singingdog

River smallies can be addictive. I would stack them up, pound for pound, against any game fish in this area. Hooking one of those fish in 15' of water and reeling like crazy as he launches for the sky is an unforgettable experience.

Went for a wade on a section of the Gull river and had a couple of nice smallies.

These are two of the larger ones. Many others in the 15-18" range (the cork on that rod is 7" long). Seems like the reaction bite is off - I can't seem to buy a spinnerbait fish for the past 2 weeks - but tubes and finesse worms are catching them.

Went for a wade on a section of the Gull river and had a couple of nice smallies.

These are two of the larger ones. Many others in the 15-18" range (the cork on that rod is 7" long). Seems like the reaction bite is off - I can't seem to buy a spinnerbait fish for the past 2 weeks - but tubes and finesse worms are catching them.

About 3 weeks ago I was on Grass Lake in Haliburton. The water was virtually filled with those. I guessed at the time that a 5 gallon bucket of that lake water would have had 50 small jellyfish in it and the entire water column - I could see down about 8 feet - looked to be that dense. First time in 20 years up here that I have seen them.

Try out around Snake Island, which is out the channel and in the Bay. Nice size smallies around there. Clear, clear water, so take colours accordingly.

Bucktail or a rabbit jig: fairly weedless (spoons and bodybaits are for open water), durable, and catches lots of fish.

Spinnerbaits are great when the bite is on, but the fish have to be fairly active for a spinnerbait to work.

Grubs are great but wear out fairly quickly.

If you can't fish a jig from bank, you are confused about how to fish them . You can swim a jig just as well as any other lure.

Pike and Musky? Give me a big bucktail for them anyday.

Depends on what you really mean....

1. fish that you have on then toss the lure, or

2. solid hits that don't end up in hook-ups

Plastic frogs are the all-time high for #2. So much so that I don't use them anymore. Otherwise, spinnerbaits and jigs are right up there for highest percentage of hookups that result in lost fish.

I am kayaking for 5 days off of Phillip Edward Island. I fish mainly for smallies, but am open to just about anything that can be caught from a kayak. Anybody fish that area and want to give me some advice?

Thanks!

LM and SM are hitting like crazy right now on most of the lakes around here. They are getting lots of pressure, but I find that right around dark is a great time to go out and generate a lot of action. My best nights have been on buzzbaits and swimjigs.

Well, that't the question isn't it? Where are they? (A way better question than "What lure" or "What colour") I was on Big East the other day - a classic rocky shield lake with SM and splake in it. I loaded up all my "deep water" tackle and searched the drop-offs, rocky shoals, flats with boulder transitioning into sandy bottom..... Finally found the fish, big ones and small ones, right against the shore in small pockets of weeds that had a downed tree nearby. Caught fish right into mid-day in 3-6' of water on weightless plastics after dragging tubes and diving cranks around all morning.

SM, in my limited experience, are very nomadic in clear shield lakes. Lots of articles will tell you that they go deep in the dog days of summer. In the last week, I have been catching them out of the weeds, acting more like LM than SM.

Bill,

Although I usually use smaller hooks, using different sizes is a good way to customize the action on a senko: the bigger the hook, the faster the fall. In current, or when I am twitching them more like a fluke, I will use a larger hook. Most of the time I use the smaller, lighter hook for easier hook sets.

One trick that works very well for me, if they are short biting and I am missing them: pull in the senko, immediatly wacky rig it on whatever hook you just threw it on, and toss it back to the same place. Quite often that will get a fish out of that spot.

Yep, senkos work well on 'eyes. Don't know why that would be a surprise, eyes eat a lot of the same things that bass do, and senkos work great on bass.

A 4/0 is a big hook for a senko. I fish the 5" with a 1/0, or quite often with a circle hook. If you are getting "peck peck" kinds of hits, those are probably small fish. Bigger fish have a tendency to pick them up and move with them. Some days you can hook-set right away, other days you will have to wait as long as 10 seconds. If you wait a long time, it is easy to gut-hook fish. If that is the case, and you aren't fishing really heavy weeds, think about going to a circle hook, either wacky rigged or through the nose of the senko. The circle hook rarely gut hooks fish, even when they are swallowing the bait.

The real strength of a senko is the wiggle it does as it falls. The more rigging you put on it (more, or bigger hooks) the less wiggle you get.

There are no documented cases of a black cougar in North America....yes, colour variations occur in many animals, but not all colour variations occur in all animals. More than likely, the black ones being sited are escaped leopards or jaguars (both different species than a cougar). The wide range of the sightings could be the same animal: Jaguars in the wild can easily cover 80 miles/day when they are roaming.

Actually 12Kg is more like 26Lb, I think the problem is he was using the old imagination scale.

Oops! Thanks....I knew there was a reason that I don't teach math.

