LipDip

JohnnyBass I'm goin wayyy out on a limb here but it looks like they were trolling with downriggers. Is it just me or is the chick in the bunboat giving you the 'thumbs down?' lol. Nice colours on the trout.

The realities, as I see them: 1. You live, work and commute in the city. This is where the bulk of your driving takes place. 2. 400-800km round trips?? You been fishing the Amazon all those wknd and not told anybody? Round trips of 400 is being pretty generous, and those are usually easy miles, on the 400/69 Towing.... 3. ....a boat, motor and trailer that weighs basically nothing. It's got a plastic 5gal tank. You can easily not even have to trailer it with fuel. If you were looking at buying a 19' Ranger or big ProV and were going to be doing a PILE OF TRAVEL, you'd be smart to buy a V8. You make maybe one or two monthly drives towing a tiny rig that weighs nothing. Towed my 17' Lund all over hell's half acre with a Jimmy, upgraded at 300,000. Tow it now with a 6 banger Explorer. My Dad and I put close to 700,000 kms on his 6 banger Explorer towing tandem axle trailer loads of rock, green wood in 8' lengths, sand, topsoil. And oh yes...a 17' Boston Whaler every wknd from Port Credit to Point au Baril. 300kms every week like clock work for over a decade. Hard, hard miles. If you think your boat stresses a regular 6 cyl pick-up or SUV to the point of burning more gas or working the tranny/motor excessively, I think you're wrong. That's just my opinion. All I can give you is perspective from a lifetime of personal experience. Not Consumers Digest, not websites, just what I've seen in real life. What you're towing, how often you tow, the distances, and where you do all your non-towing driving (the bulk of your driving, as it turns out) just don't add up to needing a v8. Unless you're making Caesars. In which case, I'll take ten!

JohnssonBass, if you can't look at a lake that size that has that many fish and that many fishable spots and not clean up on it under decent weather, you really need to take up golf. I like your assumption that because you blow on a lake that its fished out or not worth the drive for some other reason. (You came up with a similar theory re: big pike in the winter in Cooks Bay recently. Just because you can't go out with rental gear or demo'd stuff of your own and catch a fish doesn't mean there's no fish there lol. I can tell you that there are plenty of fish there from 12 to 20+lbs, and cayching them isn't a complicated procedure if you know what you're doing and have some gear that's in good working order ie: line not snapping, not hearing your rod crack, having a trolling motor/outboard that are operable ). Head Lake is tiny, and full of fish. How many more beachballs over the plate does a guy need lol?

We drove thru it on our way to fish the Bad R from our home in Kleinburg. I was 9. Today, I live directly on the street that was worst hit, Patterson. Funny how things work out. I remember that green sky, too. I was at University in Ottawa when that ice storm hit in '99. Our condo had power for some reason. Up on the 16th floor looking over a patchwork cityscape of black and lights was pretty eerie. The sky was green a few of those nights, too. Dead of night in January and with no city lights to reflect back up, the skies over the metro area had a chance to show themselves without man-made interference probably for the first time since the turn of the century.

Pretty much the only game in town. Georgie is hard on some and easy on others. I've never had an issue with him over anything. Other guys can't step out of their trucks without getting on his bad side. I don't know what to tell ya on that one. Common sense seems to go a long way with him (I know, imagine that?!)....park your vehicle and trailer in an orderly manner, keep your area clean, don't make a lot of noise, and forget about slipping freebies by him like extra guests etc. I've been in every cabin and they're all exactly what you need on a fishing trip...clean, dry, electricity, cooking stuff and sleeping stuff. At least 2 have been recently upgraded. Cable TV for sports at night and weather. Beer, food and gas 300yds away at Moon Marine. Pretty much the ideal set-up for most, maybe not for others. The longer you deal with him and the more square you are about it, the better everything gets. Most of the people who stay at Westview hunt or fish while in camp, out all day, early to bed/early to rise. If you're looking to party hard or have kids and animals running wild this probably isn't the best choice for you. I can only imagine the assortment of yahoos the average resort owner deals with in a lifetime. Healy Lk Rd sucks, but once you're back there, life's pretty good. It's about half and hour back off the hwy.

