singingdog

Don't buy a rod for the species, buy it for the lure you will be throwing. Finessing 1/8 oz jigs is the same for both bass and walleye, reeling in crankbaits is reeling in crankbaits. A good medium action 6 1/2 or 7' rod will you do you for most applications. You can change the feel dramatically by using different line.

Stained water? You must be fishing different places than I am! Most of the Brook trout spots I fish have super-clear water. Definitly key on current. I don't think lures matter near as much as finding the fish, but I would take small, heavy spoons and jigs.

I don't use bait, so I don't tip with minnows or worms. I will occasionally use a curly tail worm as a trailer.

Yea, I tye lots of jigs. Last year I caught most of my fish - smallies, pickerel, musky, trout - on hand-tied jigs and spinnerbaits. Just like flyfishing, tying your own jigs doubles the joy of catching fish. Jigs are just flys with a weight on them: easy and cheap to tie. Those weedripper heads are made by a local tackle maker. They do a great perch and firetiger patterns. One of the difficulties is finding good jigheads that aren't outrageously priced. I laugh when I see bare jigheads in tackle shops for $1/each. I can tie 4-5 jigs for that price.

My reccomendation is to go to an event or store where you can paddle as many boats as possible. Kayaks are more variable, in terms of performance and "feel, than canoes are: some feel like they are going to spit you into the water in a second, some are stable enough to stand up in. There is no substitute for getting in a few boats and feeling the difference. I know that Adventure Guide is doing a big kayak event, but don't know the date. http://www.advguide.com/

Bunch of nice looking jigs in this thread. Here's some that I tie Walleye jigs on "weedripper" heads. The inline tie makes them great in the weeds. The bottom one is wetted to show the shape they take in the water A batch of new speck/splake jigs. The top 2 are rabbit fur bodies, the bottom one is mallard flank. A batch of 1/16 trout jigs. Some wooly buggers, some streamer patterns and one rabbit hair. Keep the pics coming. It's great to see what other folks are using

Finally, a "real" fishing tournament! Sounds like a hoot. We actually had a kayak bass-fishing tournament up here years ago before the big wave of kayak fishing took off. We combined it with a downriver whitewater race to come up with an overall winner. I believe Pigeontroller's brother won the whole thing. That's a tournament that you could actually call a sport....because it's only a sport if your gear weighs less than you do.

Doh!

Marabou is good. I prefer either rabbit or arctic fox hair. They both breathe at least as well as marabou and are far more durable when toothy fish are munching on jigs. The other benefit to rabbit is that the hide is great for holding scent.

It's fast water for sure. I was bottom-bouncing with 1/16 or 1/8 oz jigs. Stoty, that is a hand-tied jig. It's a black wooly-bugger tied on a 1/16 oz jig head. I use hair as well, but this day it was the wooly-bugger that got all of them

8 degrees in early March! I just had to get out yesterday and do some river fishing. Lots of snow, but a great day to be out. I only got 3 fish, but it was good to be out. The river The fish

Don't rely on Google maps or the Backroad mapbook as your only sources of information. Google maps, at least in this area, can be quite inaccurate when it comes to small side/backroads. The Backroad Mapbooks suffer the same lack of accuracy. In my immediate vicinity, it shows roads connecting through areas that are completly roadless. The fishing info in them is spotty at best. They are a good resource, but I would never plan a fishing trip based on what they say about the lakes in this area.

After last summer, I am a believer. I started using it as a "tough bite" tactic, but ended up keeping a rod rigged with a 1/8 oz giggy head almost all season. It works almost as well on 'eyes and large trout. I was suprised at how well Senkos and Jacks Worms - both perfectly straight baits - worked. The Jacks Worm still doesn't seem to have made it on the radar north of the border.

Sensitivity. If you are doing any kind of finesse fishing, braid transmits more information back to you then any line I have tried. Don't fall for the "invisible" flouro story. Put a short piece of it in a water glass and compare it's visibility to mono....not much difference.

