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I'm Brian Bashore, Professional walleye angler and owner of The Walleye Guys Guide service. I am here to reel you in with captivating stories, expert tips, and interviews with some of the biggest names in the fishing community. So, sit back, relax, and let the drag scream!
Brian Bashore (00:01.744)
Hey folks, thanks for tuning into another episode of Real Talk Fishing with No Limits brought to you by Segar High Performance Parade. Today we're talking to the man himself, the doctor, the professor, whatever you want to call him. We're gonna call him the kind of the walleye whisperer of all, Mr. Ali Sikora. Ali, how's it going over there? What's happening in your world?
Ali Shakoor (00:21.536)
It is going awfully good over here. first of all, thanks for inviting me onto the podcast, man. I'm extremely honored to be here looking forward to talking, all things fishing related, some biology, some fishing and, ready to get the ball rolling.
Brian Bashore (00:35.472)
Yeah, you bet. for those that don't know, I'll let Ollie introduce himself. Just give him a little background, kind of, you know, fishing history. What do you do? why do we call you the walleye whisperer? Why is this guy the go-to, you know, for all of us? What's your day job and a little bit of fishing background? mean wall with MWCs, MWTs, people? Go ahead.
Ali Shakoor (00:55.608)
Yeah. I don't know why people call me the fish in whisper on. well, I am Ali Shakur. I'm from the of Michigan, from Jackson, Michigan, originally in South central lower Michigan. So I grew up, chasing a large mouth bass, Northern pike, and especially panfish with my father. he was an avid avid outdoors, but I always have to bring him up because without his, his upbringing, his tool is, I would not be sitting here today. So
We spent many, many a day on the water and the field chasing bluegill. He was a bluegill fanatic. He would drive to the ends of the earth. He'd get in Fisher and magazine and say, Hey, they're getting giant gills. They tray Lake, Minnesota. Let's go. we'd be off. snow. That's kind of where I get my pet, passion from. and along with that, I got to get this in also, you know, he really, he really used fishing, as a kid, I thought it was about fishing, but it wasn't, you know, I learned everything that I needed to become.
Um, a good man, a husband, a father, citizen, um, in the outdoors with my father. So I must give him, um, thanks and say how grateful I am to have had a father such as him. Um, he's been going a while now, so I gotta get, I gotta, I gotta bring him up to keep him, keep his name out there. Best fisherman. No one knows. Um, besides that, uh, a married husband, a father of two. I have two beautiful daughters that are 20 and 16. One's a
College athlete, she runs track. She's at University of Dayton, all Atlantic 10 last year, Dean's List. My youngest is also doing extremely well, honors society, very high GPA, also an outstanding athlete. So, you know, we hold them to a high standard as I was held to a high standard before we even get into the outdoor stuff. So that's me. That's, yeah, that's what I'm about, first and foremost. So, yeah.
Brian Bashore (02:40.88)
Well that apple didn't fall far from the tree there.
Brian Bashore (02:46.224)
That's right. That's good. I got a couple of those smart kids too and they're my step kids so my apple fell quite a ways from that tree but it didn't fall far from their mom's tree because she's a smart one as well with all the degrees. But an athlete, I know you and I are both a couple of gym rats and know especially this time of year but that's paid off. The daughter's a track star.
Ali Shakoor (02:52.654)
You
Ali Shakoor (03:07.662)
It has, we put a lot of time in with them. We're blessed to have been blessed with two wonderful children. We put our time in, of course, but it says something about their makeup and their frame of mind also. So that is where my base, my root and where I'm coming from and everything I do branches off those things.
Brian Bashore (03:30.09)
It's good foundation and mean, clearly you made it, your father laid it out for you perfect.
Ali Shakoor (03:35.982)
Yeah, I would like to think so. He definitely had some foresight and some vision. He didn't make it very far in school. He worked hard for his family, but he really stretched education. If I walked in the door with a C or something, oh boy, he was held up by the captain. So I learned early on that anything short of excellence or at least giving 110 % of your best effort.
Brian Bashore (03:51.62)
Hahaha
Ali Shakoor (04:02.278)
everything else was uncivilized and it would not be accepted. So again, that, kind of, you know, has opened up some avenues, some opportunities for me just being able to, to put that effort in where maybe I may not quite get it, but I'll work my ass off to get, to get there.
Brian Bashore (04:17.814)
Those are, you know, school of hard knocks and lessons learned and what have you, but that's something our society is definitely missing nowadays. We don't have enough the father figures like you had, you know, growing up or even just, you know, fathers like yourself and maybe the military guy to discipline and the expectations for those, you know, our children moving up and understanding that there's consequences with those actions when you fail to meet the standards. So.
Ali Shakoor (04:39.938)
yes. There are definitely consequences and consequences for not listening. you know, not, just the standard, but to listen. you know, one, one of the last things my dad said to me before we left this earth was, Hey, you know, you were a good son. Even when I was married, I had kids, you know, when I started talking, even, even if you knew where you thought you knew, you shut your mouth and you listened. you know, and, and history taught me that.
Brian Bashore (04:46.157)
Mm-hmm.
Ali Shakoor (05:09.406)
Even if I did not, and we can get into this with Fischen also, but even if I didn't understand what he was saying at the time, there comes a time where that light bulb goes off. And even though he's been gone for 12 years now, I see things with my family or I see things in the public and I think back, shoot, that's what Papa was talking about, even now. So again, I try to press that into the girls that, hey, you need to listen. And they have absorbed all that I have to offer them, awfully, awfully pleased with them.
Brian Bashore (05:38.8)
I think it's cool when you see your kids growing up and you tell them all these things, right? And you're like, and they're just looking at you like, what the hell is he talking about? You know, but then that light bulb goes off maybe four or five years later down the road and you know, you see them do something. You're like, I mean, I see my steps. I do it. I'm like, he was listening, you know, or now all of sudden now he's preaching the same thing you were preaching to him to his little sister or whatever the case may be. You're like, gets it. It just was a little bit ahead of his time. But if you're not listening, you won't get it.
Ali Shakoor (05:45.315)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (05:49.358)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (05:54.958)
You
Ali Shakoor (06:06.19)
It's a great feeling. It's a great feeling. And you know, then from there, as far as what I'm doing right now, so I am an aquatic ecologist. So I have a bachelor's degree in biology and a minor in chemistry. Have a master's degree from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources where I did some work on Northern Lake Huron with Lake Whitefish. I'm finishing up a doctorate at Wayne State. I will be defending my dissertation this coming spring slash summer.
So with that I'm studying impacts of harmful harmful algal blooms on multi Levels of the food web. So I have a chapter on walleye, which we can talk about taking a look at the impacts of Microsystis, which is the main mat forming cyanobacteria on Lake Erie impacts on walleye egg hatch and survival Lipid content by lipid content. That's just a fat content using it as a proxy for body condition growth growth rates
Another chapter dealing with green frog tadpoles and microplastics to get another level of food web and then finally the one that I'm working on right now is really exciting. So I'm using hydroacoustics multi-beam multi-frequency hydroacoustics. So we went out and we flew this airplane type structure with four transducers 70 110 200 and 400 kilohertz and we mapped We ran a trans-sector like eerie, so I'm using it to map
subsurface concentrations of cyanobacteria or harmful algal blooms and fish communities inside and outside of that bloom with some other water quality parameters. So seeing how fish are utilizing that bloom, whether they're remaining inside of it or flinging the edges, taking a look at prey fish, and then taking a look at some things like toxicity, how it may impact their health. So that's a really cool chapter on processing data.
right now for that. That's part of NOAA, federal government. So that's where that data's coming from, I went out with those guys. So I'm doing some other work for Lake Michigan, also utilizing some hydroacoustics to measure fish communities in Lake Michigan also.
Brian Bashore (08:08.61)
interesting stuff. Wayne, Wayne State, which Wayne State is that? Out of Nebraska online or is it?
Ali Shakoor (08:13.262)
Nebraska great football team at least in the past I've seen it had a pretty decent football team the Wayne State in Detroit. So
Brian Bashore (08:19.568)
Okay, I had to ask. like, I only know wait I played I didn't play there I coached football high school football camps of a Wayne State with some of them Yeah, that's a hell of a school, but we got a Wayne State in Detroit. Okay. I'm sure there's probably a dozen Wayne States out there
Ali Shakoor (08:26.466)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (08:33.378)
I think those may be the only two. I've only seen those two, yep. So I'm in Detroit, Michigan, right on the shore of the Detroit River, not too far from Lake St. Clair, not too far from Lake Erie. So we're centrally located and doing some good work over there.