Ya but Johnny, you destroy props in the driveway...smacking two on any lake isn't saying much out of the norm for you is it? Par for just about all courses if I remember lol? It's a tiny, tiny lake. Never any need to even trim down your outboard if you've got a decent trolling motor set-up. It's full of fish, been there four times in four very different types of weather/season and filled the boat with both basses, walleye and its full of small muskie. A great lake to bring somebody who's never fished before to get them their mojo. Poking around the underwater slabs of rock+cabbage with jigs is about as complex as we made it for walleye and bass. Any kind of spinnerbait will catch muskie. We stayed away from baits with trebles in there, tons of fish and lots of coontail and cabbage. Great deep weed in this lake as mentioned. Actually a very pretty lake. There's a couple locals you'll see dragging around kill chains of giant bass in small tin boats. Guess that's normal for a lot of lakes. We used black jigs (rubber, hair) black spinnerbaits and black plastics. Pretty well everything we caught was spitting distance from some type of prop-wrecker reef or thick grass bed. A very easy lake to fish, we fished the obvious spots. Beautiful lake to be on late Sept/Oct.

'Crosby doesn't battle like Ovechkin,' 'I'd take him over Crosby.' lol I may have a television with cable you can borrow guys lol. I judge players like lures. Some are flashy and produce nothing, or only produce alongside everything else. Others are reliable and will catch fish when it's tough and have a production record. I ask again....how is Ovechkin any different than any other skilled euro past or present who can't lead and has piled up stats while never even winning on a Nevada Ticket? If you like hotdogging, soundbites, goofy antics and a real penchant for predatory play, Ovechkin is your man. Very quietly Backtrom and Semin appear every bit as deadly as Ovechkin. Both are equally effective. Look what Fetisov, Fedorov etc accomplished while playing like adults. Ovechkin needs to win something or lead a team and worry less about being a goof. Ovechkin=Poor Man's Bure. Headed north, you boys have fun!

The nice thing about Roethlisberger is that despite being 260 with a face-tan, he still genuinely believes he's a hockey player. His hockey hair is off the hook. Crosby? Says very little, bigger the game, better he plays. Already decorated professionally and internationally. No sound bites, no limelight. A playmaker and his team mates love him. Probably the best ambassador in any sport since Gretzky in my mind. Funny, they're both humble, small town guys. You could not pick a better guy to lead a group. It's all action, and a resume of production. Ovechkin? Bigger the game, less of a factor he is. Walk right down the line with this one. World Jrs, Olympics (there's still a Search Warrant out on him), Stanley Cup Playoffs. Not a leader. Even guys on his own team shake their heads at him. It's been documented. At his best in 11-2 games in Decemeber when there's zero on the line. A glorified Pavel Bure if you ask me. The way Ovechkin picks his spots physically is another thread altogether. I think as his act wears thinner and thinner with all that talent and zero results, he just may get his clock cleaned, Evene in today's pansi-friendly league. Yzerman, Coffey, Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr, these guys all "loved to make score goals" just as much as you do. The only difference is they acted like men when they did it. And am I the only one who thinks Ovechkin could be a stunt double for one of the cavemen on the Geico commercials? Crosby may look like he's wearing lipstick a lot of the time, but the shape of Ovechkin's skull and forehead along with his bert 'n Ernie cut really does make him look like Austropolithicus. I think the tale of the tape in the results department will be so lopsided in Crosby's favour ten years from now that it will be a joke we ever compared the two.

Anybody remember when that tornado wiped out all of Garson a few years back? Entire town was leveled. Damages were estimated at over twevle hundred bucks.

You should've just went with a Meegs from the start.

