Garfisher

Rapala doesnt know what their lures do ...ahhaha

http://www.rapala.com/rapala/lures/shadow-rap-series/shadow-rapandreg/Shadow+Rap.html?cgid=rapala-lures-shadow#start=1&cgid=rapala-lures-shadow

http://www.rapala.com/rapala/lures/shadow-rap-series/shadow-rapandreg-shad/Shadow+Rap+Shad.html?cgid=rapala-lures-shadow#start=1&cgid=rapala-lures-shadow

Two different lures, two different actions

You're going to be hardpressed to get bluegill in around Tiny unless you were to maybe go down to Simcoe (Bluegill are slowly making their way through the Trent-Severn into Georgian Bay but they are in super low numbers). Little Lake in Midland wouldn't be bad, around 15 minutes away from Balm Beach and it's loaded with Pumpkinseeds and Rock Bass and other panfish. In terms of fishing at Balm Beach, you may get Rock Bass or Smallmouth but Balm Beach is, well, a beach. Not much for cover, there won't be too much around unless there's some rocks around.

If the fish are purchased from a fish farm, I'm sure it'd be perfectly legal; no different than stocking a pond.

Lots of places around that cultivate bass (or other species) for stocking ponds etc.:

 

Http://www.facebook.com/Zephyr-Fish-Farm-191855486176157

 

http://www.ontarioaquaculture.net/fish-stocking/kinmount.php

 

Feeder fish from any pet store will get it done for eats...

I'm pretty sure that's the only real legal way to have pet native fish in your tank besides "storing" baitfish in your aquarium (which may end up becoming illegal in a couple years anyways). I believe you need a receipt from the place of aquaculture as proof you didn't catch the fish out of the wild, it would be best to email the local MNRF office to confirm it though.

Now, realistically one could keep anything in a tank as long as you don't go gloating about it online or do anything that would make a CO want to check out your house. Of course it's proceed at your own risk, yea it's illegal and if caught you'll probably be losing some stuff along with getting fined, but at the same time I've never really heard of house raids for fish in an aquarium.

Curious...how come bass is open all year in the Northern Zones? Are they seen as a non-native species?

Bass are only native to the Great Lakes and their tributaries (and most lakes within those tribs) up to the 1st natural barrier (aka fairly tall waterfalls). Bass were widely stocked in the early 1900s (if I remember correctly), and in most/possibly all the trout lakes they were stocked into they have been very/extremely destructive. That and I believe a lot of anglers in the northern FMZs don't target bass like we do in the south, therefore a lot less pressure on the populations.

100% Green Sunfish. Native to SW Ontario and a small portion of NW Ontario

Balsam never needed a slot. It had fabulous amount of fish in every year class. The problem was they used trap nets that sat in 8 ft and went to shore missing 99% of the walleye.

You're right they should have set gill nets so that they could cover more areas (and remove those walleye instead of being able to release them)

Sounds like a good deal/ good product Rattletrap.

 

Just curious, what's the logic behind they only count as a PFD if they are being worn?

The ones rated as PFDs are rated so because they may not keep your head above water should you be unconcious and are face down.

It might be true they're not on beds BUT...remember the water level is way up and those beds last year in 4-6' of water are now not visible and are in 7-8' of water in some cases. Just saying...it's the end of May...

Yes but those bass likely wouldn't be spawning around last year's nests in 7-8', they'd likely move inward a bit to maintain similar spawning depths

Most of the Sticklebacks I've seen, we caught in minnow traps in Haliburton in streams and beaver ponds, usually pretty cool water streams some of which had Specs in them. Not sure if they were the same species though.

Different species. The ones you saw would be Brook Stickleback (which usually have 5 spines). There are also Ninespine Sticklebacks, and Fourspine Sticklebacks (which are invasive but only found around Thunder Bay)

 

For your reading enjoyment:

http://fishlab.ucdavis.edu/2009/04/10/stickleblog-spines-hurt-according-to-predators/

Neat little research there! I'm not too surprised by that haha. I know brookies love sticklebacks though, the fact that sticklebacks swim poorly may outweigh the fact that they can be quite painful/difficult to eat. I think the lake I fished didn't have too much in terms of forage, like two species of minnows and no perch (pumpkinseed though), I guess they could target stickleback out of necessity (or ease of capture).

