singingdog

It's certainly not invisible, but neither is Vanish. It's a good braid, but I prefer Power Pro.

You have plenty of hard baits for targetting bass. If I were going to add anything to that collection of hard baits, it would be some shallow-running cranks: bombers, Rap DT4s....something to bang cover with. One thing to think about if you are primarily shore fishing is castability. I would add a couple of casting spoons - little Cleos are my faves, but lots of them work - to your arsenal. They cover water as well as a spinner bait, and you can throw them farther than just about any lure around. If you are fishing weeds, trade out the treble for an offset worm hook and T-rig a worm, grub or fluke: presto! a weedless spoon that will reach fish farther away than just about any lure you can throw. You can significantly increase the castability of those buzz-baits by removing the skirt and rigging a grub, plastic frog, or fluke onto the hook.

Something that the trout will hit! Sorry, couldn't resist. I normally troll spoons for lakers. My best producer is a williams wobbler, 1/2 and 1/2. After that, I would try a jointed floating rapala or a kwikfish.

One of my favourite rods is a ML Series One. I love it for open water fishing where I don't have to horse fish out of cover. Great light-jigging and unweighted plastics rod.

Jigging (if you know where the fish are). Try a dropshot rig with a heavy tube jig on the bottom and a smaller bait - white flukes work - about 2-3' above the tube jig. Trolling: I use an outrigger clip with a large sinker attached. I clip the downrigger clip straight to my line about 15 feet above whatever lure I am trolling. When you have a fish on, you can reel in, remove the outrigger clip and fight/land the fish with nothing between you and the fish. I have used this system down to about 70' with good luck. The second trolling method I use is a FishSeeker. Kind of like a Dipsy diver, it is very good at targetting certain depths by using a series of holes that adjust the angle of dive. It flips over when a fish hits, so there is no drag while landing a fish. I found mine at BPS.

I'm guessing that the vast majority of "big name" - mizmo, strike king, gambler... - tubes are made in the same place, then just packaged differently. I certainly haven't noticed a difference between the name brands. Some of the "premium" tubes out there (can you say coffee?) are IMHO marketing hype. I look for good prices first, colour second, salt....last. All that salt on the outside of a tube is gone within 10 seconds of it being in the water. Definitly look for some smaller tubes; Mizmo makes a good one. They can save the day when the bite is tough.

I would definitly be careful. Ice conditions this year are strange. Head lake - right in Haliburton - has had ice for over a month, with sleds on it daily. Kennisis lake and Horseshoe lake both had lots of open water right up until a week ago. We definitly lost ice during that last thaw, with open water showing up anywhere there is current.

There you go....there is probably no better reason to buy them than this. If you believe it's going to catch fish, your going to fish it hard.

Well, I didn't call them crap and lord knows I don't know all: I just added my own first-hand experience. If they work for you, great. I still believe that level of realism - which is the only thing that sets these lures apart from other cranks on the market - is totally unnecessary. But, if they give you confidence, then that's all that counts.

I've used both the perch and the craw cranks. IMHO, they are not worth the extra $. The perch cranks didn't run true out of the box (no, I don't have to tune other cranks, especially ones this expensive). The craw cranks run better, but that level of realism is just not necessary in a reaction bait. I also find the craw cranks hang-up much more often than other "combat cranks". For those applications, I would take shad raps and bombers over the Koppers any day.

It's very lake-specific right now. Smaller lakes may be good to go, but larger lakes still have lots of open water on them.

Lots of jig hype out there, especially for a lure that is essentially a hook with a hunk of lead on it. I look for a good hook and a good price. If you are fishing them hard, you are going to lose quite a few of them...you don't want to be throwing jigs that are so expensive that you will be too cautious with them. There are only 3 jig colours: dark, light and in-between. I fish dark brown or dark green 90% of the time, unless I am swimming them, then I fish white or something close to it. I would probably do just as well using black/blue or black/purple. IMHO the trailer is more important than the skirt. As far as I am concerned, the skirt is just there to slow the fall of the jig. Most of the time I fish jigs without a skirt at all and have just as much luck as with skirted jigs. Don't forget about Trigged plastics. If you are fishing cover, they will normally perform just as well as a jig at a lower cost.