I've got the '04 and '05 Nip toques. I remember finding the lid I blew off the bbq on the lawn a few paces away. I figured if I cooked them I may as well eat them. That was pretty much the last thing I ever made explode. Raw pork will mess you up. My best story from that night was Adam tearing his tshirt into strips and jamming them in his ears because Lew and I snore so bad.

There's no such thing as a Grandma in ten inch.

Wire vs. Fluro isn't a debate. That's my point. There are guys who use and swear by one or both. There's a guy from the OTT R area on this board who uses nothing but fluoro and has done reasonably well lol. Other guys like using wire. You will get sound, reasonable advice from both, on both products. The fact they're using what they've ran up crazy track records using is what's important, not whether it's wire, fluoro, cat gut, nylon, a d-string etc etc etc. For anyone who likes casting, figure 8ing and keeping fish hooked with stubby rods, all I ask is try a long rod for your jerkbaits for just a wknd. Do 50 figure8's on 50 back-to-back casts each with a 6'9 and then with an 8'0. Do them right. Big and deep. How's your back feel? Still want to make good figure8's all day with the short rod? The facts are that long rods cast father, hit harder, figure8 easier and reduce the workload dramatically. If these are three trade-offs you can swallow, try using a long rod. The number of companies still pushing poolcue rods suggests to me that once guys try a longer rod they never go back. It's one of those rare trends in fishing that makes good mechanical sense. I throw a lot of Suicks, Wades, Bobbies, Bulldawgs and would definitely say that jerkbaits are one of my confidence baits. I also use a lot of Grandmas, Jakes, Shallow Invaders, DD's, DDD's, and stuff. The long rods made using them easier for me, definitely give it a try if you get a chance. You sure don't need much effort to sweep/jerk a Suick around using the 8'6. You can start your turn/boatside moves a lot farther out too! I've got 2x 6'9 Premiers, 2x 7'2 Premiers that I've caught a lot of fish on. They've been bundled in the rafters of my garage for about five years now. They're great rods. Just that once I started using 8'6s, I literally had no use for them. They look and feel like an icefishing rod to me. Just way too much work for me to use. These days, my 7'6s are my stubbies, a pain to figure8 and cast with after going to long rods lol. Use what you like, but definitely try a long rod this season. They're widely available, because lots of muskie cuctomers are demanding them. Some guys are using 10'0s too.

Here are some random ideas to think about: -Adjust your expectations according to the water you're fishing in. -For every ten prople who give you pro advice on muskie fishing, maybe two of them will have a solid basis in fact, based on personal experience and long hours, invested intensly. There are more musky internet experts than there are muskie on earth. So far on this thread there have only been three (3) respondants who I've ever seen hold a fish over 40 inches. Been lucky enough to fish with two of 'em. Muskie experts are a dime a dozen. The guys who fish a lot, do well and specialize in muskie are a lot fewer and farther between. People who tell you that 'heavy tackle is overkill' etc etc etc are guys who have not done much muskie fishing, and consider the source when you read their advice column. It's just that simple. Talk is very cheap. And in the age of the Internet, it's free.....$0. -Learn one or two lakes in intimate detail. Famliarity breeds success. -Learn three or four styles of lures in intimalte detail. Familiarity breeds success. -Fish for muskie a lot. Get into the boat with people who fish for muskie a lot. Never pass up a chance to fish with someone who fishes muskie a lot. Lots of them won't be found posting the same 32" fish on 17 different English-speaking fishing boards Monday mornings all summer. Lots of the top guys are never online. If you talk to enough people near where you fish, I can almost promise you the top guys don't have an account, or post very infrequently. You'll learn more in four hours in the boat with a good fisherman than you will in a decade of media. Idon't think there's any arguing this one. -If you have the option for a heavier outfit, buy this one instead of the lighter one. -The trend in muskie rods right now is long. We use 8-9 footers exclusively. As a result, there are great deals on shorter rods (7 to 8') that guys are dumping following the trends. The long rod trend is a good one, though. Check used boards for great deals on good gear. -The trend in reels is big and fast. Same as rods, great deals on reels that people are dumping following the trends. Great gear that has fallen out of vogue is all over the swap boards these days. I'm sure the economy and how it affects people's hobbies plays into this heavily, too. -Handle fish fast, work as a team, cut hooks, one good pic and get them back. -All-rubber and hard+rubber hybrid lures are good. Jerkbaits, skirts, soft tails on hard lures. They all work pretty well. -Learn to make a few basic styles of lures. Spinners are easiest. It's fun as hell and you will catch fish on them. -Learn to paint a few basic patterns, too. And learn to modifty, repair and salvage good lures. Either back on land or in the boat. -Use the gear that you like and have had success with. Make sure it's strong and well-maintained. As long as you're using gear in the 'muskie weight class' and it works for you, ignore all the Bull about 'fluro vs. wire' or 'Shimano vs. Garcia; or 'Ranger vs. Lund.' It's all secondary noise. -TAKE SOMEBODY OUT IN THE BOAT WITH YOU TO CATCH THEIR FIRST MUSKIE, OR SEE THEIR FIRST MUSKIE FOLLOW/BLOW-UP/CATCH.

