CLofchik

Slots have proven themselves to be one of the best management tools available to ensure a healthy population of catchable fish. Would you guys be happier if they dropped the limit to only one or two pickeral?

The trick isn't just a bag of water, but with one or two things in the bottom of it i.e. two pennies at the bottom of the bag. And it only works on house flies, mossies don't give a hoot.

I've heard a large part of the increasing toxins in Lake O is because the food chain is now centralized on the bottom with sportfish feeding on gobies & mussels.

The 2nd best $20 might be one of the Normark fillet gloves. I don't like carrying a net around either, but these metal mesh gloves are great at grabbing and holding on to fish. Never caught a musky but they work fine at tailing 40" pike. Tail them with glove. Turn them UPSIDE DOWN next to the boat, fish will immediately stop dead. Pop hooks out, right fish, wave him side-side (NEVER back & forth) until they're almost thrashing out of your hand and give'em a good shove away.

What he said. "Universal" is not "Free", universal just means those that can't afford coverage on their own leech off those that can. On the subject of Canadian dental coverage, seriously think about a trip to Mexico or South America if you need a large procedure. All their docs are US trained (which generally means better training than in Canuckistan), and for the price of a procedure here you can get the same thing done in Mexico or Costa Rica for 1/10th the price and have a vacation on top of it. Girlfriend got an implant that would've cost $2k here for under USD$500 in Mexico, the whole week for the two of us came in under what just the procedure here would've cost. Hey Photoz, I hear there's some jumbo carp in Mexico.......just say'n

20, it's from one of Spielbergs most underrated movies, Always, 1989. Here's my favourite, not fishing related & NSFW though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8_5Qc1mK54

Fish Hound Mk.II & The Puggle Of Doom in their natural habitat. Fish Hound really can't stand the water and gets bored standing still for 2 minutes, so trips with him are limited to tripping in the back lakes. The Puggle Of Doom LOVES the water, but can't swim to save her life (literally!). She is also an emissary of Satan and constantly plotting world domination. Here she is just before unleashing her fury on a hapless cat.......the carnage that was left is too graphic to post.

Ah another quiet evening on your own private beach after a days fishing. Nothing to listen to but the birds & water. Oh. If you're just out for the day don't overlook spots in your backyard, with the strike there's no ferry service out to the islands so I imagine it's pretty quiet out there. Good bass & pike on the back side of Centre Island & marina. There's also all the river estuaries that are open to canoes, some good smallie action that's hard to fish out of anything other than a canoe.

I saw more people fishing around Hamilton yesterday than I saw all last week combined. Obviously they're all a secret coven of lurkers trawling the internet in search of the hot sheepshead bite and my post tipped them off. I'm obscuring the background next time to keep the hot drum spots all to myself! Reality check, there are very few spots that are actually "secret", somehow people knew how to find fish before the internet. Just because they decide to go fishing on the SAME EXACT DAY AS YOU doesn't mean there should be witch trials on web fishing forums. Lol they probably posted a report on another forum and are thinking the exact same thing when they see you muscling in on "their" spot. But you're right, I look forward to more posts that read like this:

Associated Press July 07, 2009 Today a Hamilton man was arrested illegally dumping 20lb. bags of sugar into Bronte Creek. Though most of his statements were incoherent he possessed a fishing rod with a glo spoon and was heard to be muttering comments about "The King". If it stays stormy through August, like last season, the fish will stay scattered and never really bunch up. They'll trickle in slow but they'll never be the big rushes. If it gets real hot in August and trib levels drop they will spend more time staging and schooling up, then run in less frequent but larger pods whenever a few days of heavy rain triggers a rush. Also as a rule of thumb I've found odd numbered years to be better pier fishing than even numbered ones. Don't have a clue why, it just works out that way.

Dunnville if you have a boat, Caledonia or Port Maitland if you don't. Caledonia is fair and steady, Maitland runs hot or cold.

Lake O hasn't even set up yet and it's July, if this cool wet weather holds small scattered runs with another season of crappy pier fishing but good river fishing starting end of August. Temps don't trigger runs, trib volumes do. If it's a hot dry August with low tribs good pier fishing, crappy trib fishing.

There's alot of Louisiana drum recipes out there, but most involve making a tomato roux or sauce and baking the fish in it. I think with a lean fish like drum it helps to almost poach it in some kind of liquid. And I still haven't gotten the courage up to eat one out of Hamilton.

