CLofchik

Any Shimano product under $200 is junk. After I went through three Stradics in a year I'm never getting suckered into buying anything from them again. And then there's the baitcaster that warped it's frame on the first hookset. Or even the Shimano badged neoprene gloves that ripped open the 2nd time I used them. Or the time Bob Izumi was demonstrating how great the current series of Shimano rods were in the BPS tank when the first 8" snapped off the end of the rod bouncing a 1/8 oz. jig...... If you want to help Bob Izumi make another million shilling snake oil, by all means buy Shimano. If you want tackle that actually works for less money.....buy anything else.

Uh, you mean those reels that cast like more like a bailless spinning reel with a FIXED spool rather than a baitcaster? Those ones? Not as silly as I look trying to lift up my glass at the end of the day with the horrible misshapen claw of a hand I have after it's been cramped up trying to hold a "low profile" baitcaster all day. No wonder those pro's cast so damn fast, their rod hand is done by noon! Bah haaa haaaa that's an awesome demontration of skill, which is the reason he's using a baitcaster. The superior casting velocity acheived with spinning reels would make it too easy! You mean the myriad of outfits designed & promoted to catch the walleye FISHERMEN dontcha? There's this island in the South Pacific that's been setup to help deprogram former cult members, I think it might find some use here. Some good beach fishing too.......but then again most surf casters are using spinning outfits, oh no! If it makes you feel better you can retrieve backwards with the reel upside down

+1 for going to braid, if you fish alot in clear water with picky fish pick up some Seaguar leader material to attach a foot or two to the end. You will need to learn a few new knots, clinch knots for mono don't hold well on braid, and you'll need to keep some clippers around.

Lol, I use a baitcaster & heavy rod with 20lb PP for steel in the spring. Actually it's my favourite way to fish for them, though I don't do it often anymore. And I use a heavy spinning outfit to fish for bass in the summer. Heh, I have problems with convention I guess Put a 1oz. weight onto your heavy spinning outfit. Put a 1oz. weight onto your heavy casting outfit. Open bail/freespool at the same time. Which one hit the ground first? Gee, the one with the less resistance. Psssst I'll give you a hint, it's spool doesn't revolve. This more than anything pretty much highlights alot of peoples misconceptions, spinning outfits don't stop at 6'6" ubiquitous "medium light" with 2000 sized reels. More than anything I've used 14-20lb. mono, and now braid, on my spinning outfits for twenty years. Before I had a drivers license I was chucking 1-2oz. rigs with spinning outfits, and always out distanced baitcasters. I've had this argument dozens of times on the pierheads, against four or five different generations of baitcasters. And still your $500 baitcaster with a computer chip and self engergizing diodes can't outcast a lowly Mitchell 300 with 20lb mono. Can't be done, just can't, so stop arguing casting distance, it's bringing a knife to a gunfight. Now can people come up with scenarios (excuses?) where baitcasters are better? Sure, but I can't think of a single time I thought slinging 100lb. mono with a 16oz. lure/anchor/depth charge was actually a good way to go about catching fish. Must be a good workout though. It's like justifying a Hummer. Baitcasters are fishing bling. Aaaargh, I still can't quite figure what the most annoying sound in all of fishingdom is. It's a close call between carpers and their beep-beep pods and that damn electronic Shimano. Wheeeeeeeezzz, sounds like a nerdy mouse with tuberculosis.

Carolina rigged plastics on deep weedlines. Nowadays I rarely fish shallower than 10', and that's only to catch a few dinks for lunch.

Lol you read some of the comments? Lol.....damn kids!

I don't recall seeing too many Chestnut canoes with "splash guard" gunnel flares on them

Yup. And I've done enough spinning vs. casting throwdowns on the pier heads to put that issue to rest permanently. I just don't get how people can even think to argue that somehow there's some magic bearings that will make a baitcasters spool revolve with less friction than simply line flowing off a fixed spool. Just think about it a sec, can't be done. Equal length rods, equal action rods, same line, same size lure.....spinning will outdistance casters every time. Won't even be close. Find me at the end of August casting for salmon and we'll wager on it. And about "control"........I'd wager it would take a newbie alot less time to learn how to feather line off a spinning reel than learning how to merely cast a baitcaster. Face it, for the most part baitcasters are fishing bling toys. If you're not trolling for salmon or casting for muskies there is precious little advantage to baitcasters, toss price in the equation and it's no contest. There is simply nothing in freshwater you can do with a baitcaster you can't learn to do just as well with a spinning reel, alot of things you can do alot better with spinning reels, and cheaper. "But I can work a bait slower with more precision with a baitcaster!" -- Uh......just slow down. "But I can cast more accurately with a baitcaster!" -- Sure.....pitching baits 30' away in thick weeds for largemouth you might have a point. So if all you do is fish for largemouth in thick weeds all summer long go nuts. Double that length to an actual cast in anything approaching open water and it becomes pointless. What were the other advantages of baitcasters again? Sincerely CL, Team Spinning Advocate

