Aaron Shirley

I have been fishing Simcoe the past couple of weeks with several friends, and some days have been good, and others no so good. It has not been consistent for me or others I have talked with. Barry had a great day last Thurs, but when I went Sat, it sucked. Two days can make a big difference! We have found fish from 80- to 106-feet of water. Mostly lakers with some whities. The best baits have been Williams Ice spoons and live emerald shiners. I am seeing lots of fish looking at my baits, but most fish have little interest and don't chase the bait up at all. They are off the sonar as quickly as they show up for the most part. When they are more active on sonar and chase the baits, we do much better. Here are a few pics from the last couple weeks. I am going to get back out there this week. Good fishing! Aaron

Hey guys, thanks for the comments. A friend told me this thread was here regarding our on-line videos. Yes, we have a new format this year with streaming Flash videos. We find it better with fewer clicks, and we can add more information on the same page regarding each specific episode, again, with only one click. We realize that some people prefer to download Windows files, but Flash is a more widely used format worldwide, and we have many countries worldwide viewing the videos. Offering both formats is much too cumbersome, so we settled on Flash. We hope the people who prefer to download the vids have good success with the many programs that are available to download Flash. If anyone here has tried any of them and has recommendations for the better programs, please let me and others know. I believe that most of the programs are designed to download Flash from YouTube, so it will be interesting to know if they work with a higher quality Flash vid like on our site. Good fishing, and we hope everyone enjoys our new season of Getting Hooked! Aaron

I haven't had the chance to watch much TV in the past few years, as I am just too busy. When I was younger, my favourite show was the older In-Fisherman with the Lindners on TNN. Enjoyable to watch and I learned a lot from the shows. IMHO it was the best fishing show on television. BTW, thank you for the compliments on Getting Hooked with Aaron & Barry. We do our best to keep the show informative and just have fun doing the hard-core fishing we normally do without the cameras rolling. We have had a lot of great feedback with our 'natural' format, and I would like to thank many of the OFC members for their feedback. Good fishing! Aaron Shirley

Barry and I will be there Saturday and Sunday. We'll be hanging around the Rapala booth a lot, so come by and say hello. Hope to see a lot of other OFC members there. Cheers, Aaron Shirley

I have both the Great Lakes charts and Hotmaps Premium Canada, and I love them both. The Great Lakes charts are quite accurate. The Hotmaps Premium Canada isn't all that accurate, but close. I found that out quickly, narrowly missing a reef one day in the middle of a lake that wasn't on the Hotmaps Premium. The Hotmaps Premium is a great starting point and it gives you most of the structure on the lakes, helping to narrow your search for potential fishing spots... I would say about 90 percent. You do have to be careful navigating with Hotmaps though. Lakes on the Great Lakes Charts that are also on the Hotmaps Premium Canada have more detail on the Great Lakes Charts - FYI. I can't live without both Navionics SD cards. What did we do before we had these? Oh yeah, triagulate spots until you find your spot and mark a waypoint, haha. Which I still have to do on lakes that aren't on the Navionics charts. Aaron

Thanks everyone. It gave me a lot of satisfaction taking him out and getting into fish. It couldn't have gone any better for him. All 50 were not jumbos, we had smaller ones mixed in, but a great 2 hours of fishing with some jumbos I use the Humminbird Matrix 87c combo (with GPS) (discontinued now and replaced by the 757c combo). I thought it was the 787c2 combo that replaced it, but I was mistaken... the 787c2 is a bigger upgrade to the Matrix 87c and newer 757c combos. The Matrix 87c and 757c are great units, and I don't need a better unit for sonar capabilities with GPS. The 747c model has the same sonar properties as the 757c, but without GPS. The only reason I want to upgrade to the 787c2i combo, is for the internal GPS receiver, as I use the unit on the ice, my 12' tin boat and the bow of my big Lund ProV... and it would be nice to have the hydrographic charts with GPS everywhere without having to unmount the GPS receiver from my boat every time to put it in my portable Humminbird box. Good fishing! Aaron

