singingdog

The snow was very localised. Minden got about 12o cms, but Haliburton Forest got very little out of the same storm. The north end of Haliburton Lake only got about 10 cms. It's -22 here this morning, and most lakes right around Haliburton have very little snow on top of the ice. I would imagine there will be lots of small lakes with enough ice by this weekend.

My deck looks a bit like that, except you can't see the table anymore, and the snow is up to the top of the deck railing. We went from virtually no snow on Tuesday, to head-high snowbanks yesterday morning. It is definitely going to slow the ice down, with no really cold nights forecast in the next few days.

Yep, there is some DNA confirmation of cougar presence in Ontario. That same DNA evidence confirmed that it was an escapee (it was genetically related to Latin american populations). There seem to be a few around, but no proof whatsoever that they are wild animals instead of escapees.

Here is an interesting excerpt from the Easter Cougar foundation. The bolding at the end is mine.

"Sightings are the great conundrum in eastern cougar research. As reliable as sightings may appear to be, our experience – and the experience of wildlife agencies – is that the vast majority of cougar reports are misidentifications of other animals. Although the ECF has fielded hundreds of first-hand accounts and evaluated countless pieces of evidence, and while there remains always the possibility of a released or escaped cougar turning up, our sighting hotline has never produced a confirmation. The evidence we receive as photographs and videos, by and large, are of the cougar’s smaller wild cousin, the bobcat, housecats, and less often, dogs and deer. Large tracks consistently turn out to be coyote, dog, or black bear.

As much as we’d love to believe cougar sightings – and many of us at the ECF first joined the search inspired by so many reports – we can only conclude that there is a profound misapprehension inherent in these reports. Where cougars are well established, any knowledgeable individual can find evidence in a few days. Yet, our own field searches, sometimes within hours or a day of a sighting, have failed to produce evidence, and years pass between confirmations."

John,

In your original post, I think you are comparing two different things- - maybe not apples and oranges, but at least oranges and grapefruit . Sharing your expertise by helping out other real-estate agents is a very different thing than guiding: less pressure, more educated clientele, different circumstance.

As a fairly successful kayak fisherman, I have had numerous offers to guide. I am on the water almost 100 days/year and catch my share of large bass. I don't guide at this point for the simple reason that I don't want to have that kind of relationship with fishing....I don't want to "need" something from it. I fish for a variety of reasons, foremost amongst them is to get away from pressure and the need to produce. I love catching fish, and work very hard at it, but I don't want to give up the luxury of deciding when to work hard and when to kick back and enjoy the scenery. If I know that a frontal system is going to shut down the fish, I want to be able to stay off the water and get something else done, not have to meet somebody at lake X and thrash the water with spinnerbaits when I know the fishing won't be any good.

I love to teach and make a fair bit of my living as an artist doing just what you described: sharing my hard-earned knowledge with others that pursue one of my passions. I'm willing to do it with art because that is where I make my living and it is "work": I expect it to be a grind sometimes. I also train other folks that want to be teachers. Yes, it can be a joy, but it can also be a PIA when you are dealing with someone that believes that they shouldn't have to go through B,C,D and E to get from A to F and feel that by paying me to share knowledge with them, they are entitled to expect miracles.

At this point, I do not want fishing to ever become that.

Well, as is so often the case, I was wrong. 3 nights ago ice started forming on smaller lakes and sheltered bays. The forecast looks good, with more cold nights on the way. A small lake just down the road from my place went from entirely open one night to completely skimmed over with ice by then next morning.

As early as 3 weeks ago, rainbows were being caught in 3' of water in Dorset- area lakes. If you aren't having luck trolling, try casting to structure like rock piles or logs. If they are tucked in close, they are often within a couple of feet of shore, where it's tough to troll for them.

Shallow. With water temps the way they are, they will be shallow, chasing food. I find lake rainbows very nomadic: moving around a lot. Trolling is a great way to search for them.

We are going to need some good cold nights before any ice forms. Water temps are still above 40C.

Great report, awesome fish!

Word of advice....keep those lakes to yourself. I have a few of those and learned the hard way to not let anyone else in on them. All it takes to change a lake like that forever is one boat with 3 guys that like to keep big fish.

No ice at all yet. Most years, Jan 1 would be a bit dicey for getting on most of the lakes in this area.

Nice fish. Care to share the depth you were catching them at?

Nice LM! Congrats on a good day. That looks like a Big O, not a shadrap.

a bass steelie dilemma is a good dilemma to have.

You got that right. It's not even a dilemma where I live: no steelies. This is the only time of of year that I think it might be cool to fish in Southern Ontario.

Patience, what is that ?

 

But I still want to try and get a bigger bass than my 6lb er I caught this summer.

 

Is that a reasonable expectation at this time of the season for bass?

Reasonable? Depends on how much time/effort you want to put out. As soon as you are targetting 6lb+ smallies, you are playing a game of diminishing returns. Even in the summer, on good water, you are going to have to put in your time to beat that (there are worse problems to have). This time of year.....get out the tubes and keep your hand off the reel crank.

The truly pressing question right now is Smallies, or Muskie?

