45acp

I'm speaking in generalities and you're speaking of yourself. No surprise there. I'm also not surprised that you want to put words in my mouth. I said what I said and you read something totally different. It's apparent that you believe your bona fides give you the right to bully other posters on this and other forums. Try to have a conversation sometime instead of just throwing your weight around.

I get it. You two think you have more right to a public resource than the other guy does. I would suggest that paddlers do more damage to streams than jet boats simply due to numbers on the water. Add to that paddlers spend a great deal of time stomping around in the stream bed and leave mountains of trash in the wake of their drunkfests.

87,000 new IRS agents are about to be unleashed on the American public. You can bet your favorite spinnerbait that farmer's markets and fishing tournaments are on their list.

It's always refreshing to see posts from people who think they have more right to the water than the other guy.

I've heard guys talk about using flathead for crowd control in ponds, but I've never talked to one who actually did it. My pond is already a biology experiment. I don't want to make the situation worse by putting something in that is capable of eating my very expensive smallmouth bass and yellow perch. The bluegill are a nuisance, but so far they are proving to be a manageable nuisance. Being able to walk across my front yard to collect a fish fry or a weekend's worth of trotline bait isn't a terrible thing either.

I've heard that exact thing from many sources. Trouble is, I don't want any bluegill in my pond. They snuck in with a batch of redear fingerlings that I bought from NEMO in 2019 (long story). I remove every bluegill that I catch that's under 9". 7"-9" get butchered and eaten. Under 7" go in my bait pond to be used as flathead candy on the river. Over 9" they go back in to grow, and as you mentioned, hopefully keep most of the smaller males out of the beds. The reason for that... I stocked the pond with redear, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, and hybrid striped bass. Smallmouth bass don't have a large enough gape to adequately control bluegill numbers. The hybrids help out on the smaller BG, but they can't do much with the big ones. I soak traps 24/7 from March-November, and hook-n-line several times a week in hopes of keeping the numbers down. About once a month I'll take the Wehebe out at feeding time and throw that thing at them until they've all run to the other side of the pond. So far I've been successful at keeping the bluegills in check. It's likely they will overrun me eventually, though. When that happens I'll bucket stock some 12"+ largemouth and the cool water fishery experiment will come to an end.

My fish made it through the winter in good shape.

I'd call 18" walleye eaters for sure. KDPW considers them unders on Milford. Gotta be 21" to put em in the box.

Caught 18" walleye all week long. Found a few crappie but they were biting better early in the morning and I don't like to get out of bed early when I'm on vacation so didn't spend much time on them. Found a few smallmouth hanging out with the walleye. New trolling motor took a dump on day one. Lack of proper boat control turned fishing into work, so we spent most of our time fishing standing on shore. Think I caught a walleye off of every boat ramp on the lake. Anyway, better luck next time...

Good info, thank you. I'll leave the frozen asians at home, bring a cast net and hope I can find some shad.

I have a decent graph, a Navionics subscription, and plenty of jig heads to bounce around the rock piles. If I can find some bait when I get there I might want to do a bit of catfishing. Have the asian carp made it into Milford yet? I've got several gallons of that stuff in the freezer that I could bring.

Rented a cabin at Milford State Park for the 2nd week in May. Wife and I are going to visit the grandkids and do some fishing and boat riding. It looks like pretty much every other middling sized impoundment. Anything in particular I need to know, other than just get out there and try it?

Steeples are used to attach wire to a wooden fence post. If you don't have a tire pressure gauge in the glove box of your truck it's time to turn in your man card.

Relative weight charts are available for a wide range of freshwater species, but I've never seen one for goggle eye. https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/fisheries/fish-relative-weight-calculator/

Two of my kids are veterans. One still on active duty. God bless em all...