tbayboy

Frustrating is a word for it . 3 casts in (Mark may claim it was first cast but I think it took him a whole 3 casts) this beauty joined us in Marks boat (lousy picture though, my bad) <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1132/1460084649_7d6dbb7c84_b.jpg" width="1024" height="890" alt="Marks Morning Smallie" /></a> Like Mark said - we hoped that was a sign of good things to come but it just wasn't meant to be I guess. The school of shiners with the jumbo perch on them was a nice suprise (we were just cruising around checking structure when the whole graph filled up). Here's Mark with the 2 best of the day. <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1171/1460081739_6a32733ffd_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Simcoe Perch" /></a> Would have been nice to get into a few more (any) of those smallies but still it was a gorgeous day and I learned a lot from Mark. Top that off with a tasty perch dinner tonight and I'm happy I went out. Thanks again Mark Sean

I'm not sure if I should be happy that I'm going fishing with Mark or sad that I'm at home on a Friday night hanging out on computer forums but I'll go with happy for now

As someone who's using bait casters for the first time this year all I can say after watching Lindner in that video is where the hell do I get one? Thats pretty impressive stuff even if they do list for $800+

Thats a great pic, glad you didn't delete it. Heck a bit of time with photoshop and you'll never get skunked again

Maybe if I really overfill the bird bath in the back yard .... nahh I'm still gonna be jealous . Great looking spot you've got there.

Great photos and congrats on her first muskie!

Congrats Cliff - some of us come home from work and watch TV, some of us catch 20lb fish, go figure

Great stuff Minnow. Thats a beauty brown for sure. Sorry about the camera but glad the stick survived so you could share these pics with us.

Great stuff Shaun and Dan, some beautiful pics there. Gotta love good old perchie (the perch pattern x-rap) that guy is a pike catching machine isn't he

Great report, nothing like a weekend spent fishing with friends. Congrats on the new personal best, thats one impressive looking Muskie though I'm still waiting to see you pull that out from your Yak

Definitely no expert here but last weekend we had a couple hit close the boat and that meant the fish was horsed just by the reaction and the hooks came out. The one we landed hit further back and was played rather than horsed (thanks to some coaching from Mikeh - I would have just reefed on it tell the hooks popped). Just keep enough tension to hold the hooks there but let her play around a bit and tire herself a bit before attempting to drag her toward the net too much. So in other words what GCD said

Great googley moogely Carole thats one big fish. Congratulations!

heheh I promise next time I'll remember to wipe the water off the camera bag guys. Wouldn't want to trigger any more flashbacks

I'm trying to picture tylers face of a nice big carp hat hit right after that 1/2 asleep pic . I'm sure he's dying to break in the new reel.

Geddy Lee is a big sports nut here in T.O. and I see him at Jays games and Raptors games all the time. His Jays tickets are right behind home plate and I remember a game last year where the jumbo tron pointed him out and these two girls in front of us, maybe 16 years old saw it and the conversation went like this: Girl: "Who's that" Me: "Thats Geddy Lee" Girl: "oh yeah, he's from that old band ummmm" Her friend: "I think its 'The Rush'". Sometimes I weep for the future I'm so glad to see someone young enjoying Rush, glad you got to go the show and thanks for the great pics TJ

Great looking fish Dave, nice mix of species and I love the colours/patterns on those browns. Thanks for sharing.

Glad to see that pike survived his time with the dental work. Maybe you should file an OHIP claim for removing it

Great report Joey, some fantastic pictures in there. The before and after tree shots are amazing - hard to believe they change that fast.

Great stuff, some real beauties for sure and congrats on the 5th place finish.

