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Hello Once again, 7 months ago, is where I last left off. The beginning of 2021 a year of promise had just arrived. Vaccines developed, a chance to end covid on the horizon, and a lockdown greeting us in the new year. The winter weather taking its time to arrive, me waiting for my home body of water to lock up had me itching to learn a whole new world of fishing seemed to slow time down to a crawl. Between completely re-doing all of the electronics in my boat including the wiring and house projects, I was keeping busy. Being locked down as many of you can attest to is a strange experience, but one thing the ice offered this winter was a sense of “normalcy”. Right off of the jump, I apologize for the heavy doctoring of the following report photos, but I feel like my new home water is wayyyyy more prone to pressure and the peering eyes of the internet. As such, if you want to talk fishing the area, and I know you/you are a long time board member, my DM’s are always open. I’m not one of these crazy guys who wont tell a soul about what colour bait he likes to use, I love to talking fishing, I just don’t like giving everything away to strangers and lurkers. This report is somewhat different from the past, it has a wide range of species included maybe even enough salmonids to wet the whistles of a few of the guys that don’t like me because I drive a bass boat So without further adieu its once again AKRISONER’s (EH-KREE-ONE-ERS) (Scott, that’s me as many of you know now) semi annual review! Ice Fishing…it may have saved me from insanity. It may have also saved you from insanity as well. Here is the beauty of ice fishing in a world where social distancing, health measures and lockdowns prevents you from hanging out with your buddies. There is perhaps, no better way in the world to distance from someone while being able to maintain a mask less, normal conversation then standing out in the middle of a lake, 30 feet away from your friends ice fishing. Everyone brings their own gear, you show up, you are normally spread out apart from each other anyways, and you land your own fish. So that’s what we did, Finally, my friends could drive to the lake, and ice fish as if covid didn’t exist. Man, did it feel great to be fishing with my buddies again. At times I realized we spent hours just standing not even fishing, just standing out on that ice shooting the poop like the good old days. Below us though was a fish…one that I had only targeted a few times in my life prior, one that peels drag from the depths, and hits your bait so fast and hard that you don’t even get a chance to see it show up on your sonar. Lake trout, the ultimate ice fishing fish as far as I have experienced thus far. A trip out, a skunk, a couple of lost fish, another skunk and a return to the lake for redemption the following weekend finally had me stick my first laker on my home water. If I could figure some things out, this was going to be a very fun winter. A promise to my girlfriend that if we moved in together that we could get a kitten I went home that weekend to meet Lenny, or as we affectionately call him now 5 months later…the devil. He is a terror, and I’m fairly certain his cuteness is the only thing keeping him alive most days, that and the fact that eats spiders and house centipedes to my girlfriends relief. As I type this, I just had to go to the kitchen to investigate a crash, Lenny had gotten into the recycle and pulled his used food cans out of the trash lol. More cold weather, a bit more reading, better ice, no wind thing set up beautifully for a mid February weekend of lake trout ice fishing, and deliver did it ever. The fish long but very lean. I’m thinking the population of escapee rainbows is having an affect on the lake trout and their population of eating fish. More on those bows later. Back home, more snow and wintery weather I made one of the scariest boat related decisions of my life. Recessing my foot pedal. Now, most will say, why is it such a big deal…well how does cutting a 2x1 hole in the front deck of your boat sound to you lol. From what I could tell, the procedure seemed simple enough, the instructions even indicated that boat brands such as ranger are known to have stringers running the width of the boat that would need to be addressed. So I drilled the holes and said a few prayers and went at it with the jig saw. Things were going smoothly until I hit a section that really really seemed to slow the jigsaw down, then it basically became right impossible to cut…then I noticed smoke billowing out from any of the “cracks” (behind access panels etc.) from the boat. I immediately started to panic, oh god I’ve lit my boat on fire! Scrambling to