 11-11:30PM. We would go out a little
: past the point and the boat would drop anchor and we used Emerald
: shiners for bait. We would fill bushel baskets with blue pike. We
: fished every weekend my father would take us and we also spent a week
: or two in the summer on vacation in Erie also fishing. During those
: summers, there would be millions of large Mayflys (we called them
: Canadien Sailors or Canadian Soldiers) every where-especially at night.
: They would hatch on the water while we were fishing for/catching Blue
: Pike. When they disapeared, so did the Blue Pike. Although I live in
: Maryland, I have a summer place in Erie and spend a lot of time there
: each summer. At least every other weekend and a few weeks during the
: summer. I haven't seen a Canadien Sailor since I was a kid in the
: 50's. They would be everywhere, on everything.
: In the 70's when I lived in Pittsburgh, I worked as a Special/Deputy
: Waterways Patrolman for the Pennsylvania Fish Commission. I remember an
: artile in the Pennsylvania Angler sometime in the 70's with a theory
: that I always thought made sense. Euthrophication being the cause due
: to phospate pollution by laundy detergents. I believe the title of the
: article was Lake Erie, changing, but not dying or something like that.
: The article referred to the Blue Pike as a subspecies of the Walleye
: (like the Sauger) and they said the Blue Pike was actually a Blue
: Sauger.
: The article went on to mention the disapearance of May Fly that I
: talked about above. It seems the Blue Pike fry or first year class fed
: on the larval stage of the Mayfly that was in the deeper waters of the
: lake. When the Mayfly eggs didn't hatch due to lack of oxygen or due to
: silt, the year class had to forage in shallower water where they in
: turn were preyed upon by that years class of Smelt that were larger
: because they hatched earlier. Blue Pike Fry normally did not encounter
: Smelt. Smelt are very voracious. This artile made sense to me at the
: time and still does today. It is a more plausable explanation than
: overfishing/harvesting by the commercial or sports industry. This past
: weeks artile in the Erie paper mentions that the commercial fisherman
: used to net lots of small Blue Pike as part of their harvest and one
: year they just started catching large ones-no more small ones. I wish
: I had a copy of that Pennsylvania Angler article-it also had a picture
: of 4 or 5 Blue Pike on top of a cooler or table on the cover of the
: Magazine or inside.
: The Erie Times artile mentions a Joe Hansen of Hansens Bait store. I
: know Joe pretty well. He has a friend named Wally(who I also know) who
: used to work as a mate on the charter boats and he also worked on
: commercial fishing boats that went after Blue Pike. We have had a lot
: of conversations about Blue Pike. I don't know Wally's last name or
: how to get in touch with him, but Joe told me last week that Wally's
: health isn't too good.
: I just thought I would share some of my thoughts and memory's about
: Blue Pike. If I come across any pictures, I will forward them to you.
: If you can't find the article from the Erie Times-New, let me know and
: I wioll email you a copy of it that I downloaded fro their WEB page
: (the newspaper had a B & W picture of a mounted Blue Pike-really old
: mount). I am looking forward to more article on your WEB page and
: especially pictures.
Robert Rice
All Men are equal until the point of exertion
http://www.nativefish.org