JohnF

Okay. I get the picture. I've got a lip gripper and several sizes of pliers. With a little care and the right tools I should be able to get the little guys back in the water safe and sound - me and them. My pride just won't let me squeal and poke away at the poor fish hoping the hook pops out. Thanks for the advice. If my hand falls off from catfish poisoning yer all gonna be sued. JF

As a kid catching little dark catfish in Devil's Lake I was told to be careful when we caught 'em because their whiskers were poisonous. Hence we weren't real kind to the poor little fellers. Now I find myself catching the odd one here at the river and I'm still wary of them. I've done a bit of reading and apparently certain ones have mildly toxic spines in some fins but not the whiskers. Anyone care to deliver a primer on Catfish Handling For Newbies so we can safely and gently get the little fellers back to the water unharmed. TIA JF

That's just great. I come in from a night of being skunked by the smallies and have to look at those pics. Totally makes my day. All the same WTG JF

I know I promised to stop, but P3TA would really hate my basshide coat. JF

So here's what's in the grab bag: 15 assorted Rapalas, mostly floaters size 5 & 7 but a few bigger ones and a couple of divers 10 of those fat rattlers that look like a pregnant guppy 3 really big flat diamond shaped rattlers (dunno what they're called) lots of assorted jigs 5 Kwikfish several sizes a small assortment of largish spoons 6 Cleos of different sizes 5 Luhr Jensen Cleo lookalikes a bag of Rebel Redneck yellow plastic mudpuppy lookalikes (w/red flared necks) a variety of sizes & styles of spinners and buzzers quite a bunch of small Mepps, Martins, and Olympiques(sp?) some brass swivels incl some 3 ways some new wire leaders & a lot of snaps a large Fenwick box with hanger racks in the bottom compartment a Triton trolling reel on a Shimano Downrigger rod a Daiwa RG350 spinning reel on a 7' Fenwick rod (reel has lousy balance) a Shakespeare Sigma Supra reel on a heavier 7" Fenwick rod (reel feels nice but has what feels like about 50# mono on it) One interesting lure is an old wooden black & orange (w/red spots) Kwikfish marked X4 with a 1 1/2' wire crosspiece on the shoulder eye that has a small treble on each end. I just took some pics but then realized I don't have my card reader here at home. if anyone's interested I'll put 'em up later. None of it may be worth anything but it was sure fun digging it out of the box and sorting it out. It didn't cost me so anything I salvage is found. If nothing else it was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Now we're getting ready for a run to the Thames to see if there's anything biting. JF

Okay. All this Bring & Brag about Salmon has got my attention. I've only been fishing for a couple of summers, just bass and pike in the rivers. I've bought some pretty good light gear for that (after experimenting with a lot of cheap crap) but I've never caught anything the size of those salmon you guys are all showing off. I'm only an hour's drive from Goderich so I'm tempted to give it a go. The problem is I know nada about the process. I'm picking up a bunch of used gear this morning from a customer of mine who had to give up fishing so he's giving it to me, cuz I sounded enthusiastic I suppose, or mebbe cuz I begged for it. I know there are a bunch of Cleo's in the box, a lot of Rapalas, a herd of spoons and spinners and who knows what else. Sadly, no float type rods, just trolling rods and biiiiiggggg spinning reels on short tree trunks. I may need to find someone to tell me what they all really mean (i.e. - are they any good for anything). I've been following all the posts here about river and shore salmon fishing (doing my homework) but what I'd really like is to hook up with a mentor, some old fisherman who knows all the ropes, even if he is prone to waxing philosophical about life and it's vagaries, so long as he shares a little of his compendium of fishlore with me. A young gun is fine too, but they're so damned energetic. If I'm gonna do something physically taxing, I want to be the pacer, not the keeper upper. Anyway, gotta go pick up that stuff. Mebbe I'll post an inventory once I figger out what I got. Then all you old crusty types can weigh in with advice if you want. Thanx JF

Jeez. I'da probably rolled the canoe just lifting that leviathan in. WTG. JF

C'mon. It's just a bass with botoxed lips. JF

A friend of mine showed me that trick one day. The problem was that when he demonstrated the move, he was standing at an angle such that it looked like he just shoved the end up his nose and twisted with enthusiasm. My only thought was "eeewwww!' and I tried to remember if he'd borrowed any rods from me lately. JF

I counted all the little fishy looking heads, multiplied by 2.17835 for multiple and damaged hooks (assuming a treble with missing hooks is now a double or a single or a nilble), divided by 1.33333 for missing hooks, and added 23 for the unattached hooks sneakily planted under lures and in shadowy corners and got 47 1/2 rounded up to 48. That's my carefully calculated and considered guess. 48 JF

But they have no ears to hold 'em up. Sorry. I'll stop now. JF

Wow. How do they get those bass to keep the little blindfolds on? JF

But the live ones don't stick to the wall very well. And I have one of the finest collections of dead musky heads on my block. It's a shame not to share 'em. JF

Thank you all for the most gracious welcome. I can only hope yer all being as nice to me after a few posts. JF

And I remember from snapper encounters on the river as a kid that their stubby little necks get a whole lot longer when they're upset. I learned not to leave any fleshy bits (of me) anywhere close to a snapper's mouth. JF

Pics to follow. I just bought a new mini-dv cam for stills or video that will easily fit in the pocket inside the bib of my waders with a safety neck strap (just in case). We're gonna start getting some shots on the creek. The scenery is pretty even if there are no monster fish to record. Hopefully we'll have some soon of our first salmon experience up around Goderich and we're also going to go on a carp hunt. We have lots of them right close by that we've always ignored. JF