try and cut a notch into the section I had cut so that I could fit a hose into the hole to fill the boat with water, I finally punched a hole with a circular saw and saw that there wasn’t a fire, but the entire hull had filled with a thick mix of burnt fiberglass and marine plywood smoke. It did not smell good at all. Finishing the job with the circular saw, I realized the culprit. I had a 2x4 lengthwise stringer coated in fiberglass staggered off of centre on the front deck. A weird construction to be honest, but man was it absolute hell to notch out and fit the tray into. Who knows if I have fatally weakened the structure of my boat, its been fine thus far lol. My boat which I had finally managed to clean up after all of the wiring I had done, was an even bigger mess than before lol. I vacuumed that dust up for hours. Things were coming along with the boat, a few work trips to Timmins Sudbury and Pembroke filled in the weeks Carling has a brand new beautiful covered outdoor rink that on one of my work road trips, I stopped in at my parents and had the opportunity to skate for the first time in over a year (I normally play hockey twice a week, thanks covid) While on this trip I finally also got to see what my parents had been telling everyone about their new place, my dad saying it reminded him of being back on the farm, my parents had their very own herd of deer. The most my dad counted was 50 head, this particular day I counted 28. I spent february continuing to fish those lakers and us rookies started to get the swing of things more and more as the season wound on. The end of March was arriving and the temperatures spiked, the ice was getting eaten up fast. We went out for one final trip on the laker grounds. We left the snowmobiles at home on that sketchy spring ice and hiked it. Fishing was somewhat slow, and the ice was getting cooked. It was interesting knowing during that last walk through 3 inches of water that boating season was coming. I was ready for it! Sure enough 5 days later, the weather got very warm and I decided to throw down a wildcard and go launch the boat in Hamilton harbour. Owning an old boat, the great mess. Heres me pulling the boat out of the garage for the first time in the year, as you can see I didn’t make it more than 10 feet out of the garage when my trailer lights all failed lol. (ended up rewiring the entire boat trailer a few weeks ago) We got skunked, but i got to officially throw a jig on randal reef...who knows how radioactive that jig is now. It was awesome to be out in the boat again and testing out the new Garmin system. We even found a sunken boat on the panoptix. My birthday came and a gift from my family was a high speed polisher, I touched up the old skeeter and was honestly blown away with the results. Before and AFTER Trout opener arrived and I spent a couple of weeks wading around, watching my friends that centrepin and throw hard tackle catch a few trout while I got skunked fly fishing…again lol. I still haven’t figured out how to catch rainbows and browns on the fly. Everything I read tells me I’m doing things for the most part right, but clearly I am not lol. I headed north once again with the boat, spent a weekend getting skunked fishing shallow for rainbows and lakers, I clearly had no clue what I was doing. A long time OFC member then shot me a tip related to his success, so I put it to work…and boy did it ever work. I even added to his tip…the panoptix seriously was a complete game changer for the type of fishing. Id scan around, mark the fish off in the distance, cast to them and catch them. My best trip out I caught 10 by myself over the course of just over an hour. Wild! Lake trout have quickly become one of my favourite fish to target. They are ferocious strong as all heck fighters, can be caught in deep water and will aggressively smash your bait. My brother even managed to stick his first ever laketrout. A trip planned a year earlier to celebrate a friends sobriety, A promise made that I along with another friend would go with him on a trip to crown land south of Timmins was finally getting truly organized. I tuned up the old Suzuki (you may recall the thread with me looking for parts) gear was packed, trucks were loaded and off we went for walleye opener in the near north. The fishing, wasn’t the “greatest” we did catch a limit one day, We also got to catch a few in season northern bass. Some of you may remember that late May snowfall we had in the GTA. Well it was -8 where we were camping, and lets just say the gear I was in was not made for that kind of cold. To say that night was long and uncomfortable is an understatement. Funny enough by the end of the trip we were fishing tarps off in shorts. We managed to catch