Brian Bashore (08:35.098)
Is it?
Brian Bashore (08:47.076)
Yeah, that's I did the whole natural resource of fisheries, wildlife, biology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. And yeah, you got to be a nerd to be into that stuff, man. got it. most everybody I know that was in those were they're all fishermen and hunters. You know, they all wanted to learn a little bit more. We got we got geeked out over really algae blooms and stupid little things that everybody else is like, this is gross. But because you're in it going, OK, how does this relate to my fishing?
Ali Shakoor (09:01.784)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (09:13.998)
No doubt
Brian Bashore (09:15.088)
Right. And everybody and it was hunting was the same. mean, we're doing habitat, all this type of stuff and everybody in those classes all the time. I mean, probably 80, 90 % of them were just like they were outdoors, you know, people period.
Ali Shakoor (09:25.506)
Yeah, yeah, it's a labor of love. know, when I first got into it, there were some people in it. It was more an academic pursuit and there's still some. I really like to see people like you and I who really, really have an interest in the outdoors, get involved and are able to advocate for certain types of research and do certain things. But again, it's not, it's not a field where you go on to become a billionaire, it's, it's a quality of life thing. just, just
Brian Bashore (09:49.361)
No, not at all. That's why I left it.
Ali Shakoor (09:55.219)
know, satisfaction and work at working in the outdoors.
Brian Bashore (09:58.32)
Yeah, it is. It is totally. And I don't think people understand it. We just did a podcast and conservation type thing. And I did that in particular to try to educate. And that was really kind of bare knuckles, low level on how, where the funding comes from. Cause so many people just don't understand the Pibbin Robertson, the Dingle Johnson, you know, and government and state and matching and how that stuff works. think you get a lot of that on the science side and US Fish and Wildlife and your local agencies know it all and how.
much effort there is between the locals and federals and you know and what have you and just how much stuff is being done that most people don't know that's it's even happened.
Ali Shakoor (10:36.952)
Yeah, there's a ton. even, you know, there's the herb family foundation here in Detroit. So you can have these smaller foundations. I mean, they bought me some acoustic limiter equipment to implant in the fish and track fish tags and receivers. So you do. So there's a lot of interaction between a different government and non-governmental agencies. So, you know, sometimes we have to scrape this money up to really do this work. And there is a ton.
a ton that goes into it to try to get some of this stuff done.
Brian Bashore (11:08.11)
Yeah, time probably being the biggest thing. And in science, it's not overnight. It's usually a three-year minimum study, you know, type, type, you know, a system. just did one of those, had it funded for the University of Nebraska. We did transmitters and receivers in Walleye and track the movement. Hopefully get him on here soon to kind of explain how that all went down, but it just blew people's mind. And we caught a lot of those and worked with him.
Ali Shakoor (11:11.156)
It's the biggest. I don't have enough time in a day.
Ali Shakoor (11:28.014)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Bashore (11:36.41)
you know, particularly because my guys are on that body of water every day that he was doing it. And so he'd be like, I need to get some fish tag that I don't know where they're at. I'm like, well, you got to go here. And he was like, awesome. Thanks. You know, now I know where they spawn. This is where we're going to collect them, put them in. And then we caught some. And one of my guys took them out and watched him cut it open, stick it in there, stitch them back up. And then every time we caught those fish, you know, I would save the transmitter and, you know, send him the number and he'd give you the whole here's, here's where it went. Here's everything this fish does, you know, has done.
since it's been tagged and it was pretty.
Ali Shakoor (12:07.182)
Yeah, that's pretty cool. I've done those surgeries and implanted the transmitters and everything. It's pretty cool. I think I may have posted some of that stuff in the past. I'm gonna start posting some more again. Some of the videos of the surgeries, how the transmitters and receivers work, and some of the, you know, actually processing some more of that stuff right now as far as making the movement maps for the last chapter of my dissertation. So it's pretty cool to see.
Brian Bashore (12:29.05)
How many walleye you got growing in your house right now?
Ali Shakoor (12:31.961)
Uh, not none right now, but come springtime. Yeah, I'll have some are going I usually I get a debate and I can start raising walleye and it's it's really cool again I have a bunch of walleye a walleye and perch videos that I hatch them from eggs And grow them and I had some juvenile videos to watch how they feed and do some really cool stuff You see some some mind-blowing things that these walleye do. It's pretty it's pretty uh, it's pretty cool to see
Brian Bashore (12:37.22)
Ha
Brian Bashore (12:56.048)
You're learning live scope from a different perspective, you know, from early onset.
Ali Shakoor (13:00.366)
It is and some of the stuff that you see on live scope, you you see the movement and everything. It directly mimics what I've seen in the tanks. But I've actually been able to watch the fish live. So that's another kind of dimension of what I'm seeing on the live scope, is, is, it was, it was cool to see the two things, the live scope and the actual movements of the fish sink up in the lab. Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Brian Bashore (13:25.136)
Yeah, that is, and that's gonna give any angler out there an upper hand understanding the, you know, the whole process and movement.
Ali Shakoor (13:31.438)
It does and I think livescope is really really, you know cutting down the learning curve Really opening some eyes as far as behavior and you know, you hear a lot of people saying hey I had no idea they did that You know for for a lot of different species and especially walleye, you know, we're walleye anglers primarily So yeah, we can get we can talk about some live scope here and some of the issues coming up
Brian Bashore (13:38.892)
Brian Bashore (13:54.5)
You know, bass guys are like, didn't know there was bass there. Right now they're out fishing in middle of the pond and throwing minnows and suspended fish in all spring going, I thought you only had to fish the bank. And it's, you know, these fish haven't been pressured, right? There's, it's a whole nother world down there.
Ali Shakoor (14:06.04)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (14:10.67)
It's funny, you know, I go out fishing, I have my spinning gear and they'd ask me, you know, you going crappie fishing? What are you doing with those fairy wands? And now every bass boat is, you know, spinning gear and jig and plastic. And they're basically pitching jigs like we do for suspended bass for the most part. And it's refreshing to be able to throw that in some of my friends' faces as they go out to fish in a way. Exactly.
Brian Bashore (14:25.359)
Yep.
Brian Bashore (14:36.232)
Right. Like I've been doing this all along, man. Yeah. Well, you know, they may be ahead in the tournament and payout world and the funds and all that, but we might be ahead in in the middle fishing because we've been doing it a long time. Way ahead. And so you talk about Lake Erie and the algae blooms. mean, Lake Erie, a lot of people don't know the history of it and what it was before the mass, you know, walleye capital basically.
Ali Shakoor (14:48.684)
Happy self. Happy your way ahead.
Brian Bashore (15:04.88)
you know, before it turned into what it is. And I had that talk with a lot of people on the boat as a guide, you know, and I, we talked about zebra mussels a lot, you know, and I've spoken at a deal and at once it was a outdoor game, wild game feed for a church's men's group and the state park manager and the local game board. And when we come talk, the CO asked me what my thoughts on zebra mussels were. And I was like, they're awesome. You know.
For perspective, I was like, they're great. And he was just shook and said, he's like, I knew you were gonna say that. I'm like, well, if you didn't want the answer, you don't ask the question. So, you know, but I'm like, what was Lake Erie prior to zebra mussel? What was Green Bay? I said, can this fishery and it's changed things. We've talked about zebra mussel a little bit, but I'm just bringing that back into Lake Erie and the algae, which obviously still has, but I mean, years ago, that place was, it looked like you could walk across it.
Ali Shakoor (15:55.544)
Yeah, you could, you know, just going back a little bit, you know, at one point there was a Time magazine headline they called Lake area dead lake. the pollution was so bad, you know, the, the Rouge river caught on fire. the, the water burned, the same thing happened in Cleveland. one of the rivers caught on fire because of all the chemicals, and pollutants that floated on the surface, really murky, really dirty water.
The Clean Water Act of 1972, originally, I think it was, of slapped some from regulations on some of the companies and everything. At some point backing up, recreational fishery in the state of Michigan was actually closed. No, in Canada it was closed. State of Michigan never closed it. Canada closed the lake to recreational fishermen because it was so polluted. But again, Clean Water Act kind of cleaned it up a little bit.