It's starting to slow down a bit, but there's always fish around there. Finding size is usually the problem, there's too many 25" fish that pick up the baits. I'm down with that. Yeah the current gets ripping pretty good through there, if you use a rig that rolls you're done. Heh that's why I'm using feeders twisted from coat hangers, even with a 1oz. weight in them it's only a $0.60 rig. I've heard rumours of the really big girls starting to move into their summer haunts around Eastport, might give that a shot some morning this week. The carp barrier can be fun if you don't take your carping too seriously, took me around 15 minutes to haul the big girl in and drew quite the crowd. Between English tourists HandyCamming my "Oh It's A Tank!" act to the "oh big one, you keep?" from East Indian families there it's quite a party spot on weekends

I don't know about accuracy, I can fire offhand casts alot easier with a spinning outfit than a baitcaster, like seeing a fish or fishy structure at 3 o'clock after retrieving in from 10 o'clock. And there's no switching hands with a spinning reel. And I hate how wet my hands get with spray off the line on a baitcaster. I've always preferred spinning over casters, but am making a deliberate effort this year to get more proficient with them. Really just because I own a few that have been barely touched and it seems like a waste, I don't know if I'll ever buy another caster that isn't meant for trolling. Spinning: Longer casts, no you can't cast a similiar sized lure the same distance with a baitcaster. You just can't.....get over it. Price, spinning reels are about 1/3 cheaper. Better drags on spinning reels, you just can't cram anywhere near the disc surface in a casting reel. Retrieve, you can pick up slack line or running fish alot quicker on spinning reels. Casting: Lighter, more compact setup thats better the heavier your line gets. In my mind the cutoff point is around 20lb/test, around there you're better off with a lighter casting reel to fish all day than some 14oz. spinning monstrosity. 2000 or 3000 sized spinning reels just aren't built strong enough to handle that strength that for long before exploding. 4000 sized reels are getting too big to be casting all day. More capacity for size. Really more of a concern for trolling, but if you need more than 200m of line on a reel you need a caster.

What a weekend..........okay, I'm selling one of my bikes and I'm supposed to meet up with a buyer on Saturday. And on Friday somebody runs into it in the underground parking and breaks the fairing stay in three places along with cracking the fairing (fairing stay is a convoluted piece of thin pipe that holds fairings onto motorcycles). No note, and the tape machine for the garage has been broken for a year. Great. Oh did I mention it's a 1990 Kawasaki that was only made for 2 1/2 years, so finding OEM parts is an excercise in futility? 400km of driving around to places that SWEAR over the phone they have the right part.......only they don't. Oh and I had to babysit my g/f's damn puppy the whole time. A few things about my g/f's puppy, it's a puggle which means it's half beagle. Anything half beagle always ends up really being 7/8's beagle, anyone thats ever owned a beagle will feel that pain. She's very loud (the puppy....although what's that saying about dogs acting similar to their owners?), and this damn puggle likes to chew things. Like maps. Likes maps to obscure motorcycle scrapyards. Oh and it's a 21st century puggle......she likes to chew carbon fibre also, especially when it's part of very expensive assemblies I don't own (well didn't own at the time). Oh, and the damn puggle likes to jump from open car windows, on the 401, when you're stopped trying to read a map that a puggle has chewed on. Note to all, don't take puggle puppies on road trips. Was a fun way to spend a gorgeous Saturday, the rum flowed pretty freely that night. Sunday.....screw it I'm going fishing. Oh, right.......after I walk the dogs first, yes dear. I'm tired of getting beat up by Hamilton Bay pike (they don't exist I tell ya!), my brother doesn't feel like going out in his canoe to chase pickeral on the Grand, so hey let's go slumming for carp. Setup on the swim around the crack of noon (remember that free flowing rum from earlier...and I had to finish the F1 race y'know), and right away started running a clinic. My home bodged feeders twisted from bits of coat hanger are actually proving themselves to be pretty snag resistant in the rocky stretches. Locked & loaded with my secret deadly cherry Kool-Aid pigeon corn bait & chicken feed method mix....... Ended up going 8 for 10 with only two fish under 10lbs., found the hawg hole and drilled 5 fish over 30" one after the other. Largest taped out at 34 1/4", so Team #3 gets some upgrade inches (sowry GCD ). And my g/f had ribs on the bbq when I got home....so all in all was a decent end to a crappy weekend.

I've run either hot or cold at the dam. This time of year I always do real well just trolling a white Big O....errrr Spro .....through the holes below the dam and well past Fishmasters. Sometimes through the deep holes other times they're up on the shallow edges, my favourite part is you never really know what you've got until it's at the boat. Pickeral, whistletrout, channels even rainbows.