Normark Fin Bore 3 gets my vote. Cuts like butter. Aaron

I was up north on Georgian Bay for our annual New Years with friends, and I had to take my ice gear up with me, as there was finally ice this year. Our friends Janet and Wayne has a young son Ryan that always like to get out fishing when he can. I usually take him out fishing in the boat in the summer when we get together, but he had never been ice fishing before. I had never ice fished this area before myself, and I took Ryan along to try ice fishing for his first time. My expectations were not high, but I was excited to try a new spot on the ice. I took up mostly walleye gear, but unfortunately, the area I wanted to target didn't have safe ice. As a matter of fact, the narrow areas to get out of the shallow sheltered bay we were on was open water. I decided to walk out a little at a time for safety reasons, checking the ice every 50-feet or so. It turns out, it was safe across the entire bay up to the narrows with about 6- to 7-inches of ice. We only had 9-feet of water in the entire bay, so we put out different spoons and started fishing while watching the sonar. It didn't take long after jigging before we noticed fish moving in on the sonar, then the nibble of perch. I got Ryan set up with the Humminbird, and showed him how to use the electronics to trigger the fish to bite. As I was trying to set up another hole for myself, Ryan got into a bunch of great jumbos around 10". Ryan proudly holds up his first fish caught through the ice on a Little Wolf spoon Ryan on an ice fishing roll The snow started to fall heavily at times, but it made for a beautiful picture out there surrounded by great Georgian Bay scenery. Ryan intently watching the sonar trying to coax another bite We got into lots of perch to keep us happy, although we had to keep moving around and drilling holes to keep getting bites. We would get a handful of fish, then have to moce 50-feet and repeat. The size of perch were all over from almost the size of the spoons to 12" long. We got all our perch on the smallest Williams ice jig and Mepps Little Wolf spoons. We didn't try bait, as we didn't have any, and obviously it was not needed. We got around 50 perch in the 2-hours we were out there, so it was good fishing. We kept a dozen jumbos to fry up New Years Eve, with the largest one around 12" long. I got this nice jumbo, the largest one of the day for me Although we were only out for about 2-hours, Ryan really enjoyed the ice fishing experience. We'll definitely try the ice fishing there again if there is good ice next year Good fishing! Aaron

Haha, yep, we are paying for it today walking out that far! We were all soaked with sweat from walking so far, and dead tired... definitely got our exercise! I didn't see many sleds out there, but did see a few close to shore. Hey Irishfield, Tony had it easy dragging the sled out on the bare ice. It was a lot heavier to pull back on the snow... even without Kristi hitching a ride on the sled like she did on the way out Hey gbfisher, how did you guys make out where you were? Was the perchin just as good there? I am going to try a little closer to Gilford next time Greencoachdog, that Humminbird is a Matrix 87 Combo (now discontinued). It is just the unit off the bow of my boat. It just snaps off the bow and into my portable unit. I use it for ice-fishing and my 12' tin boat as well on small lakes and rivers, so I get three uses from one unit. I gerry-rigged my portable box to accept two 6v gel-cell rechargeables, and it works great. Tony liked the idea so much, he got a portable like mine and rigged it up the same way. I helped him do it and took pictures of the entire procedure. I'll have to post it on-line in the new year. I have had requestes by e-mail on how to do the conversion, but it is a pain to keep e-mailing all those pics. I really like that I can see my small perch jig at any depth, or a small jig for whitefish down 85' and see the fish hitting on screen. If I'm not paying attention to the sonar when a fish looks at my bait, I can sometimes catch the action in the history. The only thing is... if I want to use the GPS with hydrographic charts in the unit, I have to remove the GPS receiver from the bow of my boat with two screws and attach the GPS receiver to the portable. This is a bit of a pain, as I still use my boat to fish the Niagara River in the winter. I am going to upgrade to the unit that replaced the Matrix 87 combo with the 787c2i Combo - Internal GPS, so I don't have to mess around with the GPS receiver anymore and save space in the portable box, as the GPS receiver makes for a tight fit in the portable box with the transducer. The 787c2i Combo also has a flasher style view on it, however, I'll be honest with you, I really like the view I have with the history and the real-time flasher style vertical bar to the right of the history. It's nice to have GPS with hydrographic charts in the unit to find specific spots and see where we are on the structure. It takes the guess work out of the equation and allows precision. Whenever I find good winter spots, I can mark a waypoint and use them year after year. Good Perchin'! Aaron