And then kind of moving forward to clean up over the years. We had the introduction of zebra mussels, which were discovered in Lake St. Clair originally They like They did clean it up. Fun fact there aren't any zebra mussels left in Lake Erie around these lakes. They've been replaced by coaga mussels Which is a close cousin will call them they grow a little bit larger they're able to
Brian Bashore (16:57.904)
That place is clean.
Ali Shakoor (17:16.654)
Persist in different substrates. So zebra mussel with their abyssal threads, they need hard substrate like rock. Coaga mussels are able to persist in mud. So they live deeper. They don't need that rocky substrate. So zebra mussels were really shallow. They were the shallow rocky. So they created what was referred to as a near shore shunt. So they were in a near shore rocky area. They filter so much. know, a zebra mussel or dry scented will filter about a liter of water a day.
They were saying that there's so many zebra mussel or dry senates in Lake Erie that the entire Western Basin is filtered about once every seven days or so. So they're really cleaning it up. But they were sequestering that energy near shore. So that was really impacting offshore food was but it was cleaning the water up. So now you have weed growth growing out 20 feet before you couldn't see five or six feet. Now you have weeds 20, 25 feet deep. Clarity has really improved.
And it's really impacted the fisheries. It made some some fisheries more vulnerable, but the fisheries have have rebounded You know on top of that you throw in round gobies, which came in a few years later Dave Jude who discovered the first round go be in Detroit River. I played basketball with Dave Jude I was there when he brought the first round go be he brought it to the basketball court in a jar Exactly some kind of go be it shouldn't be here He took over to the museum and Jerry Smith who was one of my instructors University of Michigan God rest his soul
Brian Bashore (18:35.076)
He's like, what is this thing, man?
Ali Shakoor (18:42.986)
identified it and you know the rest is history. But again, those two organisms coming in have really changed the fishery and I hate to use the term because it's been overused recently, the new normal, know, Lake Erie, we can't go back to what it was but it has, I hate to say that an invasive species has improved the lake but they have, I hate to say it but I'm gonna say it because it's a reality.
Brian Bashore (19:05.72)
I'll say it, it has. It has a lot of places.
Ali Shakoor (19:12.526)
They have improved the fishery. They've changed the fishery, but they have improved smallmouth bass fishery, the wildlife fishery, and some others. They've made a huge difference in the Great Lakes and other bodies of water now too across the country.
Brian Bashore (19:25.072)
Yeah, it's, uh, you know, there's, there's, spreading like crazy. And I know Minnesota and South Dakota kind of has a emergency response team and I've talked to them enough years and I think they've kind of been like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna, Minnesota's dump a millions of dollars chasing this stuff around. And I'm like, you can't stop it. You know, you just said that they're not, they're not now they're a quagga mussels in areas that are zebra mussels. It's like, you just gotta let mother nature do it. It's just gonna do, can't, you're not gonna stop these things, right? They can be transported by not just boats and whatever, but by every other.
fly an individual or driving a thing that's out there. I'm like, it's going to work. Nature has a way of doing things and he's bouncing these ecosystems out.
Ali Shakoor (19:57.388)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (20:04.216)
Yeah, you just said, you said one of my favorite phrases I've ever heard uttered, it actually comes from Jurassic Park, when the dinosaurs are reproducing and they weren't supposed to, and he says, nature finds a way. It's one of my favorite, favorite phrases. Yeah, once these things get in, nature will always find a new equilibrium. You may not like what that equilibrium is, but it is what it is at that point. So yeah, nature does find a way.
Brian Bashore (20:27.632)
Yep.
Ali Shakoor (20:32.102)
and, like, they're, they're going to spread. mean, I've seen studies where they've made it through hell. I've seen studies where fish eggs have made it through the digestive tract of, of waterfowl and, and, have been spread that way. So they're, they're going to spread it's, it's, inevitable. I hate to say it like that again, because it sounds like, just let it go. But. You know, it is what it Yeah. She slowed down even the treatments, you know, there, there's some things they can treat them with to keep them off, you know, water intakes to the light, but even that.
Brian Bashore (20:51.44)
You can slow it down maybe.
Ali Shakoor (21:01.258)
After a while, just about become futile. They're really tough once they get in. So you gotta, sometimes you get in, you make some efforts, but sometimes you just kind of hang on for the ride and do the best you can.
Brian Bashore (21:14.064)
Yep, exactly. Yeah, I know. I mean, they're checking to pull them boats out. You know, it's like, just, the boat hasn't been sitting there. I just put it in a day. I've been driving around full throttle. mean, nothing got in the boat. Now, let's say you can catch a stick and bring it in and one fell off and there's, you know, there's waves. I'm like, didn't, nothing got in. I mean, cause I don't know how many of, they pulled boats out and went, oh, there's one. I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen unless it's been sitting at the boat slip for several weeks.
Ali Shakoor (21:31.234)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (21:38.988)
Yeah. You got bait bucket transfers and you know, there's a, there's a lot of different vectors and you can't catch them all, but you can do your due diligence and try.
Brian Bashore (21:41.305)
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Bashore (21:48.004)
Yeah, that's all you can do. Educate and help people drain, dry, pull the plug, you know, and that we can only do so much. Nature's got to find a way and it's going to do its thing. So as we've seen all over the country and, know, nature's going to its thing, it's going to change things. You're talking about the algae blooms and you're tracking, kind of watching some of those fish dipping down. they, you find them moving with those blooms? Like underneath, they like the low light.
Ali Shakoor (22:13.58)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so back to that and just to kind of give an interplay and what we find in ecology is that, you know, everything's interrelated. We can talk about tricinids and zebra mussels and round goby, but you have to talk about zebra mussels in the bloom itself. So these blooms have always happened in Lake Erie and the big lakes, Titicaca, Taihu in China, small inland lakes, small farm ponds. It's always happened. But what happens, what has happened in Lake Erie is that
Zebra mussel, coaga mussels are filter feeders like I mentioned earlier, but they are selective. So what they do is they'll filter the water, they eat algae. There's video, you can see this on YouTube. I can send you a link. You can post it if you'd like to kind of get it in here, but they will filter and they will eat green algae, but then they will release cyanobacteria. And so what happens is the population becomes skewed.
You start to see where cyanobacteria are out competing green algae That's causing a big issue with the bloom and there's some other chemical stuff that I won't go into here just go that goes on with some of the legacy chemicals and Anoxia low oxygen kind of makes a way for some Berkery to become methylated and some other chemicals to become active again to kind of feed into some other
advisories and some of the bloom issues also. So there's this complex interaction with these invasive species also that has kind of exacerbated the bloom. So those blooms have become the past few years pretty large. In 2014, about three quarters of a million people in southeastern lower Michigan, northwestern Ohio lost their water. They get their water supply from Lake Erie at the water intake down around Toledo Little Cedar Point. We had a hard northeast blow and it stacked at
algae up down to the bottom and it started being sucked up into the intake.
Brian Bashore (24:07.128)
Yeah, I remember that year we, was with National Wildlife Federation as a board member and did a little boat tour out there and the new CEO went out and dipped down a glass, you know, just drinking glass water and was like, yeah, it was solid. You know, I'm like, yeah, it's not good.
Ali Shakoor (24:16.066)
Yeah. That's the famous picture. I use that. Yeah. Yeah. So those blooms have caused some issues. We haven't had a bloom quite to that level of severity in a while. And a lot of people ask what kind of kicks those blooms off. They're pretty much predicated on springtime rainfall. The Maumee River, which actually has the largest walleye migration of any river east of the Mississippi.
grew up fishing that river with my dad. Um, goes to a lot of agricultural land. And so when we get a lot of springtime rainfall, that, that bloom will start down there. Sometimes you get the river is really flashy, the flood, you know, sink back, it'll, it'll go back down, but you'll have these little pools that are left over there on the shoreline and the sun hits them and heats them up really hot. And then the algae will start to grow. And then the next flood is washed in. Um, Noah has detected
sign of bacteria at their real-time detectors in Western basin Lake Erie is early as March, which is extremely early. It is early. So they detected it as early as March, which kind of feeds into my first chapter about walleye interacting with bloom. So yeah, so it's cause some issue. Fish are, you know.
Brian Bashore (25:20.208)
laser.
Ali Shakoor (25:37.358)
The toxins from cyanobacteria is the issue. They can be hepatotoxic, neurotoxic, endotoxic. They can have some bad impacts. Human health, they haven't really addressed it or they haven't really talked about it here too much. I know there was a nursing home in Brazil. The people were immunocompromised, they had cyanobacteria get into their water supply and about 55 people died after exposure.