Yep, that has been the question for me the past couple of weeks. Do I spend a couple of hours sitting and waiting for smallies to hit, or a couple of hours paddling and trolling for musky? At least I stay warm trolling

The "fall feedbag" was over several weeks ago. It is really an earlier fall phenomenon that is marked by cooling water before the turnover (at least on the lakes I fish). Smallies and LM tend to become more nomadic, school up, and get really aggressive. If you can hit it, it's a blast but very often short lived as the fish have a tendency to move-on quickly.

Once the water gets down to around 50 degrees (again, for the lakes and rivers I fish), the bass fishing changes dramatically. It becomes a patience game, with very slow presentations to finicky fish that hit very lightly. It can be worth it: I have caught more 20" + smallies in the last 3 weeks than the rest of the season combined, but you have to be willing to put the time in.

In my experience, there are 2 types of bass fisherman: summertime bassers, and year-round bassers.

Summertime bass fisherman are used to predictable fish that hold to easily recognizable hot spots and hit aggressivly most of the time. Topwater, spinnerbaits, cranks are the typical arsenal of summertime bass fishing.

Year-round (or 6 months in the stunted bass season of Ontario ) bassers are willing to target fish that are much more difficult to find, require slower, deeper presentations, and hit like a finicky walleye.

Bass or trout in November? When I want action this time of year, I fish for trout. If I'm feeling very patient: bass.

Slow, slow, slow, and very little movement. If you normally twitch a dropshot, let it sit.

Bass do not quit feeding in 42 degree water, but do get lethargic and very finicky. There will be the very rare day that they hit a reaction bait like a crank or a spinnerbait, but most of the time you are looking at a very light bite on slow or deadsticked presentations.

Quite a few different finesse presentations will work, but you have to have the confidence to believe that it is going to eventually get picked up. I switch from plastics to rabbit-hair jigs at about the mid 40s.

Jigging spoons, tail spins, and blade baits fished just off the bottom are another way to go. I generally don't "pop" them: just a subtle lift and drop.

You might catch one or 2 fish with a cranbait, but they'll be few and far between if you're targeting Bass. An X Rap with long pauses would be a better choice... But!... there is one bait that is overlooked and really shines at this time of year...

 

It's the vibrating blade bait!, like the Cicada and others.

 

Here's a link with some tips.

 

http://fishsenselures.com/fish_sense_lures_how_to.htm

I'll second that. The blade bait is largely overlooked as a cold-water smallie bait. When I go looking for them in tackle shops, the owners always tell me "but those are for ice-fishing".

I haven't been able to buy a bite on a crankbait for the past couple of weeks. Most of my fish have come on slower, smaller presentations: tubes, 4" senkos, finesse worms, hair jigs. I have had a few on heavy, compact spinnerbaits worked deep along weed lines.

Maybe I should qualify my comment. I don't argue that he has a legal right to keep the fish. I also wouldn't expect slayingm to usurp that right and make the guy put it back. Jealous? You bet. Any smallie fisherman worth his dropshot rig would be jealous of someone landing a fish like that.

The only reason that I think it's a shame, is that the possibilty of ever re-catching that fish is gone now. For me, knowing that a monster is down there waiting for me to do all the right things, far outweighs the benefit of having it mounted on the wall never to be caught again.

Beautiful fish. It's a shame he kept it.

Yep, Kawartha lakes are huge surface area, with very shallow water. Smaller lakes with depths over 50' will hold heat much longer than huge lakes with 10-20' depths.

The lakes I have been on in Haliburton are about 47 F. Looks like a great weekend.

IMHO, given that almost all populations of Steelhead in Ontario rely on natural reproduction a 2 fish limit is still far too high.

Not all rainbows in Ontario are steelhead

There are only 3 colours of senkos: dark, light and in-between. I throw dark green 90% of the time, but would throw black if I ran out.

They are definitly slowing down around here. Water temps are down to about 48 degrees. The bite has slowed down considerably in the last week. Still, if the weather breaks I will head out looking for the big ones.

Size is the least accurate field mark for virtually all bird ID. Numerous studies have shown that even experienced birders misjudge size. Unless the bird is sitting next to something that is familiar and of a fixed sized (leaves don't count), it is incredibly difficult to tell the difference between crow-sized and pigeon-sized.

SylvanOwner's ornithologist friend is smart to not "put more than just a few $$ on it". Sharpies and Coopers are very difficult to ID with just a few field marks; which is all you are ever going to get from a picture. This is where "gis" comes in. An experienced observer would ID a moving Coopers/Sharpie in a couple of seconds by watching the way it moves, the way it flies, it's overall shape.....An inexperienced birder would spend 15 minutes trying to see if it has a square tail or not. Ironically, the gis would be far more accurate than any one field mark. This is apparent at hawk-watch stations, where experienced observers ID raptors very accuratly at distances where no field mark is visible.

The concept of "gis" is from WW1 and WW2. Civilians were trained to observe and ID aircraft, with the ultimate goal of reporting enemies in domestic airspace. GIS (some people claim it stands for "general impression and shape") Rarely could you see all the identifying marks of an aircraft, but you could assemble a good ID from flight characteristics, sound, shape and other factors.