a few snot rockets in the mix, but truthfully my favourite day of the trip was getting up before sunrise, and seeing one of the most beautiful mornings of my life. Needless to say that experience up in the bush fishing out of a beat up old tinner, grinding out bites changed my perspective on things. It also taught me a bunch about fishing up north. Sometimes the old school, simple, slow techniques will outfish anything you will every throw at the fish. Almost as if the fish have become accustomed to the old French logger ways. Humbled is an understatement. Back home, a few more lake trout to catch Bass season (the most wonderful time of the year in my opinion) was coming. I had a lot of gear to get back into the boat, cleaned up and rigged. A family friend hosts a small derby every year for the guys and I. We throw a few bucks down, fish all day, go home eat steak drink beer and make fun of each other. Its what I live for, its literally my favourite thing in the world to do. Heres a photo of us waiting for blast off Dave and I didn’t catch any lunkers, but a 3 and a half pounder plus enough fish close to 2, including a late 1lb cull got us the dub. This hilarious photo is the result. And then, back to my home water for a 10 day stretch on my new stomping grounds. The fishing is different, its more technical, and you really have to pay attention to what’s going on. I think overall the fishing is tougher than pointe au baril ever was…but I feel like the quality of fish when you find them can be higher. There is still soooo much more to learn about the area, but I’m not as depressed as I once was about leaving PAB. Especially when you get this kind of by-catch up shallow on a crank bait. To this day one of the best fights I’ve ever had, it jumped with no exaggeration out 30 feet off of the front of the boat 6 feet in the air twice, and then ran me 30 feet off of the back of my boat then into my motor before we landed it. Insane. My parents ate it for dinner and said it was delicious. I tried a piece (I’m not a big fish guy) but it was pretty darn good. I found me a secluded bay loaded up with largies eating frogs Then Jake and I decided to go on a mission. I’d known about this back lake’s existence, Id caught a small largemouth through the ice on it, id even hear rumours that it held very large fish that were “no good for eating because they are full of worms”. Ill let the photos do the talking. A 24lb 5 fish bag of largemouth in 4 hours of fishing eating hollow body frogs, chatterbaits and whacky rigs. We legitimately culled a few close to 4lb fish in search of bigger bites. I don’t know, but I personally don’t know if I’ve seen a bag of largemouth this big come out of anywhere in Ontario, at least openly talked about. As you can tell, I’m keeping details to an absolute minimum . I’m hesitant to share much about this special place but I figured id share them with you guys that like a bit of fish porn. The photos are staying cropped tightly and blurry lol but I’ve got the real ones for a framed photo on my wall. This to me is my Mike Borger’s Algonquin Brookie spot. I don’t register with a provincial park upon accessing, so the details don’t exist lol. After that day on the water Jake and I vowed to not touch the lake again until next year. We are leaving it be. I don’t know if I will ever experience a better day of largemouth fishing in my life. My goal for next year will be to stick a 6lber out of there, theres gotta be one if there are that many 5 and a halfs willing to eat. That’s where we land, I’m 4 days out from fishing the biggest tournament of my life the anchor bay Bassmaster. I don’t know if anyone here is partaking, but if so make sure you say hello, I’m of course in the old white 17 and a half foot skeeter! Until next time!

That use to happen all the time and I am sure that covid is playing a big role in delivery times, it's just when you see "2 day guarenteed delivery" then you place the order and it gets changed it can be a little frustrating especially when you are paying for prime

Oh, I wear it fishing and farting around in town, just not hunting or working in the bush. I don't think it is thornproof or puncture resistant.............

I finally broke down and put out the money for the simms gear after trying all the others. Save your money and do it right once. I'd second the BPS. I have only had my simms jacket and bibs for a year, but man, it keeps you REALLY dry. S.

Rinse your gear after a day of fishing and what you use now will be just fine.

and people are locked up by covid and not spending money on other stuff like vacations out of country................same as the home renovation boom and the sky-rocketing cost of building materials. Supply and demand.