Lol, I think more people fish for alewives than the mighty drum (herring is apparently getting scarce in Ontario, so alot of trollers are switching over to alewives in their meat rigs). It's odd, people fish for their cousin in saltwater, even consider them a great food fish. But the poor freshwater drum is the Rodney Dangerfield of big water sportfish.....they just get no respect. 'course........I can't quite get up the courage to eat one out of Hamilton.....

Too many people assume big arse deep cycle batteries when they hear "12 volt". It's not the voltage rating that increases battery size, but amps (amps=battery capacity). You can run a small black & white fishfinder like an Eagle Cuda off 8 AA batteries for eight hours, 8 AA batteries will give you close to 12 volts, but a limited amount of amps. Now if you want to keep it cheap, go big on amps, AND keep it portable.......time to go ghetto baby! 1 Eagle Cuda 242 (Used off Kijiji) -- $85 1 El Cheapo Tackle Box -- $10 1 R/C battery from hobby store (w/charger) -- $50 2' Aluminum L channel 1x2" -- Swiped from work....shhhhh our lil' secret k? 1 C-clamp -- Princess Auto $2 There ya go, for under $150 you get a completely portable sonar that's still decent and will run for days before needing a charge.

Ah the poor whistletrout, sheepshead, the much maligned freshwater drum........ I have to say I've been having a blast the last few weeks playing with the huge numbers of these things that are around Hamilton Bay, been dinging them pretty much everywhere there's deep water, though Pier 8 has been the most productive. They put up a good fight, are stupid easy to catch and can top out at 20lbs. What more do you want from an easy summer fish? Deep diver shad cranks have been my steadiest bait, with shallow running white cranks working after the sun starts to go down and they come up shallow. Give the whistletrout a shot, they've been putting up better scraps than bass or even carp. Bait is coming in at night to spawn so thick I'm snagging alewives on my crankbaits, good sign for Lake O baitfish numbers.

From Caledonia down to Cayuga there's decent numbers of smallmouth to be caught from shore or wading, but below Dunnville I've never got more than a handful. Never seen a largemouth come out of the area. Too many bigger fish for poor sunfish to compete I think.

If you're commuting in regular rush hours leave a little extra, that hill gets packed with suburban numbnuts and there's no alternatives. Keep the speed down, that stretch on top of the Escarpment is heavily patrolled from Brantford-Hamilton. It might be quicker to come in on the 401 and down Hwy. 6, traffic flow on 6 would be going in the opposite directions.

Tuf-Line XP Alot of tackle shops sell it in bulk for $0.08/M. Almost exact same Spectra braid as PP, and $0.02/M cheaper than that "deal".

I'd take a guess that most people assume your fishing expectations are slightly different than a 9-year olds.

I really doubt visibility really matters on surface lures, keeping your line from sinking does matter however. The only waters where I fish for bass have the odd pike, the flouro is to stop bite offs. Braid isn't very pike-proof. See!

Noice shooting, and good on ya for having respect for the lake. Heh your VHF aerial looks as long as your boat It's a shame what's happening on G'Bay, I can remember what an insane fishery that used to be. Depth, lures any fleas?

Cootes Paradise itself is pretty shallow, so shallow that last year it pretty much dried completely up. It was nothing but a giant mud flat with a small bit of shallow water infront of the Carp Barrier and an RBG crew that went in and seined out a few dozen carp swimming around in it. Then they proudly claimed that all the carp were extirpated out of Cootes. But if you follow the Dejardins Canal back into Dundas there's deeper water where carp live year round, so no they haven't gotten rid of carp in Cootes. Even if they do there's never enough water in there to support any kind of gamefish in numbers, and what fish there were was mostly in Spencers Creek......y'know, before it got poisoned by toxic runoff after a fire in Dundas.

There's a tavern in Paris that had a sign above the can, "Please Flush, Brantford Needs The Water" Just say'n

Another vote for the Rapala Skitter Pop. I don't know if they still make them out of balsa or have gone to plastic already, but after being a Pop-R devotee for years I picked up two balsa Skitter Pops when the store was sold out of Pop-R's and never looked back. The trick I learned about poppers is that it's not about the sound we can perceive, but how much water the popper can spit out infront of it. It's all about the spit with poppers. Once you get in the right groove you can twitch a Skitter Pop 6" but spit water 2' infront of it, works well. I'm always using a braid/flouro combo, what I found works well is rubbing a candle or piece of paraffin on the flouro to keep it floating.