Is that what happened on the Goon? I've been there every year for over 23 years, and didn't see any 'groves' of people. There were three or four active camps, and most were only half full most of the time.

 I also heard of the dozens of fish kept, but amazingly could find hardly any actually registered in the camps. Barney was an absolute whacko about CPR, so not many were kept there when he owned the camp. Bill was nearly empty most of the time before his rub with the RCMP, so that wasn't where this happened. He had pictures of most of the kept fish at Indian Point, and they numbered in the single figures, not the hundreds reported.Then Birchcliff went under,  and before it did it wasn't near full, either.

 I didn't notice much difference in muskie fishing traffic out there at all after the study began and CPR only was allowed. I enlisted the help of the Northcotts trying to loctate the reported dozens of fish taken, and Hanna couldn't confirm but a handfull, either.

As far as Ottawa goes, I haven't paid too much attention to the politics there for awhile, for very good reason. 

To answer a question placed earlier as to why I recommended Richard, it is because I have done so before, and have heard good things back. Good enough for me.

Thanks to everyone for the cudos, I apreciate it. Client when you call me please mention M1st so I know who called as I am getting calls on a daily bases this week.

Say as you will, the Ottawa puts out a lot of big fish but it is a huge body of water and you just can't come up here and nail fiftys like we ( guides who spend over 1000 hours a year on the water ) do. I fished my butt off today in the worse of weather with winds coming and going and showers here and there to finaly nail a 35 pounder by 3:30 pm. Just a year or so ago I would'nt of had the knowledge to succeed where most would fail.

BTW please note fish mentioned by another guide and his clients are coming from another body of water then mine so please they are not all coming from the Lower Ottawa but the Larry as well as 2 mountains in Montreal wich total nearly a couple hundred miles of huge rivers. There also is the Upper Ottawa River west of Ottawa that has a couple of guides and many other anglers.

God I love my job 23 more days to get ripped this month.

There was  no real population collapse that I or anyone else I fish with ever saw. I saw the fishing remain excellent as the system aged, and improve over the last few years because of new year classes of Muskies. If indeed the population collapsed in the  80's, then I wish it would collapse like that on some of the lakes I fish around here. I have had incredible days there, and that goes for the first and last year and all the time I spent there in between. I saw activity that was truly unbelievable in the late 80's and early 90's, with HUGE fish. That would not have been possible if the population was trashed.

IMHO the biggest problem was year class vacancies where no fish from a year class were there at all. That, again IMHO, was at least partially a symptom of the fact Wabigoon is a flowage feeding a paper mill, and if the spring was dry and the mill busy and the system drew down, the spawn ended up high and dry.

That couldn't have been angling pressure. If it was, where in the heck were the anglers?  How in the world would an entire year class get harvested? We are talking a huge system here with only a couple resorts. Eagle, LOTW, all those areas experience WAY more pressure per fishable acre, I know, I had to weave my way through some of the LOTW waters to find a spot to fish at times. It was and is a  reasonably rare thing to even SEE another boat fishing muskies on the Goon, even during the week of the 4th of July.

 I think there was concern the trophy fishery was very fragile, so the Ministry did what was necessary to keep it protected, whether it needed it or not. We talked to the guys doing the study quite a bit, and followed the progress as they tried to get a handle as to what actually is in the Goon. I salute the Ontario Ministry folks who worked the Goon, they were and are truly dedicated.

That is exactly what I'm saying; I was up there then, quite a bit. If that many big fish were kept, I will be darned if I could find out by whom and from what camp. The rumors said hundreds, but the camps and area shops couldn't confirm. There WERE some fish kept up there, as there were from all the lakes in that era, but not what was eventually reported much later.

I didn't notice a decline in 30# class fish at all, in fact all I have seen since the late seventies has been improvement.