Never seen it this bad

[don novicki]

At Presque Isle State park. Hunted this morning and the conditions were pretty decent: snow, cold and a light NW wind but where once there were thousands of birds here at this time now there is virtually nothing. At first light a lot of birds would leave the bay and fly out to the lake, and then trickle back. But not this morning. I'll bet there were no more than 100 birds that left early for the lake and that was it. I had a great view of the whole bay and didn't see any other birds head out to the big water. You could always count on getting your BB's and buff heads but now, for the second year in a row its like the birds just don't come here any more. Could high lake levels affect the diver population or is it something else? IMO it can only be a few things: the migration hasn't started which I find almost impossible to believe, the migration has shifted and now misses us almost entirely, or, there are not as many birds as they say there are. Personally I think the population has collapsed, after the severe drought in Canada, and yes I know we don't get our ducks from the PPH region but some of the arboreal forest birds might have been affected too. Lastly I seem to remember hearing about a magic number of <38,000,000 being the number that closes duck season. I think we are there, and see major changes coming.

[SpinnerMan]

Zebra mussels have probably shifted things. Last year in Saginaw bay, the numbers of old squaw on the horizon was incredible. The mussels have created a massive forage everywhere for ducks that eat them.

I am just guessing, but I wonder if the warmer winters the last couple years have pushed the zebra mussel population north making it even worse on your end.

The deeper water may also have shifted the ideal feeding grounds. The one trip where we had tons of BB was not very deep.

A lot of them just don't move any further than they have to. Open water and unlimited food.

[don novicki]

Never thought about zebra mussels before you mentioned it. Those dam things are everywhere, however if its true I believe they did some studies on them and they found many had some very harmful toxins in large concentrations. They could sure be a contributing factor.

[SpinnerMan]

When we hunted the other end of Erie a few years ago on Maumee Bay. They had just pulled out the docks. The piles of dead mussels that dropped off the docks from one season in the lake was unbelievable. You could easily have shoveled them.

[don novicki]

Good weather front coming thru in the next couple of days. Tomorrow is high winds but 50, however they are calling for Lake Effect snow on Tues so maybe it might just be decent at P.I.. Going to give it a go and see if I can tag my 1 Bluebill, and maybe put the hurt on some mergies.....

[don novicki]

P.I. opener 10-30 going to be warm low 60's with a SSE wind. Less than ideal conditions. I don't put in for a blind anymore and usually hope that lots of people from far away win the lottery drawing since that typically means they are not there during the week to hunt. I'm going to drive down and see the circus anyways and will post up a report Mon. night........

[Ricky Spanish]

P.I. opener 10-30 going to be warm low 60's with a SSE wind. Less than ideal conditions. I don't put in for a blind anymore and usually hope that lots of people from far away win the lottery drawing since that typically means they are not there during the week to hunt. I'm going to drive down and see the circus anyways and will post up a report Mon. night........

Bad is good.
Let me explain. A drought season.
The first good dry spell we had just happened to coincide with the peak of " the duck commander " phenom.
Where I hunt sucks but suddenly people from all over were crowding my usually empty ramp I use.
Two boats with camera crews and fancy wraps on the trucks showed up for a few weeks.
It sucked pretty bad and now I've got the lake mostly to myself and a handful.of die hards. Hang in there Don.
The circus ends shortly.