Troy--WOW!!! Thank you for your great reply/post. It was informative and I do know the fertilizer induxtry is trying to get better and more efficient every year, but we all know more work still needs to be done. I fished Lake Erie 2 weeks ago and it looked worse than in the 1970's when I fished it, so something is up and nobody seems to have answers. My guess it is a combination of many factors--probably the Maumee river and Portage river and Lake St. Clair into Lake Erie being the 3 biggest "issues" that have to be looked into. It is a little sad when you fish and say there is no way you would swim in it--sure the fish also are pissed-HaHa. We did manage to catch some Smallies around Pelee and Sugar Island, but not the number we were hoping for, and we even had "candy" aka softshells to fish with. Hope the cold winter kills the algae for good and look forward to May fishing.