And Grand Lake St. Mary, which is out of the Great Lakes watershed, but it's just south in Ohio. There were some families who lost pets. They have real bad blooms down there and the pets went swimming in the algae and ended up dying. So there can be some serious health implications for higher level vertebrates.
Brian Bashore (26:21.272)
We get it in the lakes just around here in the summer when it's real hot and stagnant. mean, the GFP puts out a report, you know, no swimming, don't let your pets out. Just stay out of that. They're real small lakes usually, you know, and then it's two weeks go by or rain or something happens and they're like, all right, the beach is open again.
Ali Shakoor (26:25.783)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (26:29.773)
Mm-hmm.
Ali Shakoor (26:40.878)
Yeah, yeah, folks need to heat those warnings when they do put those out. But they do have impacts on fish as well. There can be behavioral changes. So if you have a fish that are demersal, which means they live on the bottom, there's been instances where they've noted where those fish are no longer, they're starting to suspend in the water column now. Or you have fish that are primarily nocturnal will start to become active in the daytime, which makes them susceptible to predation to being eaten.
Brian Bashore (27:06.04)
just because of low light conditions I imagine right throughout the whole
Ali Shakoor (27:08.023)
That's part of it. Yeah, but it actually changes their behavior, you know, at a deeper level than that. There can be issues with reproduction. It can negatively impact reproduction, but then those decreases in reproductive success will compound or are able to compound over the years. And in a long lived species such as walleye, you know, which live about 20 years or so that could be.
an issue if it ever were to get going good. So there are some impacts that it can have on fish. Some unpublished data from Ohio DNR showing that larger walleye were actually using it as cover. Educated guess would be that minnows, fish, prey fish are using that dark edge as cover. And then the predators, the larger fish are kind of following along on those edges, excuse me, to be able to pick those fish off.
So there are some, interactions that are starting to, you know, be shown between fish and the bloom. And so with my stuff with the hydroacoustics, I'm looking to kind of get a better look at that. because we actually drove a boat. started in clean the transects is about 10 miles long. So we have five miles outside of the bloom, five miles inside the bloom, daytime and nighttime crews is paying the entire time. So I'll be able to tell if there's a difference between night and day inside the bloom and outside the bloom. And and I'll link it to some bait fish things and everything to try to make some.
Make some connections. So, but there are some possible connections there that are going to come out of this data.
Brian Bashore (28:37.966)
Man, it's interesting and deep stuff. can refer to the migration. You've done seminar, I've seen it, you know, at the MPA conference gave one a few years back. And you seem to know the migration for Lake Erie better than pretty much anybody. don't like it's two today because they've heard it in there. Like, I want to hear about this. I want to know what, what, how's this working? Also get it East, West, West, East Detroit river. just kind of give a big picture of rundown on a little bit of the movement.
Ali Shakoor (28:47.47)
Mm-hmm.
Ali Shakoor (29:06.7)
Yeah. First of all, whenever I talk about this kind of stuff, I say Lake Erie, but you have to remember that, that this happens everywhere. Happens to Sakakawea, happens in Hawaii, happens in a farm pond in Iowa. The only thing that made differences, that made changes scale and magnitude. You know, you know, we talk about fishing humps in Green Bay, comes up 20 feet out of 60 feet in a farm pond in Iowa, maybe a foot out of eight feet, you know, so it's all you, when you think about these things, just think.
Brian Bashore (29:14.755)
Right.
Ali Shakoor (29:36.076)
the difference is just scale and magnitude. It still happens the same way. So, you know, primarily there's a lot that goes on here. Yeah. Yeah. There's some broad generalization. So, so.
Brian Bashore (29:44.667)
We can summarize it. I know it's hard to do without all the slides and stuff.
Ali Shakoor (29:54.734)
We have various stocks of fish in the Great Lakes. So you have spawning population, the Detroit river, you have the reef complex, you have Sandusky river, you have Maumee river, you have one that a lot of people don't know about, which is a Henshick complex, the islands there and Canadian water. It's actually the third largest, genetically speaking, spawning population in the system. But then you also have fish that'll come down out of Lake St. Clair.
Saginaw Bay, you'll have fish to go from Lake Erie to Saginaw Bay and Lake St. Clair. there's this constant, call it a mishmash of populations that are constantly mixing to go different places. You have fish that are reef spawners, you have fish that are river spawners. So you have a thing called spawning site fidelity where they'll go back to salmon habit, you know, they go back to their natal streams. Kind of the same thing with walleye. they're...
Reef spawners will go back to the same reefs, generally speaking. River spawners will go back to the rivers, but sometimes in certain years, the river spawners will pull up short and spawn in the lake. So there's a lot that goes on here, but basically the fish will start west. They're gonna start in the Detroit River, they're gonna spawn. And some of those fish will spawn a lot earlier than what people think. And a lot of times, not all the time, but a lot of times those are gonna be a larger fish. It's the reason that a lot of guys will...
east really early when there's a tournament early and get into some big fish. Those fish have dropped. They're heading back east and are eating it along the way. They're really getting their weight back up until they're about the size of being pre-spawned fish again. They're actively feeding. A lot of their energy isn't going to spawn. And so those fish are good fish to try to target. When I was in Northern Wisconsin doing some work with muskie under the ice up there early on, I'd be out spotlighting muskie at night and I would see walleye spawning under the ice up there on some of those lakes.
Brian Bashore (31:48.56)
said that for years. don't care if the ice is off or not and they probably like when they're spawn they're gonna spawn.
Ali Shakoor (31:53.624)
They're spawning. Trust me, I've seen it. I've seen it with all my eyes.
Brian Bashore (31:55.834)
Photosynthesis, I always say in seminars, I'm like, these women don't go into heat because there's a full moon. Right? You can ovulate, it's just the way it is. While they are waiting for 44 degrees and a full moon and all these things, they gotta spawn when they gotta spawn.
Ali Shakoor (32:07.501)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (32:12.473)
Yeah And remind me about the seminar because you said we can go anywhere with this. So let's let's talk about you know We said you said 4040 and that's another thing people say up. It's they're gonna spawn at 44 and it's actually It's not it's the pace of the warming that does it You know, it's not 42. Yeah peak may happen at 46 But another year peak may happen at 44 peak may happen at 42, but it's the pace you have a rapid increase We had a rapid increase one year in March. It was early March and I'm catching
Brian Bashore (32:20.559)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (32:40.726)
males that are melting on the reefs in second week of March, first week of March. So it's the pace of the warm and it kind of kicks off that activity. Everything is hormonal. And a lot of they get those cues from length of day as far as the development of gonads, milk and eggs and females in the fall, you know, as the days grow shorter, that kicks off something. But then after that happens, there's another hormonal surge, which is kind of dictated by some other things, including water temperature that kind of kicks them into spawning.
So yes, they will spawn under the ice. They do spawn under the ice. I've seen it. I've seen it in multiple lakes. I've seen it in several different places in different states. So you're damn right. They will spawn under the ice and they do spawn under the ice. But back to the migration. So they're to start west and spawn. And as that water temperature starts to warm. So generally speaking, you can think of adult walleye almost like a salmon. They're looking for that cool water.
Um, if you think about it, when you're fishing Lake Erie in the springtime, um, pre-spawn, you're looking for what you're looking for dirty water, right? That dirty water is a couple of degrees warmer. If you find a big patch of cooler water next to that dirty water and start fishing, guarantee you, you're going to catch fish that are still long, 28, 29, 30 inches, but they're going to be long and skinny because they dropped. So they need that warm water, metabolically to help those egg develop, you know, get the metabolism ramping.
After they spawn, prefer temperature of an adult walleye that size, generally speaking, is about 20 degrees. So about 60 to 60 degrees or so, somewhere in that range. So after they spawn, they immediately start looking for that cooler water, right? So two ways you can think about migrations. Walleye can make two types of migrations, horizontal and vertical. Vertical involves distance, horizontal is depth. So in the lake or a river system, your coolest water is always where? On the bottom.
Brian Bashore (34:38.053)
deep.
Ali Shakoor (34:38.806)
It's deep. So those fish will spawn. You can catch them up high. Think about it. Your area or your, your somewhere, one of your big legs, your fishing super high. Exactly. You don't get Markham sometime they drop. They want to get the cooler water instead of going horizontal and having to make a, you know, they really have to make a big run. They can simply just drop down to the bottom, lay in the mud, recuperate. The water's a little bit cooler. It may not be preferred, but it's cooler than that surface temperature. So a lot of people will go.
