Since its birth in 2003, Lake Ontario United has grown from a fingerling into an online fishing community larger than a fall king salmon.

Found at www.lakeontariounited.com, “The Lou,” as its fans like to call it, has more than 6,800 registered members. Dozens more join every day.

For those serious about trolling for trout and salmon, or for those just interested in protecting the phenomenal natural resource that is Lake Ontario, LOU provides articles, tips, open forums, live chats, maps, a directory of launch sites and services, classified ads, a professional anglers page … the list goes on.

“We wanted to create a website dedicated to Lake Ontario and fishing,” says Chad Lapa, the site’s co-owner with Capt. Jerry Felluca and its information technology guru. “The last two years, it’s hit the tipping point to where we’re getting 3 million page views a month. It grows by 10 to 25 new users a day during the spring.”

Don’t look now but LOU just got better.

Last month, the site launched a new service called Lake Ontario Tweets, providing instant fishing reports from a network of top-caliber charter captains using the social networking technology of Twitter.

L.O. Tweets, the brainchild of captains Bill Ruth and Rick Hajecki, is the first of its kind in the fishing industry.

Because Lake Ontario’s water temperatures are affected each day by winds and currents, fishing conditions change with them. It means that fishing reports available in print or through websites can be rendered obsolete rather quickly. Not with L.O. Tweets.

“When I’m on the boat, I can tweet exactly what’s going on,” says Hajecki, who operates Crazy Yankee Sportfishing. Recently “I was able to tweet where I hooked up a nice fish and 10 minutes later I tweeted a picture. It’s as instant as you can get.”

The idea of posting real-time fishing reports had already hooked Lapa. Working with Joe Dolan, his ex-college roommate from RIT, a cutting-edge service using Twitter was developed.

“Instead of a captain fishing all day, coming home, posting a report and everyone getting the information a day later, this is real time,” says Lapa, 28, who owns BlueEye Design. “We’re pushing the boundaries of what’s out there technology-wise.”

Advocating for the lake, which is what members of LOU do best, is about old-fashioned conservation.

Lapa and Felluca, who runs Rebel Charters with Chad’s dad, Larry, operate the website just as its originators, Capts. Steve Drave and Mark Cole, envisioned. As a labor of love.

“We promote the fishery as much as we can,” says Chad Lapa, whose next website project is a Lake Ontario fishing trip planner.

A downside? Clicking on L.O. Tweets is growing into an obsession among anglers stuck at work.

“The weekend recreational fisherman is sitting at work and living vicariously through the captains who are out there all day,” Lapa said. “Or they are leaving and losing work time because they’re watching their buddies live on the lake. Guys are posting videos and pictures and the site updates itself every 30 seconds. It’s almost too much for people to handle.”