After a bad trip to Balsam last week PatrickG and I decided to try the Grand again. Our first stop in KW is at Natural Sports for tubes and jig heads (big plug for those guys - they know and carry exactly the right stuff for the region and are very friendly). They're starting to gear up for salmon but tell us the bass are definitely on as well. Great we think and head to Patrick's spot on the river. Last time we fished here he outfished me 20 to 7 so I had spent the meantime stocking up on all the same gear as his - this time it would be different I thought! Before I get into the report a little diversion about the pics. I had recently picked up an AquaPac which is basically a waterproof camera bag (thats much cheaper than the official waterproof housing). I bought it because I found myself shying away from deeper water in fear of ruining my camera. This thing is actually pretty cool and works well except that when you take it out of the water you have to remember to wipe the lens side of the bag otherwise you've got water droplets and smudges (the grand leaves this sediment on everything when it dries). Next time I'll remember this better so please excuse the picture quality. Anyhow, back to the story - my turn to show Patrick how to fish the grand. Patricks first cast - fish on. Ah crap here we go again. Just a liittle guy but its the first bloody cast. 20 minutes later its 5 nothing. I've missed one but thats it. I switch to a topwater (getting desperate) and Patrick continues tossing the same jig with tube and boom - he's into a nice fish. He's yelling at me to come over with the camera and I'm swearing at him, at my rod, at the river. "Yeah yeah, its a big one, good for you, (stupid cheating son of a ...)" Turns out it was a nice one. In fact a solid 3 pounder: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1032/1424776083_7cbf4e40ce_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Fishing while using shrooms?" /></a> As you can see I've blurred the background and even the fish - wouldn't want anyone knowing what we're doing right? Like I said, still learning how to use the new camera bag, this one came out a bit better <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1073/1424775387_d50d731a6a_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Fishing while using shrooms?" /></a> Patrick started giving me some advice and I realized I just wasn't feeling it with this ironsilk mono line. Patrick swears by it on the river and it seemed nice but I just didn't feel the bottom enough with the light jig heads. I switched to the spool of 8lb fireline crystal I had (handy thing with spinning gear) and it felt a million times better. Sure enough second cast: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1007/1425661634_4354d8196a_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="On of zillions of the little guys" /></a> Took a pic of the little guy because I was worried that would be it for the day for me. Couldn't have been further from the truth. The wind was really blowing (this was Saturday) and was pushing against the current. As we walked down I noticed a break in the waves where a shelf dropped off into a bunch of big rocks with a big hole in the middle. "Oh yeah", says I, "thats gotta hold a fish". The second the tube hit the water I had a fish. Then another and another. Patrick starting working the area and it was on. Fish after fish hit from this 30 foot long honey hole. We were upset if you went two casts without a strike. Now to be fair the vast majority were like these guys from a double header: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1418/1424782167_13e0588dfe_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Double header mini fish!" /></a> But there were some big guys too including my best of the day (wish we'd brought a scale, not sure about weights): <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1049/1425662294_46e22f0d4d_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="My best of the day" /></a> And Patrick had a couple more that we figured around the 3 lb mark: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1314/1425659304_17cab6bef6_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Nice one" /></a> <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1122/1425663500_551b1b7c28_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="10 minutes later another" /></a> As for the contest - well i stopped counting at 19 to 15 in Patrick's favour but I'm sure we ended up around the 50 mark in total so we'll call it a draw. As for the camera the other thing I wanted to do was try some in water video. The results were ummmm mixed . But I had to put the clips together just because the commentary on some is pretty funny. I didn't think it would even pick up sound in there but it sure did and the clip where I stepped off a shelf into water almost over my waders is pretty funny (in that self deprecating humour type of way) and there's a good audio playback of me getting excited about a fish (yeah, yeah, I'm easily impressed): <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value=" name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object> So there it is - after a day of 2 hour drives, expensive boat rentals, bags and bags of gear, rods all over the place and next to nothing to show for it we spend $10 on gas, $6 for a pack of tubes, $4 for some jig heads and take one rod and some waders and have what so far is my best day of fishing this year, go figure . Big thanks to Patrick for all the river fishing know how he's passed on and please don't PM me asking for locations - this is PatrickGs spot and isn't big enough for any pressure so there's no way in hell I'm sharing it - the Grand is full of great fishing so go explore it and find your own spots

Congrats. I'm sure that 5lber will show himself soon.

I hear you guys (to angler and cliff) - I have a serious love hate relationship with Scugog. Almost every time I'm on the lake i get skunked for the first 6 or 7 hours (usually not even a nibble) and then get a few at the end of the day (Mike tends to ok during the day but then again he knows what he's doing and I don't). The funny thing is that when I do start hitting fish on the bog they're usually pretty nice which keeps bringing me back for more punishment the next time. Go figure.

Nice stuff guys, beauty smallie.

Mikeh and I hooked up again and decided to give Scugog a go with the intention of christening his new big net with some nice slime. We arrived at the first spot around 10am and started tossing topwaters (mike a buzzbait and me a torpedo bucktail spinning thingy ). In no time Mike had a hit but it missed. Shortly after a muskie 5 feet from the boat exploded on my lure and being the rookie that I am I quickly set the hook - so quickly that I nearly impaled myself on the lure as it came flying back to me - doh. We had another short strike soon after but couldn't get any solid hits. We figured this was a great sign of the way the day would go so we moved on to let those girls calm down before trying to temp them again. Of course you can guess how this goes - 7 hours later and Mike has 1 2 lb large and I have a smallie that might hit a pound on a generous scale. Not a wiff of muskie anywhere. We even went back to the original action spot but nothing was going on. At 5pm we figured we do one more hour of drifting then call it a day. At this point I'm tossing smaller spinner baits hoping for bass or maybe a small 'ski but Mike still want the big boys and is tossing a very large chatterbait when he gets a big hit. Finally I think and grab the net and camera when what pops up attached to the huge hooks of this muskie bait: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1253/1430073417_da3e839798_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Mikes second bass of the day" /></a> A couple ounce shy of 3 lbs. Ok, well at least its a nice fish so we decide to do one more drift slightly off course for the last one. Almost right off the bat Mike has a muskie hit the chatterbait 6 or 7 feet from the boat. Mike gets a good looking hook set in but this is one smart fish. She throws herself in the air and bends her tail all the way around to her mouth and POP the hooks are out. Mike simply looks at me and utters "That was pretty cool". Ok fine, on goes my big topwater again as the action seems to be heating up. 10 or 15 minutes later the lure catches some weeds (the bucktail backend tends to hang low) and I give it a reef to loosen it. BOOM thats not weeds. Pretty quickly the whole lake knows I'm excited about this fish. After a few minutes of haul, run, haul, run she tires out and mike gets to slime his net: <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1424/1430950588_333ff0d044_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="In the net" /></a> The net really worked well - made it easy to remove the hooks and get the camera and what not into place without stressing her out. And here she is, a new personal best at 43" <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1154/1430951592_26f152de8d_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="43" Muskie" /></a> And of course the release shot <a href=" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1035/1430074291_47d67468b2_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="The release" /></a> On the whole a very long nearly fishless day but at least it ended on a high note. Big thanks to Mike for all the muskie pointers this summer, wouldn't have landed this guy otherwise.

Wow, surprised that fish didn't drag your canoe all the way to the spawn. Congrats on your new PB.