If Haliburton is any comparison, I wouldn't be venturing out soon. Larger lakes are still mostly open. Smaller lakes have been frozen for 2 weeks, but not very solid.

It's fairly obvious that the big 3 just don't know how to do business in a modern economy - an economy that is not going to go away no matter how much hand-wringing folks do. Is that where we should be putting our money? Do we really want to nurture companies like this? I certainly don't. Do I want to take care of workers that, through no fault of their own, have ended up in a dire situation? Yes. I see these 2 things - bailing out incompetent businesses, and taking care of workers - as 2 completly seperate issues. If we are going to invest billions of dollars into something, lets invest it in the people and in industries that have proven they are going to do business in a sustainable way. Do another kind of math. Take the bailout $ that the big 3 are requesting, and divide it by the number of workers that the big 3 have. With that kind of per capita investment, incredible packages could be developed to transition, retrain, workers and develop innovative industries.

Jigs are supposed to be fuzzy Nice ties bigred. The fish don't care where the beads are. Personally, I put them on the way you did...one less step.

A thread only goes south when people start responding to the disturbers. The guys that want to argue are laughing when you respond to them....you are giving them exactly what they want. Nothing shuts up a troll faster than not being responded to.

A 3oz weight on a snapswivel is a great lure retriever. Clip it onto your line and let it go down and knock against the lure. Works great on wood.

I used baitcasters for the first time this summer. They are good for some things: super accurate casts to cover being the #1 thing for me. As for the other benefits that are often attributed to them - speed of retrieve, casting distance, hookset, speed of casting - I just didn't experience enough of a difference to believe that it's significant. I'm no pro, but I can toss something way farther, especially lighter lures, with a spinning reel. Bass pros have really popularised them, but they have very different needs than most casual fishers. On the downside, I find them much more tiring - I have some wrist problems - to use all day. You are fighting the torque of the rod wanting to turn over in your hand.

Good post! I saw a great presentation a few years ago about ice safety. One of the things that struck me was the stat about people falling through the ice and how they die. Nearly 100% drown, virtually none freeze to death. The presenter said that it takes a few minutes to drown, but you would survive partially submerged for 7-8 hours. People drown because they keep trying to get out of the water, exhaust themselves and slip under. The presenter said that almost everyone that dies would survive if they crawled over to the edge of the ice, got their arms up on the edge, and let them freeze in place. That way, you can just hang and wait for rescuers. Sounds good in a warm room....I don't know if I would have the presence of mind to do it in icy water.

My experience - as short as it has been - is that trout fishing is as much about exploring, map reading, exploring, making contacts, and exploring as it is about wetting a line. 3 years ago, I would have told you that the softwater trout fishing in my area was marginal at best. This fall, I figure I have landed close to 100 rainbows and several OOS lakers (all released successfully), and I'm not a good trout fisherman. It doesn't help that trout can be so 'off and on': if you find a new stretch of stream that seems promising, but get no bites, that doesn't mean there are no trout there. Get to know the folks chasing trout in your area, hang out in tackle shops, join a club....it will take awhile, but if you let those folks know that you are keen AND are going to protect the resource, the info will come to you gradually. 1 good tip from someone that knows where fish are can save you months, maybe years of searching on your own.

If you don't want to do it yourself, look up Jamie Dors at Paddlesports repair. He does great work at very reasonable prices.

Yep, it's hard to keep track of. My favourite art quote is from Andy Warhol: "Art is whatever you can get away with." I use that with my students all the time.

Not the fish, the fisherman. Beautiful day, great water level and the rainbows were biting. Picked my buddy up after school and headed to the river to take advantage of the beautiful day. First fish of the day My buddy's first ever rainbow! A couple of the larger ones. A 2lber is a good fish for this stream, a 3lber is a monster. Dinner.....yum! All were caught on 1/16 oz jigs, either an olive woolybugger pattern, or pinkworm pattern. No floats....this stream is fast enough, and the eddies small enough, that floats are tough to use.

When I said "easy to hunt" I meant with dogs...sorry, should have clarified that. Still waiting for a pic, even of some tracks.

I'm not big on tournaments, so I find it pretty light on content outside of the tourney results. I wouldn't subscribe.