The East gate is where Hiway 60 exits the park on the east (go figure) side.

The hot ticket for big cold-water smallies at Dale Hollow seems to be Float and Fly fishing. It is a bit of a cult down there, but folks catch big winter smallies that way.

All good suggestions. I would add micro-jigs to the list. Here's a few that I tie. They are basically fly patterns on 1/16 oz jigheads: wooly bugger, zonker minnow... For trolling, don't forget about using a spoon/fly combo. A streamer - bugger, muddler, hairwing... - 12" behind a spoon will often increase your hook-ups. The plug that I have had great luck with is the Pins Minnow...probably no better than a Rap, but I like them. In lakes, I find brookies very location specific. Sometimes they are in open water, other times you have to be casting right onto shore to get them. We had a day last year that they were gorging on salamanders. If you didn't get your spinner within 6" of shore, you weren't catching fish.

That was unnecessary. It's a good, thought-provoking question. The regs are a balance between what is absolutly best for the fishery and the need to maintain a recreational fishing industry. Lots of times, in my neck of the woods, I see folks that are completly within the regs doing the wrong thing: bedfishing bass, taking full limits of spawners day-after-day out of a small lake.... Using the regs to ignore good biology may be legal....that doesn't make it right.

The only rigging I have is a single rod-holder just in front of the cockpit. A cart wouldn't last 5 minutes on that trip. It is 1 Km of rough ground with lots of log crossings and steep sections. Dragging a plastic boat, unless it's on really rough rocks, doesn't harm it at all.

You can cover water just as fast with a jig as you can with an inline - or any other lure. I have very good luck while they are shallow on bucktails and rabbit jigs tied to imitate minnows. Another killer is the Yam swim jig body on a jig head. Fish it like a grub.

Wall-to-wall cottages on that lake. Having said that, it is still a pretty good multi-species lake: lakers, whitefish, LM, SM. If you have a boat, you also have access to Mountain lake. Between the two, there is pretty much every type of fishing: 100' deep sections, rocky points/islands, weed flats, current.

Another good reason for skis in the winter and bikes in the summer

I use keel sinkers, or, better yet, heavy sinkers mounted onto those rubber jawed downrigger clips. I clip on the weight anywhere from 10-20' from the lure. When you land a fish, you can reel into the weight, unclip it quickly, then fight the fish with nothing between you and it. The water clarity determines how far away I clip the weight.

I fished swim jigs a lot last season for eyes, LM and SM. I have been using the Yamamoto 3 and 5" bodies on swimjig heads and as spinnerbait trailers with very good success. My best big fish lure this summer was a buzzbait with a 3" swimbait trailer (no skirt). It looks crazy, but casts way better than a typical buzzer and catches big fish. I thijk the swimjig works really well on fish that have seen lots of spinnerbaits. My biggest surprise this year was using them on lakers and splake. I rig them with a circle hook stinger hook through the tail: http://www.swimbait.com/trout/index.html

So, you asked a store to match someone else's price and they wouldn't. Now you are calling them unfair and accusing them of ripping you off? This is whining of the highest degree. It would be fine to post positively and let folks know that store X has a good deal on something, but to slag a store for not price matching, then rant over and over about it is over the top. I am the first to let it be known if a shop offers blatantly poor service, or fails to fulfill their obligation as a retailer, but offering a lower price is not included in that obligation. You asked, they answered. You had every opportunity to shop elsewhere. If they think they can sell that unit for their quoted price, they owe it to themselves, their employees and their loyal customers to do that. Just because you want it for a lower price, they should take a $130 hit? Several folks have mentioned on this thread how hard they work for their $$. Put the shoe on the other foot. Retail is a brutal way to make a living, especially in this age of instant internet price quotes. You walk in and ask the guy to reduce his profit by $130. What are you offering him in return? If you act like you act on this thread: nothing. You are loyal to nothing but price.