It's a tough choice...........

Pssst Shad colour. They dive a little bit deeper than a Big O, but the hooks are killer stock. Memorable moments, 4 species in four passes through the same hole trolling the Grand (whistletrout, channel, smallie then a trout. In June). My Big O loving friend finally cried "No Mas, No Mas!" one windy day on a back lake when I went three 18" bass in three casts. Hell I've even caught chinook on them casting infront of Bronte. They've got a weird funky wobble.........yes I am a big fan Now on Husky Jerks.....other than a few jointed baits I'm officially off Rapala's. Heresy I know, but I just never did that great on them. Their "wobble" always seemed to me to be a tad tight. I always liked Redfins better, and for a suspending Secret Weapon before suspending lures became all the rage we doctored ours by injecting water into them. Casts like a bullet, has alot looser wobble than a HJ or XRap, used to be the Secret Weapon casting for browns off pier heads in the spring and pike. Bombers work too, but Redfins are my "comfort bait" 3.5cc's for a 6" Redfin 2.5-3cc for a Bomber Long A

Look for anything that's phosphate free and made from vegetable fat (instead of animal fat). Dood, Sunlight bars. Be careful though, they sink (as all vegetable based soaps do).

Jeebus, if people freak out over one trophy laker taken for a derby I'd hate to see them by the fish mulcher at Port Credit during the Salmon Hunt There's a 99% chance that laker was stocked. There are piles of greasers in Lake O, Ontario stocks more lakers than rainbows. There have been half a dozen confirmed 30's around the lake this year. Unclench everybody, jeez.

There's been a few bears that have followed the Rouge R. valley all the way to Scarberia. Last year I was out and they had Twin Rivers Rd. closed hunting for a bear that was wandering the streets. Hmmm, banning the Spring hunt is fine when bears are wandering downtown TBay or Owen Sound, but once they make it to Aurora it's a mad panic. Funny that.

That is one funky lookin' brownie!

Trout or salmon Planked on a bbq with a few sprigs of fresh dill & spritzed with lime juice (I like the taste of lime over lemon). Other white fish like catfish or lake trout (or bass, pike, pickeral, hell even tilapia), I like baked/roasted with tomato juice. Stupid easy ghetto tasty fish recipe #7: Spread fillets on big piece of foil. Lay from fresh mint on fish. Lay some sliced onion ontop of that. Lay some freshly sliced lime/lemon ontop of that. Pour/smear 1 can of tomato soup ontop of all that, cover everything and really try smoosh it as deep as you can. Or you can use sauce or even tomato juice, but I prefer the thicker sauce you get using condensed soup. Fold up foil and bake on a closed bbq for 20-25mins@350ish. Just a hint of lemon which is alot better than dousing everything with lemon pepper. 15 minutes to prepare everything.

If that's a Big O it's been mentioned a few times, always was a staple for me until I found the Spro Crank25 at Fishmasters (only place I've seen them, and even he doesn't carry them anymore). In multiple Uber-Small-White-Crankbait-Throwdown-Ultimate-Challenge I've spanked a die hard Big O lover over & over. But I still have a few Big O's in the box.....y'know just incase I lose my last Spro.

+1 Come down to Bayfront in Hamilton and watch the goobers winch bass off their nests. If it wasn't so sad it would be comical, one clown wearing a Shimano jacket was running around all happy as all get out with his 18" "5lb'er" getting his surly wife to snap pics for 5 minutes, a few others are literally bouncing huge hooks with 1/2" piece of worm off the faces of females on the nests. When I pointed out the 10lb sheepshead cruising around one guy spent 30 seconds plopping his worm piece infront of it then went back to his "easy" bass. Goobers. You could literally see the gobies swarm the nest eating eggs every time one was pulled. Oh and FYI, bass don't eat when they're on the nest, or even after the fry hatch. All that energy they waste when they're caught cuts down their chances of survival by a nice chunk. And a mile away is some of the best carp fishing in S.Ontario right now.....but hey it's alot more fun to shoot fish in a barrel.

#1) Original Redfin Gold/Black: #2) Spro Crank25 Shad (replaces white Big-O, love this crankbait): #3) Original Culprit 6" worm, Red Shad #4) Mann Jelly Worm 6" or 8", Motoroil. Usually fish it Carolina rigged, in shallow wacky. Do better with this worm than tubes. #5) White spinnerbait double blade, Colorado or Willow leaf blade depending on depth. That's usually the order I follow during the day, usually stay deeper working plastics I never get to the spinnerbait.

If a US visitor AND their boat is in Canada for 45 days or less they only have to follow their local regulations (PFD's, throwing devices, licenses). Ontario's open container laws apply though AND the 0.05 restriction on operating a boat.

For Lake O probably not, they grow alot quicker down here than the Boreal giants.