I haven't heard anyone present this possiblity: the scale was set to Kg, not lbs? 12kg would be right about 5.5lbs, which seems fairly close to what that fish looks to weigh.

For me, Senkos still outperform other stickbaits when the bite is tough. Of all the imitations, the Yumdingers fish the best for me. Otherwise, the vast majority of cheap sticks - the ones with the "hook slot" in them - are all made in the same place, so get them for the best price you can.

You can make Senkos last longer in several ways:

1) after the nose gets torn up, just bite off the first 1/2" and re-rig it. It keep working right down to about 3 1/2" on a 5" senko

2) save the one with the torn up noses and use them for wacky-rigs. Orings work, cutting thin rings from cheap tubes works as well.

3) rig them backwards after they get torn up

4) save the short bits and use them as jig trailers. It looks stupid - southern smallie fisherman call it the "dog turd" jig - but it catches smallies.

That's an excellent smallie for this area: congrats. Water temps are indeed going down here: the fish are still biting, they have just moved from traditional July holding spots.

Make sure you boat all the way up to 3 Brothers Falls. It's a beautiful spot and the eddies just below can be very good fishing.

If this is a pond or small lake completely surrounded by land (more than road allowance distances) then it would indeed be trespassing.

Crossing the land would be trespassing, but being on the water would not be; unless the landowner had gone to extraordinary lengths to make it so. Landing a float plane - don't laugh, it has been done many times up this way - on a lake that is completly surrounded by private land is not trespassing.

There are a couple of huge tracts (50,000 acres) of private land in the Haliburton area - Haliburton Forest being one of them - that have researched this issue quite well.

No carp in that section of the Burnt, but there is good Smallmouth and Muskie fishing, decent Walleye fishing. Pack your 'stained water' aresenal: that section of river is tea-brown.

Top of the Hill tackle is owned by folks that don't actually fish much. Jack in Minden is a much better resource for this area.

In general, there is not a lot of carp fishing up this way (Haliburton area), but lots of great bass fishing!

Yep, once you fish out of a kayak you will never go back - except to wading. Check out Rapid Medias new mag: Kayak Angler. There are also some great online resources for Kayak anglers. If you think Muskie from a kayak is impressive - and it is - check out the guys off the Monterey coast that routinely land sharks and bluefin tuna

Yes, there is a road allowance. Check with the local municapal office to see what it is. It is possible to purchase the road allowance to protect access to a lake or other feature. You can always go to the local assessment office and check the assessment maps: always a good idea when accessing a remote lake. It's amazing how often there will be a concession line that runs into the lake, which you can use as an access point.

With very few exceptions, water is public property in Ontario. If you didn't trespass to get on it, then you are good to go. Every once in awhile a lake will actually get assessed as land, and the surrounding landowner will pay taxes on the area of the lake. In that situation, the lake is considered private property. As far as I know, this is a very rare scenario because most landowners will fight having a lake assessed as part of their tax load.

Thanks for the info. I usually fish for lakers with a gang troll or troll a spoon attached to 2 ft of flourocarbon and a egg sinker before the swivel. I didn't realise that lakers go that shallow I never troll for them in anything less than 50 ft of water. Where would you try for rainbows without any moving water??

Cheers Jeff

I would just check the stocking sheets and go where they have been stocked. An easy place to fish for them in moving water is the Gull River between Horseshoe lake and Minden lake. I usually have the best luck right where the river empties into Minden lake. You can shore fish it - just watch out for us kayakers - or, if you have a boat, you can fish farther down. The left shore is a fairly steep drop off with good tree and rock cover. Eggs or egg imitations work really well in that section.

BTW: the fly/spoon combo works for all trout: just adjust the size. It can be killer on early season specks that are eating leeches: a small kastmaster for distance with a black wooly bugger trailing. It's also a good way to get bites from really finicky pickerel. In that case, a small spoon with a bucktail jig chaser works well.

If you have a temp probe, use it to find the thermocline and fish just below it for lakers. That's where the census guys set there nets.

Jeff,

Lakers are not as deep as some folks will lead you to believe. I troll for them from a kayak and still catch them in 30' of water. Get yourself a Williams Wobbler, krinkle finish, 1/2 silver 1/2 gold. Don't go small for the lakers: I have my best luck on the the larger sizes.

A trick lots of guys up here use is to tie 16" of mono to the split ring that holds the hook. Attach a decent size streamer or muddler minnow to the other end of the mono. Lots of your hits will come on the fly.

Rainbows are a different story: very line shy most of the time. If you can find moving water, that's where I have the best luck for rainbows right now.

As far as I know, they don't have a shelf life. I have bags that are 3 years old and still seem perfect.

If you can find some of the 301 - Watermelon with a glow Chartreuse tail - they work great on shield lakes. Believe it or not, they are a killer Walleye bait as well as SM and LM.