I already posted this, but belatedly realized that burying it another thread was dumb, if not an outright hijack. So here it is again, with my apologies. I've been river fishing all my life, save for a brief hiatus from 1960 to 2006. As a kid growing up in St.Marys at the confluence of Trout Creek and the Thames I fished all summer long, then got away from it until a couple of years ago when a buddy drug me out to the river again to chase Bass. We've spent the last two summers wetwading the Thames either side of St.Marys tossing a variety of lures on ultralite gear for smallies & Pike and just having fun, looking forward to a reward of single malt for our putting up with Mother Nature in the raw. My buddy always uses Rapala minnows with fair success but he's slowly converting to plastic after being outfished by a rank amateur (me) so many nights. Probably the most interesting day out we had this year was wading the river just below the dam in Calabogie chasing bass and catfish. I don't even remember what the river's called, but it was pretty and the current was ripping and the rocks were slippery. It was a hoot, even if Rob did get dunked. I used to do a lot of scuba diving and it's kinda fun to chase the fish now having an idea of how they behave when not being hassled by us surface dwellers. They have very little fear of divers so we get to watch them up close and personal. Most of my fishing is C&R with barbless or debarbed hooks. I just like getting out and playing. I will try to keep the stupid questions to a minimum and if anyone is keen to wade the creeks around Stratford & St.Marys some evening let me know. There are a few spots sure to produce some smallies and the occasional Pike. I've actually got some boots and waders now. The water is getting a little nippy and I'm not sure, but I think the sweat sox and bare legs might have had a negative effect on the fish catchability, really. Perhaps I shoulda washed the sox more often. JF

Don't forget to factor in the unseen Canadian taxes, shipping costs, brokerage fees, etc. It's not as simple as just converting the dollars. There are also customer relations issues that have to be addressed with customers who paid the big buck not long ago and may be wanting to exercise return privileges if there is too dramatic a price change. It's complicated. All that being said, there's also the temptation to score a little extra margin, but that's a responsibility any business has to itself as long as it can find the happy medium between customer satisfaction and profitability. As for the monopoly, that can only be countered by the exercise of the principles of free enterprise. If someone can be competitve they can take a run at the big boys. If they do it right, the big boys will have to offer some selection or service advantage, back down on their pricing or lose market share. JF

Application of simple economics. The American dollar for years delivered more bang for the buck when spent in Canada, so it was easier to attract those sportsmen with American dollars (that didn't cost 'em $1.50 cdn or more) than it was to attract us Canucks to spend our hard-earned devalued bux. Follow the money, and the States was where it was. If by some flaw in the system(s) the powers that be can't force the US buck back into the ascendancy, or at least the Canuck buck down, you'll see a change in philosophy for those northern service providers, and possibly even some better deals for us denizens fo the frozen north. How practical that may be for the lodges remains to be seen. They need to gather in a lot of revenue in a relatively short season with pretty high overhead. But don't blame the lodge operators for chasing the American market. It's just a matter of economic viability. Personally I'm off to the bank in the next few days to convert a few thousand that we'll need for upcoming trips to Phoenix and Mexico. I'm betting the high number won't last too long. It may not drop a lot but rest assured there's lots of governmental connivery going on to bring it down, and for some pretty solid reasons that are tough for us regular Joes to comprehend. JohnF

Are you including cheap (unscented, unsalted) plastic worms in that? If I Texas rig the worm and do a slow retrieve through shallow creek water I get plenty of solid strikes. Actually I get a lot of tail bites and the bass stays with me, even jumping & tailwalking, until he gets to my feet. Then he spits the worm at me and says sayonara sucker. I can see the tooth(?)prints in the wormtails. I started using them when the season opened this year and figured if the cheapies are this good, the real deal (like Senkos?) had to be even better. But if anything the bite dropped and I sure went through a lot more senkos, even with fewer strikes, than I did the cheapos. The cheapos are damned near indestructible but the senkos disintegrate almost before my eyes. I recently started threading a bit of 4# mono through the cheap worm body and hiding a small hook near the tail of the worm. It reduced the number of strikes but I've caught bigger smallies with that tail hook. The worm action isn't as sinuous on the retrieve with the 4# inside. Mebbe I'm just working a part of the Thames where the sm's are hungry, or mebbe it's just beginner's luck. BTW. I may not have introduced myself yet. I used to fish as a kid growing up in St.Marys at the confluence of Trout Creek and the Thames, then got away from it (for more decades than I care to recall) until a couple of years ago when a buddy drug me out to the river again to chase bass. We've spent the last two summers wetwading the Thames either side of St.Marys tossing a variety of lures for smallies & Pike and just having fun, looking forward to a reward of single malt for our putting up with Mother Nature in the raw. My buddy always uses Rapala minnows with fair success but he's slowly converting to plastic after being outfished by a rank amateur so many nights. Probably the most fun we had this year was wading the river just below the dam in Calabogie chasing bass and catfish. I don't even remember what the river's called, but it was pretty and the current was ripping and the rocks were slippery. It was a hoot, even if Rob did get dunked. I used to do a lot of scuba diving and it's kinda fun to chase the fish having an idea of how they behave when not being hassled by us surface dwellers. They have very little fear of divers so we get to watch them up close and personal. Most of my fishing is C&R with barbless or debarbed hooks. I just like getting out and playing. Sorry about the windy post but I've got that off my chest now. I will try to keep the stupid questions to a minimum from here on in and if anyone is keen to wade the creeks around Straford & St.Marys some evening let me know. I've actually got some boots and waders now. The water is getting a little nippy and I'm not sure, but I think the sweat sox and bare legs might have had a negative effect on the fish catchability, really. JF

I'm thinking I'd offer the most obnoxious kid in the neighbourhood five bucks to release it. JohnF