Brian Bashore (34:43.545)
Yeah. 20 feet back, right?
Yep.
Ali Shakoor (35:08.376)
They'll make these runs, they'll, they'll leave an area up. The fish are gone. They spawn. They've taken off when they simply could have just dropped down to the bottom. And I have crank baits where you can barely see through the bill anymore. Cause I'm literally just grinding bottom and grinding and grinding.
Brian Bashore (35:21.841)
Yep, I always drop that three or four ounce bouncer off the back corner of boat, stick that one on the bottom.
Ali Shakoor (35:26.565)
Exactly, and this is where I understand in biology and in the migration can really help. So those fish don't necessarily have to leave first. First they will drop. And wherever together I'll show you, I have tag data to show this, as they drop in the water column by calendar also, by calendar month. So this is kind of verified in the telemetry.
Brian Bashore (35:46.512)
So you think, the perception is so, I've heard it for years and I always agree with it and you probably know best, is that people are like, well, once they spawn, they're done. They go inactive, you know, a two week window after the spawn, the fish don't eat. And I'm like, that's, I think that's the biggest crap I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure they're hungrier than they've ever been, you know.
Ali Shakoor (36:05.71)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Up until that point, you know, they, they've directed all energy into gamete development, eggs and milk, you know, somatic growth, which is normal body tissue, a ceased everything, all the energy is going into reproducing. And after they've spawned, they got, got to get that weight back on there. They're not going to make it. They're not going to make it after, after the ridges are spawned. So they're hungry, but let's say they were inactive. They're predators again, keying back into some fishing.
If you come across a bear or a wolf or a predator in the woods, what's the first thing they tell you? Don't run.
Brian Bashore (36:40.464)
Don't run, or least run faster than that guy, right?
Ali Shakoor (36:44.11)
Yeah, or have a shape friend who you're faster with But no one that tells you right there what what keys are predators instincts? He You drop those bait down to the bottom you grind you get a lot of deflection and you crank it up You know a lot of people have this this this idea that at the springtime you have to be One one or one two or one three on a GPS. I've had where I'm two five two six two seven I've been three miles an hour, you know, it's a reaction bite when that bait goes by him really fast
Brian Bashore (36:58.917)
Yep.
Brian Bashore (37:05.508)
Hmm.
Ali Shakoor (37:12.844)
whether they're hungry or not, they're gonna snap at it. They may not chase, but they're gonna snap. Now we're talking about doing some other things. I'll switch out the back hook, upsize it a little bit. Cause a lot of times you'll see it in the spring when you start catching old fish, they'll come in with one hook because the bait went by really fast. They're not super active, but they just took a snap at it because of that instinct, right? So just tying it back into the fishing and some of the things that you can do and understanding the mood that they're in.
Brian Bashore (37:39.792)
found that out my first time at Lake Erie, was an NMT tournament, 2015 or something like that. It was beautiful out there. The whole week was nice. There was one windy day of practice. I'm like, this place is awesome. It's flat calm. It's April. I'm in a t-shirt and shorts. It's phenomenal, but I'm used to trolling two to three mile an hour on a river. I get the Trollmaster in and it's one, two, you got to go slow, got to go slow. And we got fish. That was kind of a pretty good prime. Erie was putting out lot of those.
40 plus pound bags at that time for everybody was cranking. And then I think day one, I waited in one fit. lost Knoxman. was just, they went sucked. They do, I'm calling, shaking off 25s by noon. You're done. You're calling, you know, coming with like 35 pounds and all they did was bump it up to two something. You know, I started watch the outside board card, catch them on a turn. I'm like, Charlie boats catching them. ain't going under two mile an hour cause he can't. And just bumped it up and just literally just started doing figure eights. it was.
Ali Shakoor (38:24.27)
Speed'll get.
Ali Shakoor (38:32.43)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Bashore (38:37.36)
was lights out. remember talking to Bill Sutton. He got cut off by the ferry or he was gonna cut off. So he had to bump it up to get around it in time. And as soon as he did that, bam, 3132 went sure.
Ali Shakoor (38:49.914)
Exactly. And again, that just comes from, you know, we get in these habits as fishermen nuts, water's cold, you need to go slow, you need to upsize, you need to do all these things. you know, understanding biology and how different species react, you know, they're a predator, they're going to react like a predator, you give them some speed, they're going to bite, they're gonna snap at it at the very least, they may not be hungry, but instinct is going to kick in. So yeah, spot on. So
So again, just trying to make some fish and stuff in it as I go. So after these fish have spawned, they're gonna start to go east. They're gonna drop down. Some will go east directly because they're trying to stay ahead of that advancing water. I'm gonna make some generalizations here. And a lot of people think that they're chasing bait, but the stuff that I've seen and the papers I've read and people I've talked to who have been out there really more than I have show that the bait fish thing is not.
You know, it's not the driving force. It's more a water temperature thing and going back to their home waters because some of these fish are Eastern Basin fish. Some will stop in the central basin and stay there all summer. So they kind of get back to their to home water. Some are going to go back to Saginaw Bay. But as you're following the migration and I'm going to I'm going to try to not be eerie specific because I can tell you in April there in the Detroit River Island Complex.
In May, they're on Huron dump in July, they're on Lorraine dump in August. They're in Cleveland in, you know, September. They're going to be off Geneva mentor, you know, then finally off ashtabula in October. They're in, they're in, uh, out East and area Pennsylvania and at deep water eating bloater and Shiner. And then they start to come back. That's the basic, you know, migration in a nutshell, but as you think about how these fish move across your body of water, you want to think about structure.
Structure that will hold these fish because they're gonna migrate they're gonna leave and a lot of people will get burned especially on eerie fish and shallow fish Because there's nothing there to hold them and I always say shallow fish have track shoes on right if you catch them you got fish in the rain and the black rivers dumping if the lake is clear and it's dumping dirty water if the lake is dirty and it's coming clear water or it's A degree warmer a degree cooler. It's gonna hold them. It has to be something different. It'll hold them there but if if everything is
Brian Bashore (40:54.362)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (41:12.088)
Homogenous and uniform those fish have track shoes on their heads down. They're they're going to where they're going I prefer deeper fish one those deeper fish are less susceptible to bear to bear the meridians changes pressure changes They're less susceptible to boat traffic So I prefer those deeper fish and I know that those deeper fish are going to be on brakes They're going to be unstructured. They're to be on a dumping ground They're going to be on current breaks, which are really really important
Brian Bashore (41:27.418)
Does sense?
Ali Shakoor (41:41.036)
A lot of people get hung up on thinking about structure as being hard and fast. Current is huge. The Great Lakes are just a large river. They're just like the Missouri River. It's just a large river system. That's it. And while I are fish of current, I fish with the current measuring device in the boat to find these currents, to find intersecting currents, to look at all these different things. So as fish are migrating across your system, think about things that will hold them deep points. If you have a bunch of deep points in the world, what's different about one point?
Brian Bashore (41:53.744)
you.
Ali Shakoor (42:10.446)
Is it a little bit deeper? Is it a little bit shallower? Is it rock instead of sand? So these fish are making these migration to stay in that cooler water, but they're going to hold. They're going to hold on specific pieces of structure that are different. You don't really want to catch them on bait, especially pelagic bait either, because they move so much if you're looking at being repeatable, unless you're going to really chase that bait. So again, there's a repeatable, there's a pattern that you can
Brian Bashore (42:30.906)
day.
Ali Shakoor (42:40.312)
kind of follow every year. But the best fisherman always get on something a little bit different within that pattern. So you have these large pieces of structure I'm talking about points, the dumping grounds, Sandusky, Huron, Lorraine. But then you have these smaller pieces of structure, less apparent changes, water changes are huge. Again, current breaks are really huge.
Brian Bashore (42:50.8)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (43:06.974)
If you're ever on Lake Erie, you should go to NOAA's page. There is a resource page that shows depth averaged currents by month, and it's historical. So from January to December, it has the large scale water movements or currents, and it shows all the gyres. It shows, and when you think about it, you fish Erie a lot, you think there's always fish on the southwest corner of the ground. There's a large gyre that sets up, goes around the Canadian shore, comes down Pelee Point.