Au natural for me, some of these recipes sound like you're better off eating a bag of Doritos lol. I like the taste of fresh fish, not so much marinades, crackers, chips, batters, sauces etc. 24" lake trout, block of Crisco, couple lemons, white flour and cold beer on a flat rock is my favorite. Catch 'em and eat 'em, no idea why someone would fill a freezer, old fish for me is anything that's been out of the water more than a couple hours. If I feel like eating fish, I'll go out and catch a couple. Always like a feed of fresh pike on muskie trips. The lard concept is a little iffy for some but it's the best I've used on boat trips, small, no ice and it fries up fish or potatoes fast and light.

Fluoro's leader material. Not made for spooling out a reel and casting, IMO. It's wiry, stiff and tough. Companies should do like Maxima and sell it in little 25yd spools. Its properties don't lend itself well to being stored on a reel's spool and cast, spinning reels especially. I can tell you that 6# XT from Berkley is as tough as everyone else's 12# regular limp mono, makes a great, castable mainline on your reel and if you add a foot of fluoro on the tip of that, you're in business. Back-to-back uni knots or a swivel I've been fishing with the stuff for two years non-stop for everything from muskie to crappie 12 months a year and this is a semi-educated opinion, to be taken for exactly what it's worth in webland. I can cast as far and trouble-free as I want with non-fluoro main lines on reels and I have leaders made of fluoro with over 300 lakers on them (winter, spring and summer 2 to 25lbs, all recycled) and a few muskie and pike to around 49 inches last season. It's like anything else: use it in the right application, it works great. I personally would never load 150 yds of this stuff onto a reel and expect good casting/memory performance. It's leader material. Other types of line are far, far more suited to everyday casting etc than most fluoros are, I think. Maxima, Stren and Seaguar all make excellent fluoro from what I have experienced. One well-made leader's gonna last you a long time. It'll outlive most jig heads, that's for sure. Good luck Cliff, something tells me you could rig a bait to a phone cord and still catch 'em anyways bud. Canadian busniess less apt to play ball and jump to a customers needs than an American...who would have thunk lol. There's lots to learn about customer service and responsiveness from our friends S of the border in many cases.

Awesome rig man! But you'll be shopping for a new truck this time next year after towing that baby with any regularity/distances with a Rav 4 I can almost guarantee you.

I use a 7'0 St. Croix Premier in medium/heavy for jerkbaits, the only ones I use are Bobbies, Suicks, Sledges and Big Daddies. I'm at the front of the boat and being under six feet tall and that much higher above the water, that extra length is really nice. I cast all my pike jerkbaits on a 6'9 Premier in the same action and it's amazing how much more work losing those 3" of blank translates into when casting, retrieving, figure 8ing, setting the hook. Exact same with my 7'6 rods vs. 8'0s. Only six inches difference is huge in so many ways. That 7'0 is also what I throw magnum Bulldawgs with and I've used it a lot trolling fast, close to the boat in shallow water. It's the heaviest action blank I use by a long shot and fun to fish with. I paid $140 for it new.