I went out of Gilford on Cooks Bay on Lake Simcoe yesterday for perch with my fiance Kristi, Tony and Johnny, and did we ever have a blast. We had constant action all morning until we left around 1:30pm. The average size was a little small, but we had bigger fish move in at times with different schools. There was about 4" of black ice all across the bay, and some areas had a layer of white ice up to 5" on top of the black ice. It was bare ice in the morning, which made the walk slippery (cleats would have been golden). We walked out way past all the other anglers in hopes to get into great numbers from unpressured perch, but we learned after that most anglers close to Gilford did very well. After we got to our spot, I started to set up my hut, and Johnny and Tony started getting into fish. It started to sleet/wet snow just after I set up the hut. I stopped to take a few quick pics of the guys before finishing setting up inside. Johhny in the background reeling in a perch Tony gets a nice fish on a jighead and craw I finished setting up in the hut with seats, the Humminbird sonar and heater, which Kristi was happy about, as she was comfortable and dry Kristi in the hut warm and dry as the sleet fell outside Kristi with a nice sized perch she caught on a W2 Jigging Rapala Typical schools of perch that moved through on sonar... the screen was full from the bottom 10-feet of the water column at times. Every time I saw a new scool move in, I let everyone know, and we nailed fish. It was great to see the lures and fish on sonar when the bite slowed down a bit, as I could lift my lure above the fish and trick them into biting or target suspended fish I noticed up higher.. it's almost like a video game Our hot set up in the hut was a size 8 black Gammakatsu octopus hook tied 12" up the line with an Exude nymph, and a small Mepps Little Wolf spoon (pink and white) or Cyclops spoon (gold) on the bottom. We even got double headers on the same line when the perch were thick. Most fish came within 10-feet of bottom suspended. We tried to target the top of the school for the most part, as it was easier to see our lures and perch hittimg them. When the school thinned out and got closer to bottom, we would let our lures down to the fish. I popped out of the hut a few times to check on the guys, and took a few pics. Tony gets into a fish Tony holds up a couple larger than average sized perch We got some larger perch throughout the day from 10" to 12" to keep us happy. Near the end of the day I tagged a true jumbo on a Mepps Cyclops spoon that was the biggest of the day without a doubt (don't know how big, didn't measure or weigh it). Tony even caught a small muskie about three pounds, which was pretty wild. He said there wasn't any fin clips on it, but I don't know if MCI and the OMNR clipped the ones they stocked or not. No pics of the muskie, it went right back down the hole. As we were about to pack up and leave, I got this shot of the perch tally for both Kristi and I at 43 perch. We released about 6 perch for every one we kept. If you get a chance, get out to Cooks Bay and get perchin'! Good fishing! Aaron

Blaque, You cannot use the Fish'NChip anywhere near shore or navigational buoys. The card is meant for fshing only and has no navigational info. Since you are close to the navigation buoy at Seneca Shoal, the Fish'NChip card will not work. Your Gold chart will be working for safety around navigational buoys. You must be farther than approximately 5 miles from any navigational buoys before the Fish'NChip card will become effective. When you are far enough off shore, switch the Gold for Fish'NChips and you should see all the high detail. Not very useful for anglers fishing close to navigational buoys. Here is a link for more details: Navionics Fish'NChip You will need to click on North America, FAQ's, then Fish'NChip, as the exact link redirects back to the home page. Good fishing! Aaron

Hi Raf, The pictures in my recent post with great fall colours were taken this past Saturday in the Haliburton area. Fall colours in Haliburton Cheers, Aaron

That can't be correct. I was on Lake Erie (Port Colborne) this Sunday for smallies and the surface temp was 63 F. I would check that info again. Aaron

Thanks for the comments guys. If I remember correctly, the surface water temp was between 56 F. and 58 F. We spent time on different lakes on the weekend. Cheers, Aaron

Blaque, you will be fine with a glass boat right now. People use aluminum boats when the ice flows start, usually in January, as aluminum is more forgiving when navigating through ice flows. Good fishing! Aaron

LOL, yeah I was a dumbass not to check the forecast that far north. I wasn't thinking.. but you can bet your biggest smallmouth I will be more prepared next trip! Blaque, thanks, I do like to get creative with photos. The fall colours in the background make for some really nice shots Good fishing! Aaron

Give the same respect you get from some boaters. Many times, some boats figure out that the fish are schooled in a certain area of the drift and target that area of the drift exclusively on longer drifts. Some times, the rest of the drift is almost devoid of fish. It all depends on the circumstance and your own point of view of ettiquette. I have always tried to fish those "hot spots" in the drift while giving other boats respect at the same time. It isn't always easy when the river is busy, but I try to cut in where there is a big gap of boats close to the top of the hot spot. The busier it gets on a drift, the more difficlult it is to cut in and still have respect, so going to the top of a drift and drifting fishless water above the top of the hotspot may be the only option if you want to have ettiquette. On drifts like the Queenston backdrift that are really short, I always go to the top of the drift. My biggest pet peeve there, is people that drive their boat right up the middle of the drift that anglers are fishing. When you drive your boat over the fish, it puts them down for a while. If yake your boat to the far outside of the drift when you want to start a new drift, you will not tick everyone off As for bait in the fall, roe, roe and more roe lol. Salmon, brown and steelhead eggs all work, but I prefer brown or salmon eggs in the fall. Egg immitations can also work well, like Jensen Eggs, Exude eggs, UB Fishin eggs, yarn and corkies. All drifting on three-way rigs. As the winter sets in sometime in December, it is good to take more baits with you, like Kwikfish, streamers, pink worms, steelhead roe or skein etc. Just remember, the main baits are always emerald shiners (or immitations), salmonid eggs (or immitations), or pink worms. I would not recommend fishing above the dams if you are new to the lower Niagara River. People have died fishing there with the strong currents. From Queenston down river has lots of fish and is relatively safe. The fishing will not really pick up there until November, and really gets good later November. Here is a link to a couple of Niagara steelhead shows we filmed, there is some good info for a someone new to the river: Niagara River steelhead - Aaron & Barry Niagara River steelhead with TonyB Good steelheading! Aaron