Brian Bashore (43:12.528)
Thank
Ali Shakoor (43:34.478)
gets deflected and it rips right across the southwest, the southeast corner of the dump, southwest corner of the dump, excuse me. And those fish are always there at that time of year as a result of it. It brings perch in and holds them. So all these things are happening during the migration. But again, as you think about this migration on your lake or on the river system that you fish, again, look for structure and look for water temperature. Surface temperature, a little bit, but I use a unit to measure temperature at depth.
which has been priceless. I do use the fishhawk. I use the portable, the X2. It's a great unit. have a full disclosure. I have a relationship with fishhawk and I'm not here to sell product, but it has been.
Brian Bashore (44:05.156)
Good. Fish out. Yeah.
Brian Bashore (44:17.326)
I had, Ryan Buddy was on here talking about, I had him bust one out and kind of explain it. And think I put the link in his podcast to it. So I've never used one, but I'm like, yeah, seems like it makes an awful lot of sense to have one in your boat.
Ali Shakoor (44:30.19)
It gives you temp and speed at depth. Again, I can tell you a bunch of different ties, but you know, off Kelly's iron, I had a good bite going. 45 feet of water, the fish were 40 feet down and there was a hard current out of the east. So going east, was, you know, one, one, one, two, like you'd think in the springtime, but going back into it to get the action, the fish wanted, I was actually two, three or so.
And people looking at me like, this guy's really cooking. And we were just wailing on big fish and then we're doing 40 plus a day out there in pre-fish because they wanted it fast. They wanted that action into the current. So that fishhawk and other units like it are really, really invaluable, especially for finding those temperature breaks at those large walleye ones. So again, if you're interested in those types of things, take a look at those units. They're really, they're worth every dollar that you spend on them.
Brian Bashore (45:23.994)
Yeah, it definitely sounded like it. know, the Detroit River, we went there a few years back for the NDBT. was mid crap weather, of course, and the bite was so, so, bucket less place. I was pretty pumped to go there. I just wish it would have been a little warmer, but, you know, but I had a couple of days of practice where I think I got them pretty good. and not so much. think I got one each day in a tournament, five pounder each day.
Ali Shakoor (45:45.144)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (45:49.84)
What's the approach there? know any others up by the bridges and you've been on St. Claesity, for those that don't know, I've always been a co-host on The Next Bite a couple times. I think you've done some, I think probably even done some this fall maybe out there, but you did them St. Claesity, you did them in Detroit River. Kind of sum up Detroit River fishing a little bit for those that.
Ali Shakoor (46:07.391)
Yeah. the Victoria River fishing is outstanding. That fishery is crazy. It's not like the heyday. You know, there were times out there, I fished in MWC. I had 46 pounds after day one. was, you know, we were like eighth place, you know, 50 pounds.
Brian Bashore (46:21.488)
You're Oliver and steer at like 99 pounds 100 pounds
Ali Shakoor (46:25.486)
Yeah, was nuts out there. 52 pounds is lead, something crazy. Those fish, I don't want to get back to the river, are gone now. That was basically driven by the 2003 year class. Those fish are gone. But there's another, we've had record hatches for the past, oh man, five. Yeah, this year was a little bit down as far as hatch, but there's a lot of big fish in the system that are be coming along.
Brian Bashore (46:40.367)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (46:45.242)
Seems like every year, so.
Ali Shakoor (46:54.53)
you know, tons between five and seven right now. You know, we had a tournament out at the end of last year and we, I mean, we were doing 50, we were cast and we were doing 50, 60, 70 fish a day and 65 feet of water and so many fish between four and seven. They were just all cookie cutters, you know, five and seven. So, so, that would Detroit river, know, vertical jigging. we'll talk about the trolling bite out there too. People are starting to do some other things. first gear. I love medium fast rods.
Brian Bashore (46:57.338)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (47:24.46)
having my St. Croix sweatshirt on, I'm really partial to the St. Croix, the legend.
Brian Bashore (47:28.644)
You use that heavy metal rod out there? You got one of those?
Ali Shakoor (47:32.214)
I do have one, I'm partial to that 6.8 medium extra fast.
Brian Bashore (47:36.968)
It's good. I have a couple of them. were out there for that tournament, know, and it was ripping and we had all sorts of stuff and I'm running those one ounce jigs and I caught so many more fish on that run versus anything else. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, this is an icon, you know, and I had the new avid one and I told the dad, I'm like, I don't know if I just had better, no play feel, I could feel everything. I mean, it's a broomstick basically. Right. I think it's, you know, it's five, eight or whatever it is and it don't bend.
Ali Shakoor (47:48.811)
heavy metal. Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (47:57.346)
better.
Brian Bashore (48:06.948)
But yeah.
Ali Shakoor (48:07.406)
It's definitely a pool cue for sure. I like something a little bit more, a little bit more flexible in a tip. I do a lot of tip watching out there. So I see a lot more bites before I feel them with that extra fast tip. And I like the length because the depth changes so much. So I just like a little bit longer rod where I can change depth just by giving a rod a dip, you know. But that time of year, you're targeting, know, those fish have, first of all, they get in there a lot earlier than what people realize. You know, we shot that next bite out there two years ago.
Brian Bashore (48:25.776)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (48:37.294)
In November So again the acoustic telemetry is shown at these fish everyone thought those fish were holding outside of the Saginaw River and outside of the Detroit River and they would come in in the springtime They're actually coming into those rivers in November in October Overwintering right in the rivers. So we've been fishing late this year We were jigging a river until we couldn't take the cold anymore and pretty much, you know, the the launches started closing on us those It
Brian Bashore (48:52.046)
the winner in there.
Brian Bashore (49:04.004)
Does it freeze up?
Very seldom. No, not at all.
Ali Shakoor (49:07.05)
If there's no way in hell, I'll take a step across it. Yeah, it's pretty folks right now. There's a good ice down above Bellisle Bridge, but it freezes up. But, know, early in the year, you know, Bellisle Bridge, I mentioned is a great spot. You get fish that are migrating down out of St. Clair into Lake Erie. That's the first spot on the U.S. side where it's kind of a pitch point. You have a lot of current right there and those people will kind of build up. Same thing at the Cow Pasture on the Canadian side, which is just.
Brian Bashore (49:29.924)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (49:35.246)
on the east side of Bell Isle there. There's some other spots further up in Canadian water, but I'll talk about these. The water's a little bit deeper, it's a little bit faster, and those fish will kind of go there first before they start to make their spawning forays. So as you're fishing that river, you want to look for big pre-spawned fish. One of the keys to finding those fish on that river are finding undeveloped shorelines. On the U.S. side, there was a lot of...
industry at one point and a lot of the shoreline has been direct ball. so you go to Canadian side a lot and you see some more sloping gradual shorelines, rocky, where a lot of the spawning activity takes place. and in those fish that spawn and activity takes place primarily at night. So you go really, really shallow at first light out there. there's a first few spots I can't name. There's some charter captains that would string me up by my toes. If I mentioned the spots.
Brian Bashore (50:29.316)
Right.
Ali Shakoor (50:33.186)
But there's some spots that are, four or five feet of water. First at first light where those fish have spawned all night and they're kind of still hanging out there before they start to drop back. You can really, really get into some really big fish.
Brian Bashore (50:44.728)
The US shoreline is just trash. mean, it's still beams and concrete and rebar.
Ali Shakoor (50:52.302)
You better have exquisite boat control to fish in some of those spots. You're going to be donating all day long, all day long. But they do, but it does hold fish. Trenton channel holds fish. But again, talking about migration, that migration into the river and out of the river has been changed because they've shut down those coal burning plants. The candy cane in the Trenton channel actually blew them up this past year. they're no longer there. that warm water used to call those fish into the river and they come into the Trenton channel.
Brian Bashore (50:55.267)
Right.
Brian Bashore (51:02.394)
Yep. yeah.
Brian Bashore (51:14.426)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (51:21.742)
And it's actually altered the migration of those fish where they're actually starting to come in on the Amherstburg side, the Canadian side, where the shipping channel is a little bit deeper and it's faster. So, you know, we talk about this migration, but, you know, humans impact these things. We say we're doing a good thing by getting rid of these coal fire plants and doing this and doing that. That's something for another conversation. But just talking about fish and it has altered the way the river fishes.
Brian Bashore (51:36.409)
video.
Brian Bashore (51:43.978)
No doubt, right?
Ali Shakoor (51:50.03)
mid river, they got rid of some of the discharges also and it's changed the way mid river fishes. But again, undeveloped shorelines, rocky shorelines, and what you do is you want to get shallow early in the day. And then as the day progresses, again, the same thing I said earlier, people will leave spots as the bite dies, when really all those fish do are just slide down a break. They may start at six and they may end up underneath the Ambassador Bridge in 45 feet of water.