We do have Striped Shiners in Ontario, they are mainly a SW species (SW of a line between Lake Ontario across to the Bruce Peninsula) although they have been introduced elsewhere. Where they are found they are very common, and aside from a few small differences are virtually identical to Commons

Hahaha no problem. I figured you were referring to a different shiner, you are only over 1000km away from the closest Ontario population. Plus there's like 3-5 different shiners up there that can be silvery in colour

Come to think of it last year I was fishing for walleye one night after work and one of the walleye spat up a stickleback. Maybe those little guys aren't such a bad walleye bait!

Terry I hope you are referring to "Redside Dace" as either Finescale, Northern Redbelly, or Northern Pearl Dace considering where Shining Tree is haha. And Manitou I'm guessing your "Silver Shiners" are something else?

Only asking as using Redside Dace and Silver Shiner could net you MAJOR fines considering they're listed as Endangered and Threatened (respectively) lol

 

That's the difference between a life jacket and a PFD. A life jacket is designed to keep your head above water even if you are unconscious. A PFD only provides floatation. Most non-inflatables are PFDs. I think the inflatiables are actual life jackets; but don't quote me on that.

There's only 1 approved inflatable life jacket in Canada (Mustang MD3157), all other inflatables are considered PFDs.

Probably a cisco

FMZ 18 could be it's own BMZ, you wouldn't need to keep the VHS zones though as bait from the areas most affected still have to stay within their own BMZ (i.e. FMZs 16 and 17). Making FMZ 18 its own BMZ would simply mean that all live bait sold in that BMZ would come from sources within it.

The VHS zones are somewhat useless as although bait harvesters/distributors can't move bait taken from within the zone to outside of it, there's no real way to stop anglers from buying bait from their local bait shop before heading north/east/wherever to fish at their camp/cottage. Or better yet an angler can take bait they caught from within the VHS zone and take them outside of it as there is no real way to prove where they got the bait from.

Where and when do they stock the Atlantics? In theory they could get charged under the Species At Risk act if they harass them or destroy habitat.

 

If there's a mayfly hatch or similar, they'll be shallow. The fish don't care what month it is.

That is true, fish do weird stuff (and nothing is out of the realm of possibility as Cisco are extremely tough for a coldwater fish habitat wise). It's just Barry's Bay is an area that has fallfish, in habitat that screams fallfish, featuring a shiny fish that is a foot long or so which also can describe a fallfish

Those "whitefish" or "herring" sound like fallfish to me haha, there's no way there would be whitefish or cisco that shallow in July even with a cool spring.

And the trout opener for Gbay is a bit different this year, 4th Sat in April instead of the last Sat.

Trout are open all year...

FMZ 16 (G-Bay tribs with some exceptions) are 4th Sat in April

X-Raps/Husky Jerks are a go to for me, throwing trolling spoons is another favourite as they have a ton of movement while being retrieved slowly and they stay up in the water column. They can be a little difficult to cast but if you have a good little wrist snap on the cast you can get it to cut through the air very effectively. A sleeper lure for me is a River2Sea S-Waver (110 size), rather than a straight retrieve I sweep my rod to the side and reel up the slack. I hammered pike two springs ago on that lure.

May 1st is correct, it's been that way for a quite a while (at least since I was a kid haha)

I think all the fish species data is from old records, some records may be based "hearsay" or from old stocking records (it has Brook Trout listed under Little Lake in Midland for instance, which is a lake pretty similar to Little Lake Barrie without the Pike). The Broadscale Monitoring Bulletin(s) would be a better bet for getting an idea of what actually is in there/other lakes that are part of the monitoring.

Simcoe is also a large waterbody haha (excluding the Great Lakes in comparison), in theory you could get areas of stunting but I would think it would take an insane amount of pressure on a small area to do it. And even then I'm sure perch roam enough that large ones would filter back in relatively quickly. It's the small to mid-sized lakes that are very susceptible to it.

Just to quickly jump back to the original topic:

http://blog.nature.org/science/2015/10/15/why-everything-you-know-bluegill-management-wrong-fish-fisheries-panfish-fishing/

Sounds similar to what people have seen on some lakes with some high pressure, basically the large ones get taken out and the small ones take over due to harvest pressure. Easiest thing would be a reduction in limits, however there would likely be a lot of pressure from some of the angling community to either limit a reduction or even keep things as they are. If you personally want to attempt to make a difference (obviously one can't control what others do especially if they are within their legal right) the easiest thing would be releasing the larger panfish (such as maybe not keeping gills above 8-9" if in the Kawarthas) and not harvesting larger males when they are nesting. If you want to keep your limit of the big guys though and aren't doing anything illegal, all the power to ya haha.