how many on here remember one year they had a 12" minimum length on eyes ?
and i remember the late 70's perch and eye fishing was outsanding but that was before the zebra mussles, lake was not clear a little brackish in color fish didnt get a real good look at the bait , hopefully they will start feeding and make people work for them a little harder
Here is an article from a paper a few weeks ago.... Read it all to get to the Oneida stuff..
Back in 1953, a New York State hunting license cost $2.25.
It was $2.25 for fishing, and $3.75 for a combination license, a savings of 75 cents. A big game tag was another $2.25. So, for six bucks you could get after all legal game and fish. Not bad, although a pack of Luckies was just 20 cents back then, a gallon of gas was about the same, a new house could be had for less than $10,000, and a new car for about $1,700.
In terms of real money, a license today probably is less expensive, I think.
Steve Payne, owner of Steve Payne Custom Rods in Cassville, sent me the 1953 New York Fish and Game Syllabus. It’s nearly 60 years old, so naturally a lot of the regulations in it seem strange, at least to me. You kind of wonder what the heck the guys who put that syllabus together were thinking.
For example, on opening day of any small game season, hunting was allowed only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Thereafter, it was 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. There had to be a reason, but you have to wonder what it was. Big game could be taken from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day of the open season.
Some of the regulations are pretty funny, like this one that jumped out at me under “Who Must Have Licenses”:
“Women over 16 are now required to have a license to fish.”
That wasn’t so in New York until, I believe, 1948. I’ve struggled with that one for a long time. What was the thinking behind that?
Seasons back then were generally less liberal than today, bag and creel limits often were far more generous and everything was pretty complicated. The trout season was from April 1 to September 10, and the hours were from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. from April 1 to May 15, then any hour for the remainder of the season. I’ve been trying to figure that one out, too. Also, the limit was five trout from April 1 to May 15, then 10 till the end of the season.
And there is this:
“The taking of all species of fish from waters inhabited by trout in the Counties of Oneida and Madison is prohibited from March 1 to the opening date of trout season.”
Walleyes were subject to some interesting regulations. The state-wide season was May 1 to March 1, but on many waters there was no closed season, no minimum length and no creel limit. The Niagara River was one of those waters. The walleye population there crashed in the 1960s, and there always has been the notion that industrial waste was the biggest reason, but there were all kinds of bass, sheephead, muskies, northern pike, silver bass, carp and panfish in the river. Do you think a century’s worth of everyone taking all the walleyes they could get of any size had anything to do with the decline? The same thing happened with the river’s tremendous number of huge sturgeon, which were pulled out of there in wagonloads for decades.
Back in 1953, a New York State hunting license cost $2.25.
It was $2.25 for fishing, and $3.75 for a combination license, a savings of 75 cents. A big game tag was another $2.25. So, for six bucks you could get after all legal game and fish. Not bad, although a pack of Luckies was just 20 cents back then, a gallon of gas was about the same, a new house could be had for less than $10,000, and a new car for about $1,700.
In terms of real money, a license today probably is less expensive, I think.
Steve Payne, owner of Steve Payne Custom Rods in Cassville, sent me the 1953 New York Fish and Game Syllabus. It’s nearly 60 years old, so naturally a lot of the regulations in it seem strange, at least to me. You kind of wonder what the heck the guys who put that syllabus together were thinking.
For example, on opening day of any small game season, hunting was allowed only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Thereafter, it was 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. There had to be a reason, but you have to wonder what it was. Big game could be taken from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day of the open season.
Some of the regulations are pretty funny, like this one that jumped out at me under “Who Must Have Licenses”:
“Women over 16 are now required to have a license to fish.”
That wasn’t so in New York until, I believe, 1948. I’ve struggled with that one for a long time. What was the thinking behind that?
Seasons back then were generally less liberal than today, bag and creel limits often were far more generous and everything was pretty complicated. The trout season was from April 1 to September 10, and the hours were from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. from April 1 to May 15, then any hour for the remainder of the season. I’ve been trying to figure that one out, too. Also, the limit was five trout from April 1 to May 15, then 10 till the end of the season.
And there is this:
“The taking of all species of fish from waters inhabited by trout in the Counties of Oneida and Madison is prohibited from March 1 to the opening date of trout season.”
Walleyes were subject to some interesting regulations. The state-wide season was May 1 to March 1, but on many waters there was no closed season, no minimum length and no creel limit. The Niagara River was one of those waters. The walleye population there crashed in the 1960s, and there always has been the notion that industrial waste was the biggest reason, but there were all kinds of bass, sheephead, muskies, northern pike, silver bass, carp and panfish in the river. Do you think a century’s worth of everyone taking all the walleyes they could get of any size had anything to do with the decline? The same thing happened with the river’s tremendous number of huge sturgeon, which were pulled out of there in wagonloads for decades.
There was a limit for walleyes on Oneida Lake – 15 fish of 12 inches or better, or 25 fish if two or more persons were fishing from the same boat. Could you imagine a good, knowledgeable angler working the lake? Several hundred fish a season would be possible. You can bet it was done many times.
Whitetail deer were a different story, probably a reflection of how recently they had returned to much of the state. With few exceptions, the bag limit was one buck. The season in the Adirondacks was five weeks. It was just over two weeks in the Catskills, and just seven days at the end of November in most of the rest of the state. The deer take that year was 29,352, all but about 300 of them adult bucks.
Certain critters were not so well protected, especially if they had reputations as fish and game killers. You could kill all the English sparrows, starlings, crows, purple grackles, kingfishers, cormorants, great horned owls, sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks and goshawks you had a mind to. English sparrows and starlings are still on that list, along with rock pigeons and monk parakeets, but everything else is either protected or subject to regulated hunting.
It was a different day, yes. I’m sure many of the 1953 regulations were based on political and social considerations and possibly incomplete understanding of the biology of game fish and animals. You’d like to think that today’s rules have more lot of science and reason and thought behind them, even if there still are political and social pressures, but I don’t doubt some guy 50 or 60 years from now will take a look at the 2011-12 hunting and fishing guides and wonder what the heck we were thinking about.
