In this week's episode of We Love Outdoors with Rich Davenport, your humble host reviews the latest fishing news, which is walleye has opened, while the yellow perch are on fire on Lake Erie, and the dredging has finally begun at Sturgeon Point Marina! An event was held this past Saturday, April 30, called the Perch Master's Tournament, where 50 boats/ teams of anglers competed to bring in their 5 largest perch by weight. With 50 boats playing in the event, most centered on Wendt Beach, just west of Sturgeon Point, but the marina wasn't open, and anglers had to run from either the Catt or Buffalo. Lost revenue for the town.... During April this year, without the port being open, the town lost up to an estimated $560,000 in angler activity. Hopefully once the marina is repaired this will be a thing of the past.

The bill seeking to ban fishing and hunting tournaments in NY is once again in committee, as are a number of other bills unfriendly to outdoors concerns. This would impact a lot of economic activity, including the upcoming Walleye Professional Tournament Championship slated for Dunkirk Harbor at the end of August 2022. Make calls to your representatives and urge them to vote no on this frivolous bill.

The record-setting fishing continues, this time with a new saltwater record for bluefin tuna in Florida, when team "No Name' captained by Jake Matney reeled in an 832 lb. 2 oz. monster, breaking the old record of 826 lb. 8 oz. caught in 2017. Wow!

The political landscape in NY shook with a recent court decision by the highest court upholding two lower court rulings voiding the newly drawn US Congressional and NYS Senate districts as gerrymandering and unconstitutional, which is now forcing the primaries back to August instead of June. The Assembly redistricting has also been challenged just before the deadline, which will further mess things up for the Democrats this coming November. This year NYers have the chance to restore some balance in government, as the one-party rule has been an utter disaster for the people, and that's an understatement.

The flurry of bills being introduced is on steroids again as we approach the end of this year's legislative session. We can only hope no action occurs, as June 2 appears to be the last session day for 2022.

Many important dates coming up and are covered in this episode, including family fishing clinics, meat and ammo raffles and opening days of note.

Free fishing weekend in NY is last weekend in June, where no license is needed to freshwater fish for those 2 days.

And the Democrats have inadvertently made protecting freshwater a political issue for 2022 when they voted down the moratorium sponsored by George Borrello in the NYS Senate EnCon committee, where all GOP members voted for the moratorium, which would have protected all freshwaters in NY, including the Great Lakes from Industrial Wind Turbine industrialization, while all 7 Democrats opposed the measure, citing "premature" and "wait for the science" as their reasoning, yet the science, in the form of the NYSERDA feasibility study was already done in 2010, and was panned then, while Borrello noted environmental concerns that are not being studied by NYSERDA at all. SPread the word far and wide, as clearly the Democrats are opposed to protecting our freshwater for the kids not yet born, and everyone else.

And Congressman Chris Jacobs has sponsored a bill to protect the Great Lakes from these schemes and also to pull federal subsidies from wind development in total. The battle is now fully joined, yet no project has yet been applied for nor solicited yet. And the darling of the Sierra Club, Block Island wind, has proven to be an unmitigated disaster, as they haven't generated any power since summer 2021, and now ae leaking oil into the ocean!