So they're in that area for a reason. want to spawn. They're not going to make a long run in the river. So they'll just kind of slide up and down that break. This is where your side imaging comes into play. You know, you go along and side imaging and you inside of it, you'll see them on that break. You'll know exactly where to make your drift. And I think that's, that's really underutilized by a lot of people who fish that river side imaging is gold on that.
Brian Bashore (52:23.842)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (52:36.144)
Sat image is golden everywhere. You can get rid of my 2D as as I'm concerned. give me a second. Since it came out, I'm like, sat image is on 100 % of time. Obviously, I have to work on plane, you know, but it that's and then I changed my kHz, you know, to 400 or something when I'm super shallow and I'm like, dude, there's fish everywhere. And the other guy's like, there's nothing here. I'm like, okay, whatever. Move on. I got it. And I'm like, there I've done that to my friends. I'm like, do this, which, you know, how many more do you do? You switch over. And he's like, oh yeah, you ain't kidding, man. They're everywhere. I'm like, yeah.
Ali Shakoor (52:43.117)
It is.
Ali Shakoor (52:52.535)
everywhere.
Ali Shakoor (52:57.752)
you
Ali Shakoor (53:05.89)
Yeah. Yeah. So that Detroit River again, you want to target the shallow stuff early and then slide deeper. people are really starting to troll. growing up, we did a lot of long lining out there, but now folks are actually pulling boards. had a buddy who was on the river. Hell just before the Novice show last week. So about maybe 10 days ago, before it got really cold, he's pulling boards and bandits up in mid river and then, you know, you got a two man limit. So, and in the springtime also, so, so what these fish are doing, they're spawning on the bottom, but then after they spawn, they'll start to suspend.
If you really start to pay attention to your sonar, you'll see a lot of high marks on the river. And a of people don't think those are walleye, but they are one of my dad's favorite things to do with fish gold hot and tots in the middle of the river. Yeah. Really high in the white. You know, we started doing that. Like, brother, here we go. He's, know, he's playing around and he starts whacking fish and it's something I've done ever since. But those fish will come up and suspend a lot of the finishers, high finishers in the Michigan walleye tour last year. We're pulling boards down in the lower river, pulling bandits.
Brian Bashore (53:45.589)
I'll add that maybe.
Ali Shakoor (54:05.146)
So again, another way to fish those fish, you really don't want a vertical jig or pull wire, God forbid, you can pull boards out there and do extremely well on the same quality of fish.
Brian Bashore (54:11.972)
God forbid, right?
Brian Bashore (54:19.952)
Yeah, I had never done the hand lining thing and didn't. And even that tournament we had there, actually took, had three, I was going to, if I'm going to do, I'm going to go with three ways. I'm going to, you know, put the, least have a ride in my hand. And I took them out of the boat. And then that morning, right before I put it in, I was like, ah, I dropped the tailgate. was like, I better just throw a couple in here in case, cause it was muddy and you know, and sure enough, I dropped it back with a, a hit stick. You're like middle of the day and I catch my five pounder.
Ali Shakoor (54:47.938)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Bashore (54:48.452)
on a three. And if I didn't have that, I wouldn't have put it out there if I didn't already have it rigged up and that on the boat, but I didn't. the next day I didn't catch two on a vertical jig, but one was snagged. So I had to throw it back right away. And then, you know, I was like, well that sucks. But then it wouldn't, one minute later, you know, got another hit of five pounder legally. I'm like, all right, it's good karma.
Ali Shakoor (54:53.57)
Yeah
Ali Shakoor (55:07.926)
It sucks with your attorney guy. You got to have your hand line or pole line stuff in the water. And that's another way to fish it. There's you get some of these old boys that have, you know, raised on the rivers. There's a couple of 80, 70, 80, 90 year old guys that are down there hand lining and holy moly, they put on a clinic down there. It's impressive to see. But if you're ever interested, good place to come learn. Very, very willing to teach those kinds of things to people who've never done it also.
Brian Bashore (55:33.248)
It's definitely interesting and just something about fishing and having at least a rod in your hand, you know, and I saw a lot of those coangular stuff come in with their hands were just, they were thrashed, man. And I'm like, did you wear a glove or something, you know, or what? I didn't know what I was doing or the guy didn't offer me something and he just sit down there. I'm like, and the worst thing was they didn't catch nothing.
Ali Shakoor (55:38.7)
Yeah, yeah.
Ali Shakoor (55:51.342)
Yeah, it's hard on your hands, it's a meat tack. It catches fish.
Brian Bashore (55:59.374)
Yeah, it definitely works. I get it. I see why. So are you fishing? Did you get in on the NTC just coming here?
Ali Shakoor (56:05.836)
I'm not fishing in TC this year.
Brian Bashore (56:07.792)
Okay, because it's here in South Dakota, on Lake Francis Case. So question, maybe you have some insight on this that fishing, it's been tough on Francis Case and this last year was really tough. It's getting a tournament out there every week and it's 107 miles, huge reservoir. There's tournaments everywhere every week and they're typically pretty small. Everything in South Dakota is a kill tournament after first of June. Where everybody goes fishing, where they typically go in May and June and...
Ali Shakoor (56:10.604)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (56:36.216)
after the Chamberlain Bite, which hasn't really been the greatest even the last couple of years, it's still, it's pretty healthy and there's a lot of fish. This year, people could not catch fish, period. I mean, there was tournaments, 20 boats, and there was like two fish gone.
Ali Shakoor (56:50.317)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (56:52.176)
There was a weekend, think it was sometime in June where boom, it blew up. Nice bags. Everybody caught fish. It lasted like two weeks and then it just disappeared again. You know, and the vile just down here, what I was hearing from some of the anglers up there and they were like, oh, they think that a lot of the fish didn't spawn. You know, lot of the females, obviously they can reabsorb their eggs and whatever. But we had an early spring. Ice was off in early February, but it didn't, it was a very slow warm.
Like even when it should have been 60s, it was still in the 50s water temp wise. You would have thought, boom, everything's going to be ahead of schedule. It just, you know, we had some nice days, but the water tip just did not go very fast at all. it was maybe these fish. I just keep telling them that you're all fishing in the wrong spots. is a problem. You're going off memories. You're going to where you typically go and they're not there. You're giving up. If you ask me, you should have been a whole hell of a lot shallower. You know, these guys are trying to target these fishing trees, but the biologists tell them about that. They all didn't spawn, so they're all in a funk.
Ali Shakoor (57:43.277)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (57:52.56)
I'm like, I wasn't buying it. I'm like on a hundred, everywhere from one end to the other to this place, that's what happened. I'm not buying it.
Ali Shakoor (57:59.309)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (58:00.558)
I I watched them spawn in Chamberlain, so I know they spawned up there, but there's obviously, you know, residential fish throughout that system.
Ali Shakoor (58:06.67)
I I think I would be in a little bit of a panic if that many fish in the system didn't spawn. If there was, there was something environmentally going on with that many fishes, because there's always a small proportion of fish that don't spawn. That you, you'll catch them in June, July. They've re they're real droving the eggs. You'll get like a hard orange mass or something. But, but, that many fish, um, ah, boy.
Brian Bashore (58:12.336)
Exactly.
Ali Shakoor (58:32.27)
That'd be something if that many fish didn't spawn. But even if that were the case, even if they didn't spawn, still you'd have to account for what's changing their behavior. Behaviorally, that's too much, I think. Sure, some may not have spawned, but I bet if they laid egg mats out or something like that, they could see. I'm not familiar with what they've done out there.
Brian Bashore (58:34.671)
Yeah,
Brian Bashore (58:55.882)
And they, you know, they, put nets out, everything, you know, spawn Chamberlain, but they're still, you know, and they migrate and what have you, but there's, they don't all, there's certain, you know, that everything they need is right here in platter and peace Creek or in this area. So these fish don't, they don't all, all move. And that's it's the lower part is where they were all kind of struggling. And that's where the NTC will go out of it in June this year, but I didn't get up there at all. Actually. I mean, I don't think I've been up there since NWT tournament was there.
like, well, you had a couple good weeks of it that it went away. So it tells me that the fish are there and I know by today all did.
Ali Shakoor (59:29.228)
Yep. They shipped a little bit. know a few years ago it was, as a matter of fact, it was the year you're talking about on the Detroit river. it would that really cold spring and there were some other things that had gone on. Michigan DNR had egg mats in the Trenton channel and there were very few eggs on those mats. I think they may have had some mid river around Wyandotte also. Yeah. So those fish weren't coming into their, to their normal areas to reproduce.
