The Urban Fisherman

The resevoir opened up for the season this weekend and with bad weather an plenty of work to get done around the house I was only able to sneak out for a couple hours Monday morning. Fished a micro jig for panfish the first hour or so and managed a mixed bag of rock bass, perch, bluegill and OOS largies. For the most part the bigger bluegill have already moved back out into deeper water. Any weed edge produced a few fish. Eventually my hands couldn't take the cold anymore and I decided to try trolling for bow's. With ZERO experience I tied a 4lb fluoro leader onto my 7' spinning rod and tied a 2" original floating rap to the end. Started trolling, just poured myself a warm cup of coffee was about to take my first sip and my rod goes nuts, drop the coffee and reel in my first ever trolling rainbow - a perfectly pan sized 17 incher! Put up a decent fight on light tackle. Next up was this suicidal bluegill. Fished for another 45 minutes - had three more hits but only landed 1 more bow. Cleaned them up and had fresh fish on the BBQ for dinner. It was my first time keeping, or eating rainbow trout. One fish had a much stronger taste than the other. Could 1 be a stocker and the other a home-grown? Anyways - it was a short outing, and I look forward to learning more about trolling for these little resevoir trout. Any tips are welcome! Cheers, UF

The resevoir opened up for the season this weekend and with bad weather an plenty of work to get done around the house I was only able to sneak out for a couple hours Monday morning. Fished a micro jig for panfish the first hour or so and managed a mixed bag of rock bass, perch, bluegill and OOS largies. For the most part the bigger bluegill have already moved back out into deeper water. Any weed edge produced a few fish. Eventually my hands couldn't take the cold anymore and I decided to try trolling for bow's. With ZERO experience I tied a 4lb fluoro leader onto my 7' spinning rod and tied a 2" original floating rap to the end. Started trolling, just poured myself a warm cup of coffee was about to take my first sip and my rod goes nuts, drop the coffee and reel in my first ever trolling rainbow - a perfectly pan sized 17 incher! Put up a decent fight on light tackle. Next up was this suicidal bluegill. Fished for another 45 minutes - had three more hits but only landed 1 more bow. Cleaned them up and had fresh fish on the BBQ for dinner. It was my first time keeping, or eating rainbow trout. One fish had a much stronger taste than the other. Could 1 be a stocker and the other a home-grown? Anyways - it was a short outing, and I look forward to learning more about trolling for these little resevoir trout. Any tips are welcome! Cheers, UF

I did some major mods to my pontoon, but I love it. It's no bass boat but with a fiance in university a 1 and a half year old daughter, and a new house it's all that I can fit in the budget. Better than a float tube for me because I don't back-pack it and I don't think I'd want to be fishing out of one in march, or october..... Just more comfort, can carry more gear than a tube - has a motor, battery, humminbird graph, you name it..... cheers, UF

right on kickin' - you put in some leg work and go a mixed bag...to bad about the smallies being OOS though! cheers, UF

Yeah Averie has her fair share of fishin' toys Cliff! Her fav's are some magnetic fish that she catches when she's in the bath tub! I think there was 3 fish over 8lbs caught in erie last year... it's crazy. A friend of mine was guiding on friday with two guys who've never fished erie and all three of them landed 6 pounders before lunch!

Great Family report Cliff!! I hope my daughter still wants to come out fishin' with the old man once she's old enough to have a choice! haha Thanks alot, as usual! Hope you, Bly and the kids have a great long weekend... Cheers, UF

great report! I like the coleman boat to by the way!..some cool pix..thanks alot! Cheers, UF

Fished out of Buffalo for the day on weds. If we were on any other body of water it would've been a stellar day, but for Erie at this time of year it was actually pretty tough fishing. Three of us fished hard for 7 hours or so and managed around 70 fish in our boat for the day. Plenty of fish over 4lbs, a few 5lbers each and one of my buddies landed a long but skinny 22 incher which only weighed in at 6.25lbs....not heavy for that length.... There was no rhyme or reason to how we were catching them. Usually when you find them staked up on rock piles it's 1 after another but they were scattered all over the place. We got fish everywhere on everything, from 7 feet of water up to 30 feet. Water temp was between 49 and 52, and fish were caught on tubes, football heads, swim baits, twitch baits, drop shots and Jigging spoons..... Tubes seemed to be the ticket for the bigger fish and the drop shot was pretty well only producing little guys... My first fish of the day, first cast, was a solid 20 inches - so I figure, ah, I'll beat that by the end of the day.....figures, after that I couldn't boat anything over 19, so that's what I ended up measuing for the tourney! Running out.... First fish of the day.... Fat fish... A release... One fish was spitting up shiners, so I tried out a silver jigging spoon and it was the ticket for a few nice ones... A close-up Finally got around to measuring this chunky 19 incher for the tourney...caught on a tube in about 10 FOW.. Good Luck out there this long weekend.. Cheers, UF