Wes, 'Icing 'appen...' was my tagline on this board for years! 'Denis, mon amis, if you sign your contract over to me I'll prorate your losses.' Jesus Christ Braden you would too, wouldn't you? 'My ambition is to own all your contracts, run this club my way. I'd make a fortune..' 'Dave is it tough sitting up here, watching your team lose like this' Definitely, Jim. 'You injured your knee in the Peterborough game?' No 'Oh? I though you had' No, I went out in that snow storm last week to start my car. I didn't have a jacket on. I think it may have settled down in around my kidneys....

1. Allow me to quote the late, great Colonel Sanders who said: 'I'm too drunk to taste this chicken...' 2. 'Ned, you went to Princeton, were All-Eastern, weren't you? That's what it said in the yearbook, Jim. 3. 'Marge, I'm not gonna lie to you....Goodnight.' 4. 'It's their ice, it's their rink and it's their fvckin town but tonight, we got our fans with us. They paid their hard-earned money to get here, so lets give 'em a show. Get that stick in his side, let 'em know your there. Get that lumber in his teeth, let 'em know you're there! (Bleed all over them, let 'em know you're there..) 5. 'You can't put those guys in jail, their folk heroes! They're criminals! Yah, well most folk heroes started out as criminals... Sarge, the boys and I want you to have this little memento. It's a Chiefs keyring, you cannot buy these in stores.' 6. If someone tells you they 'used' to fish, they never did.

Trying crappie this wknd and gonna skip the minnows and try crickets. There are tons around right now. OTT fans are pretty quiet, they're all I hear. Still gotta win 4 games though.

You're right squid, Garcias don't really have much of a following or history with muskie fishermen. I was just trying to help with a fairly uneducated guess I'm basing on what I've heard/read, not what I and others have experienced. Pearson, Johnson have been using the same Garcia's since the 1970's, I'm pretty sure they're a viable option. (But they might prefer reels with cheap bearings though, I'm not sure). Tell you what, post pics of the last five muskies you caught last season on a Maina combo and I'll post my last five on those junk Garcias lol. Lots of river fishermen W. Coast and ONT hold line class records for huge salmon on very light leader material, float and fly fishing. Ask some of the experienced river rats like Spiel etc if guys use ten or twelve pound leader material to catch big fish, it's always much much lighter. I say good luck to all and use what you feel most comfortable with, I think you're right about this wknd, she's shaping up nice!

Kevin, 50# line on a bass reel and a light rod won't do it. That line could possibly subdue a small musky eventually, but definitely not a large one, and you'll lose a lot of lures to backlashes on line that light. A good basic outfit with 80# line will cost you about $300, roughly $150/$160 for both the rod and reel. Compared to rainbows, chinooks or even big carp and catfish, muskies don't even rank as fighters...it's all over withing 3 to 5 minutes after the strike. Muskie tackle is for the lures used and to a lesser extent, handling big fish quickly. Guys can land thirty pound salmon on a six pound mono tipped, but they're not using it to heave around half-pound lures or fishing heavy cabbage/banging rocks etc. Ebay, muskiefirst.com and the OFC classified are all excellent sources for used rods and reels, baits also. I have used them all at one time or another and the people are always on the level. If you do a search on Ebay Canada for 'Garcia 6500 Muskie Reels' you'll get all kinds of hits and can probably drive to the seller and get a steal, many go for less that $75. Muskie-action Shimano Compres cost less than $100 and Lebaron's sells them, I think they're outstanding value. One trip throwing baits in the wind with fifty pound line or one decent fish on the wrong gear will have you shopping for upgrades by Monday morning, trust me on that. It's not fair to the fish or you to go in with the wrong tackle, you'll both lose. Nets are the next most important item, most guys want to catch a muskie but have no idea what comes next once they thing's beside the boat. You can get great deals on the same websites, used. Good luck.