Brian Bashore (59:51.908)
That's where I caught a lot of fish, why not?
Ali Shakoor (59:59.526)
At least they weren't seeing eggs there. But again, I mentioned earlier that sometime you will have river fish that will pull up short and spawn in the lake. So it could be the same thing where if you have fish that are normally spawning in creeks and creek arms in the springtime that are pulling up a little bit short, maybe spawning on rocky shorelines or points or something along those lines where they've kind of adjusted a little bit because of something that's happened. Here was water temperature that did it.
out there and saying the same thing. The weather was a little bit different. The water tent was a little bit different than normally. So those fish just kind of shifted a little bit before that large of a body of water for that many fish not to spawn and then not to bite to be in a funk because they didn't spawn. I'm not saying the barge is wrong. I'm not doing that at all. you know, I would just ask, have some other, some other questions. That's that, that's all I think. Yeah. Like he said, think those fish just kind of shifted and folks were in the wrong areas. they fish have fins. They're going to go wherever they want to go.
Brian Bashore (01:00:45.22)
Yeah, I would have loved to been the guy talking to him.
Brian Bashore (01:00:54.286)
That's exactly and we're creatures of habit and all these guys are just going to because and I talked to a few people that don't fish there very often and they came up to fish the weekend and they did good I tried to explain it to the guys that are all time. I'm like this guy had no idea where he was going to what he was doing But he figured it out because he's electronics and he went he didn't go to where you go because he doesn't know the honey hole or the community spot or whatever the case is So he went started shallow or did this went way up in a creek, you know, I'm like you all just
Ali Shakoor (01:00:57.198)
That's right.
Ali Shakoor (01:01:08.686)
the
Brian Bashore (01:01:22.606)
Memories, memories, memories, which.
Ali Shakoor (01:01:26.222)
I think you're spot on with that. Those fish moved and I'll clean it on Erie. We had a championship out there and we all fished. So I was stubborn. I went to my spots and I catch one nine pounder and everything. And it was actually all the guys from out West who were hammering the reef, Kelly's Island shoal. And they were all a good finishers out there. Cause I went out there. said, I can catch fish here, but I'm going do 25 a day. I'm going get my ass kicked. And those guys were under caught 25 a day in one.
Brian Bashore (01:01:52.592)
Yep.
Ali Shakoor (01:01:53.954)
So I think you're under something, the fish is kind of shifting a little bit and acting a little bit differently than normal.
Brian Bashore (01:01:59.056)
We're stubborn. know not to do the memories things and this, but you go and you get tricked, right? You roll into a spot and you whack an eight, nine pounder. You're like, yeah, this, this is it. You know, and then you get tunnel vision and you forget about everything else. then also, you know, like you said, you're chasing fish that are with the bait, the bait's gone or they're, know, there's no, it rained two days ago and now that that runoff has moved and you roll their termamore and you're like, there is nothing here anywhere. You know, you're like, now what?
Ali Shakoor (01:02:23.084)
Yeah. Hey, so that goes to show that, you know, even having all of this knowledge and being a biologist and studying walleye and everything, that when I've launched that boat sometime, I'm still making dumb mistakes and going off memory just like everyone else. So it's tough.
Brian Bashore (01:02:40.58)
We've all been here. We've all done it. Hey, it's, we've already been on here for an hour. I you were a busy man. got, you got a lot of work to do. You got a lot of research to get done and we can talk for hours. So we'll probably get you back on here again and we'll dig into some, some more of this, a little deeper. You fishing anything this year? You're going to be with people follow you. can see out there at MWC, NWT anywhere.
Ali Shakoor (01:02:49.739)
Yeah.
Ali Shakoor (01:02:59.542)
Yep. MWC, we're to do Illinois River, Port Clinton, Hawaii, Bay to Bay to knock and Wisconsin. can't think of the lake right now. Then we're going to do, I think I'm going to do NWT Alpena and New York. I'm going to jump back in. I jumped in a few years ago, full time in WT, but I've recovered from a rotator cuff tear.
Was having a tough time. I didn't think it was very far fair to my coanger. So I pulled out. So I'm looking to make a jump back into the NWT. And I think this year is going to be my my my segue to doing that. So I'm going to do a couple this year.
Brian Bashore (01:03:35.888)
yeah, we've got a couple of them that aren't too far for you. Way far for me, but not too far for you. So, I'll take care of these two on this half of the country. You take those two on that half of the country. We'll just transfer my points over. I said, like, give these to Ali. He can have them.
Ali Shakoor (01:03:49.4)
Alright, at the very least we can exchange information after the season.
Brian Bashore (01:03:52.228)
Yeah, here's I got whatever place in the first two. want to transfer my points on what we can do that He's gonna pick up the second half, you know out there in them Great Lakes. So awesome. Awesome. If we could Leave these listeners as one little tidbit one little nugget to help them in their angling journey. What do you what do you got to offer? I mean you offered them more than they could probably take in already but
Ali Shakoor (01:04:12.462)
Yeah, I would leave them with something we kind of touched on already and that's to pay close attention to things. It's probably not the fish memory. So to pay close attention and when you catch a fish or you see something that catches your attention to ask questions, you know, why was that fish there? What was that fish doing there? Why is that bait fish there? You know, when you start to look at those things and ask those questions, it kind of, it'll lead you down a pathway because that fish was there, there's other fish there.
And if there's other fish there, then there's other fish like that in a similar spot. So being really observant could kind of help you develop these patterns and have a knowledge base that you can use not just on the body of water that you fish, but in other places as well. Because I say it all the time that a walleye is a walleye is a walleye. So always remember that a walleye is a walleye that's going to do what it does. So wherever you go fish, pay attention, be observant and, you know, make some mental notes and keep track of things.
Brian Bashore (01:05:06.16)
That good stuff. That reminds me of a few things I've always said in a few seminars is I've never seen a walleye read the walleye insider magazine. So like you said, a walleye is going to do what a walleye is going to do. And it also makes you think of the old original in Fisher magazine in Fisherman. I loved it. Just like probably fell asleep with that thing because it had so much scientific information off that was from Doug Stangy days or whatever. Right. That was that's what we just don't see a lot of that out there anymore. Next by does, you know, do
Ali Shakoor (01:05:12.366)
That's right.
Ali Shakoor (01:05:15.875)
Right.
Ali Shakoor (01:05:28.654)
That was one of my hooks. I loved it.
Brian Bashore (01:05:35.748)
Do a pretty good job with it, but the infishman is, you know, lenders no longer have that. And I don't necessarily read it as near as much now, but it used to just be very, very, even the TV show was very scientific on stuff and, it was super educational. So, and there you go. It was your hook. was my hook. So we got, we got caught. So if you guys are young and up and covers, it don't even matter if you're new anglers into the wildlife world, check those out. Go on YouTube, check.
Ali Shakoor (01:05:45.422)
Very, very.
Brian Bashore (01:06:00.816)
Follow Ollie along on his social media stuff. He's got some great things over there. He's always surprising with what he's got growing in a fish tank somewhere in his house or wherever it may be. But you'll follow him along this year on his tournament journey and the guy's a hammer and you're going to see him out there. Check out the next bite. He's got like two or three shows, at least those guys I think now have three, three. So watch those. It's good information. Cause just like I said about the end of fishmen, when Ollie's on there, he gets to bring that little perspective into it for him. So.
Ali Shakoor (01:06:18.776)
Three, just shot my third, shot my first.
Brian Bashore (01:06:29.776)
You might become a full-time host on there when they start having little scientific segues. It should be a segment of the show where they talk a bit, you know, the conservation quarter or whatever you want to call it, and brought to you by Ollie.
Ali Shakoor (01:06:40.174)
We've discussed a few things, and we're gonna have some more discussions on that that light. But again, I'll be posting stuff on social media and things just like this. But again, thanks for having me on. I really, really appreciate it. It's been a joy. And I'm normally not that hard to get a hold of. So next time you want me on, just get out. I'll responsive next time.
Brian Bashore (01:06:57.936)
No problem, No problem. You're a busy man, busy man. So that's good. That's, you know, you're saving the walleye world out there and that's, we all appreciate it. So appreciate the insight. Appreciate your time today, Ollie. And thank all you for tuning in to another episode of Real Talk Fishing. So stay safe and we will see you on the hard water for the next month or so.