tie direct stoty - this is the knot I use... http://www.killroys.com/knots/barrel.htm works great for me. I even use it to tie 4lb fluoro leaders to my 6lb mono for those picky eatin' bluegill! haha Cheers, UF

power pro or stren super braid with Berkley %100 fluoro leader is the way to go. If the water isn't clear, don't even waste time with the leader....my opinion in short dude! cheers

brookies are for woosies! Just kidding Dan - FHR, awesome write up dude. I don't even live in the GTA anymore, or plan to pike fish in the area anytime soon but I still couldn't stop reading until the end. I'm sure it'll help out a fair bit of people. Cheers

yeah I'm trying to teach my daughter that you're NOT supposed to poke their eyes out! And she gets PIEVED when we release the fish - she screams at me for letting them go... I'll upload a vid of it at some point....

my computer's all messed up! haha I had to refresh my browser - finished off the thread, hit post and found that there was two!! haha please delete this one Mods! ciao, UF

I finally got together with the entire family this weekend and of course the weather had to be terrible. My Dad and I were looking forward to hitting the bay since I moved out here last summer. I suggested maybe checking out the cats in Dunnville but we ended up sticking with our original plan and toughing out the weather...BAD IDEA! Neither of us have ever been on the bay before, but with south winds we hoped the bay would be at least a little sheltered from the point. Well, an hour in and the waves started coming over the edge of the boat so we high-tailed it back! I'd have taken some photos but the rain was coming down pretty hard and my fiance would have killed me if I wrecked her camera (again). We did manage a few fish before heading back for shelter. The original plan was perch out by EC10 but it's hard to feel a bite when your little 16 foot boat is going up and down like a bobber. We boated a few smaller perch, so I decided to throw on my perch patterned X-rap and first cast - good hit, a couple minutes later my Dad nets my first LPB pike - a chunky 34 incher. We tossed her in the livewell and headed in closer to shore where the waves weren't so bad for a quick picture then called it a day after a whole hour of fishing! Sunday wasn't rainy, but it was just as windy and the breeze was cold. So we opted to stay off the lake and take my daughter and only niece down to the reservoir for some dock bluegill action. My niece Kaiya didn't know what to think of the fish, but my daughter being the experience blue-giller that she is promptly tried to poke it's eyes out with her finger! Always bring something to keep the live fish in when you fish with kids as it'll keep them busy for hours! And finally a shot of my Dad with his PB 10 inch bluegill just before slicing and dicing the poor little fella! haha Hope everybody has a great work week.. Cheers, UF

browser got messed up - please delete this one!

I can't help with any legal advice but I am sorry to hear about your loss, and I do hope everything works out well for you and your mom in the long run. There sure are some good people on this board! Cheers, UF ps. great name pal!

I think that in this day and age people should have enough common sense to NOT smoke with their kids in the car, but I think making it the law is rediculous. First of all, it'll end up being one of those laws to make the people who pushed for it happy, but they'll never enforce it. Waste of time and tax payers money if you ask me.

Reminds me of the 19.5ft starcraft my old man and I used to have when I was a kid - he bought it, I kept it clean haha Great boat, I'm sure you'll love it! Cheers, UF

Hey all! My old man is coming down from Sudbury for the weekend and we've been looking forward to sharing some water together for nearly a year! The plans were to chase perch and pike in Long Point Bay, but I was told when you get a stronger east wind that the bay can get rough. So I'm wondering two things... 1 - would fishing in Dunnville for channel cats be a viable alternative to get away from the wind? and 2 - would 2 rookies who've never been to Dunnville be able to find their way into some fish? and be safe about it? The boat is a 16' starcraft side consol with 40hp pushing it. Lastly - we have NO IDEA what is involved in channel catfishing so would we need to buy any specific gear? Would Fishmaster have it at his shop (and where is it?) Thanks for you patients and I appreciate any input at all! Cheers! - and good luck this coming weekend!

Double header - you're an ass! haha awesome pix as usual Dave! Thanks for the report! Cheers, UF

Forget the snow - how do I score morning naps?!?!

oh man talk about being jealous!

Hey that's one's a keeper for sure!!!! heh had to say it. congrats dude! UF

NICE - i'm going to have to look into some lights for the Extreme Personal Pontoon if I plan to chase chinooks in it this fall! hahaha great job on the install and great advice lew... cheers, UF