trapshooter

I hear ya Simon... all this snow is no good for our ice!! I just hope the big lakes were open when we got the big dump monday night. Some of the boys got out on one of the stocked trout lakes last weekend for limits of splake. All the snow since then might have sunk the 'good' ice though. I feel your pain! There's too much snow for my snowmachine too!!

Hey Mike, it was awesome to have you guys here again. Definitely one of my most anticipated annual trips!! It was a thrill I'll never forget watching you catch that big one. Congrats again buddy!!

Hey Simon, nice to see you got up to LS for one last (or maybe not?) kick at the can. The fish are getting fat, as they do at this time of the year. Good on ya for putting the over slot back too!!

Make sure you have the proper equipment to handle these fish too. Stout rods and powerful reels. I use 80lb no-stretch superline. This ensures a quicker fight and hence less harm to the fish. The long fights on light tackle is what will kill a muskie. THey get tired out from a long fight then pulled out of the water and they're done for after that. I've never fished the french so I can't help much with baits etc. but good luck and have fun.

Trip of a lifetime! Congrats on all those monster gators. Truly impressive!

Thanks gang! Hey Graeme... get up here whenever you can. You'll love it man.

Been super busy the last few weeks fishing, learning new water and doing some guiding. Everything here on Lac Seul is 3 weeks ahead of normal with the early spring and warm temps. The pollen from the Jack Pines has come and gone already, which usually happens mid-June. Fishing has been good overall and I've covered a lot of area on this huge lake. Here's a few pics from my adventures in the last little bit. Bass.... another reason to love NW Ontario... they never close! Walleye fishing has been fun too. This one is the biggest so far for me this season, 28" This next walleye I caught OOS while pike fishing with a huskey jerk... get this... it followed to the boat so I f8'd it and sure enough it came around and inhaled the bait. Saw some big pike this spring too.. in fact the biggest I've ever laid eyes on was this 44.5" my buddy Colin caught. Makes my mid 30's fish look tiny! Spent a day trolling for lakers and boated 19 fish but nothing over 5lbs. Didn't even snap a picture. So there's my update. I'll be out a lot in June and before I know it, it'll be muskie season again.

hey, thanks guys. Yeah Graeme, that's my first OOD feature. Another one coming out in July. Cheers, ben

... that Tillers are a far superior boat to all others!

I put the 300 size Shimano Curado through it's paces last year fishing muskies and it held up and performed very well. It's one of the easiest casting reels I've ever seen. I could give it to my wife and she'd go the whole day without backlashing it. I used it for top water baits and bucktails up to double 8's. Bigger then that, dbl 10's etc. I used my calcutta 401.

Sometimes the hole can get clogged with sand or dirt. This has happened to me twice before and the fix was simply to shove a piece of wire in the hole and dislodge the sediment.

A lot of rod companies have technique specific rods... i.e. crankbait rod, drop-shot rod, etc. I believe the St. Croix Avid series crankbait rod is 6'6" medium power, moderate action (casting rod). I have it, and love it. The mod. action lets you cast baits a bit farther b/c it's a whippier rod. Get the nicest low profile Diawa reel reel you can afford and put some 20lb powerpro on it. YOu can always tip it with a mono/fluoro leader. Good luck.

Thanks gang! Good to hear from you Graeme. Let me know when you can get away from the desk in TO and start living the dream.

Awesome. Looks like you're having a great spring so far. Keep it up.

Yeah the lindy darter has been good to me. Catches pike, walleye, trout and I even had a whitefish slam one. That colour is called bluegill!!

That's awesome Simon!! Hope you get out in the boat today. I'm going to rig mine up asap - there's a couple places to launch here too. Very early spring!!

Great vid Dave. Your winter camp looks awesome. Love the night shots of it with the fire going. Some nice trout too.

Hey Gang, it's getting down the last of the ice up here. You've got to pick and choose your spots now, but I've been off the big lakes since last Tuesday. Thought I'd share some pics from the latter half of my ice season. LOTW Pike on a tip-up/quick strike rig with a big live sucker. We had a blast with these whitefish on a lake about 30 mins from home. Good numbers of whitefish and always a welcomed treat when one of these guys would show up. Seems every lake I fished this year I managed to find one of these guys. I finished my season on Lake Minnitaki, which is all of 5 mins from town. It's a massive system in itself and has excellent walleye fishing as well and nice pike and lake trout. We were intercepting the big walleye on their way to a spawning river. It was actually difficult to catch fish under 18" to keep for the pan. Some buddies with nice walleye. Although we were targeting walleye it's always nice when a couple surprises show up. Real early spring up here, that's for sure. A couple spots open now for launching a boat. Walleye doesn't close till April 14th so the next outing will be in the boat.

That is a BIG pike man! Way to go.

OFAH

Suicidal smallies in NWO.... must have been June!!

Yes, excellent movie! I'm pretty sure there was some Townes Van Zandt music in there too.

Trust me, you don't want braid. When you're casting for lake trout you don't need sensitivity! They slam it. If you can't set the hook with mono then you're not trying hard enough. The stretch in mono helps to keep lakers pinned too. Look at the advice everyone has given you so far... MONO!!

Yeah I was going to say 6 or 8 at the most. Mono, not braid. As for what kind... ask 10 different ppl here and you'll probably get 10 different answers. But that's because there's a lot of good stuff on the market that will get the job done.

Yes, he mentioned a reel that he's using for crappie but could be a different rod. And it's unclear if he's planning on using the same line for his crappie fishing and the trout trip.