Sweet steelies! Note: I would think twice about putting your float reel in the water where you walk around. The water has micro sand particles that will get into the reel. Sorry if you already know this and clean it after your day of fishing. Just thought I would point it out because I hate when that happens to me. Great day of fishing! Aaron

Very nice Simcoe smallies! WTG Aaron

I had the pleasure of fishing with Jimmy Dodd in the Haliburton Lakes on the weekend. Chris, Bob and Jeff were also up there with us, and it was a blast. Thank you to Chris Giles and Jim Dodd for the invite at the last minute, I look forward to next year already. Good smallmouth fishing during the day, great company, cards and beer at night What else is better than that? How did you guys make out on Sunday??? I will mention though, that I showed up north dressed very lightly and wearing sandals. Holy crap was it cold up there at around 3 Degrees C.! It's a good thing I brought up insulated Kodiak boots and my Lund Gore Tex rainsuit! We live in the banana belt here in Southwestern Ontario! I had a great time on the Haliburtons, and I would like to personally thank you for having me out on your boat Jimmy. It was nice to get out on someone elses boat for a change. It was a Husky Jerk, X-Rap, carolina rig, drop shot and tube jig bite up there. We got them anywhere from 6-feet to 25-feet deep along rocky and weedy shoreline. Here are some shots from the Haliburtons... Jeff with a nice fish Jim (left) caught this smallie on a jerk bait, and Jeff (right) jumps into the pic Jimmy with a great northern bronzeback Jim with a slightly bigger than typical sized bass for the Haliburton area in the fall Jimmy Dodd pretty much put on a clinic for me on his favourite fall watersheds. Jim had a hot hand with several fish over 3, a few close to 4 and one close to 5-pounds. We all caught many fish from 3-pounds and under to keep us all busy. Here are a bunch of nice pics from day two with Jim and his bass. Just awesome colouration on these true northern bronzebacks Thanks again boys! Aaron

That's too funny Rick. Nice job on the muskie. Maybe I should buy a shark rod and go fish Bronte lol. Aaron

Nice bass Gavin, WTG! Who says ya need a boat to catch big buckets So you have gone galavanting all over Ontario's northern parks, only to get your PB bass in downtown Toronto, that is kinda funny. Good to see you getting into some nice fish! Good luck in your quest for one over 5lbs. Aaron

Hey guys, I fished the harbour for bass on Sunday from 8:30am to 11:30am (didn't know about the tourney until I got out there). I launched out of Lasalle. Wow, it was a very tough few hours of fishing! I have never seen the water levels so low before. Many of the shoreline spots I normally fish were dry! It must be down close to 5-feet. Anyway, we joined in that 'conga line' of boats briefly to take our turn casting at 'em. Saw you out there Rich, and also saw Daj out there. My friend Mitch lost a good largie there and we decided to move. I got about a 2.5-pound smallie on finesse tactics on another spot, and that was it for us. Saw a few good largies, but they seemed to have lock jaw. We did see a bass boat that got into two largies in one spot we hit... on a wild coloured bait for the bay. Good to meet you guys. Was going to cast Lasalle just before we left, but there were already bass boats there and decided not to beat a dead horse and give them their space. The bay can be good at times Rich, but it can also be a tough bite as well. Congrats to those that got into a few on tough day! Good fishing! Aaron

IMHO Any coho 12-pounds or more is a good fish, and over 15 is a great fish. I have been getting into some good fish out of Bronte this year. Its' very nice to see Aaron Here is a coho on the larger size that I have been getting out of Bronte this year.

There is nothing like the feeling of hitting a nice Chinook from shore eh? Congrats on your first... I'm sure you will be a regular spoon chucker like the rest of us now BTW when I use braid casting for kings, I also use a mono or fluoro leader... I learned my lesson years ago with a few less lures. I use a 6' leader myself. Good salmon fishing! Aaron