[thorne]

Interestingly enough I was going to start a thread on the same topic after my day on the water last Sunday. This is what I noticed....

So, I have been fishing Wab for a good 20ish years now...seen the befor and after the town power plant effects and the pre and post walleye repopulation. I loved being able to fish trophy pike...from my boat...less then an hour from my house....In March...lol. but the power plant did mess up the ego system. Some species benefited....some dissappeared. Then came the oil spill. Best thing to happen to the lake IMO. Catch and release just made the pike population go crazy. Catching 10-20lbers was not hard at all with over 20lbers being a decent chance as well....now those years were a lot of fun. Then the walleye were put back in....oh boy....the lake filled with juvinelle walleye....pike were all heads, spine and tail....they all looked like they were starving and wasting away, with not one over 6 lbs to be found. At least not by me....its was, for a few years, a total disgrace of what was a wonderful recreational fishing location. I pretty much wrote Wab off as a enviromental experiment totally ******ed up and ruined.

Last Sunday changed that. Me and my girlfriend spent the day from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM fishing all my old favourite places on the lake and what I found made me smile...I was going to keep a count...but somewhere it got lost lol...together we must of landed well over 100 fish. The majority were walleye, but to my surprise...and joy...about 40%ish were also Pike. Young very healthy pike. Sure nothing was over 5 lbs, but not one anorexic bastard among them. So we now have a lake....full of young very healthy fish. Kinda looked like someone hit the re-boot switch. I'm hopeful that there a still a few hogs lurking around in there, but it does look like if all keeps on as it was last Sunday, that in 5 years or so Wab will be a good diverse lake to catch both pike and walleye, with the occasional trophy to be had. So that made me smile a bit. This winter I'm going to look for a few whites and perch. Seen lots before the walleye went back...haven't really looked hard since.

Guess what I'm saying is because of last weekend I now have hope for the lake....its still good fishing...just a totally different body of water then it was 5 years ago....just my 2 cents..