Sterling

Not sure about other browsers, but with Chrome you can right click the page and hit "translate". Works fine on those french websites such as quebecpeche. Dabluz I used to live in matagami and fished the Nemaska area quite a bit, fell in love with the place. Do you know the area at all?

Tons and tons of limits being caught in that area, especially Burwell. Check long point forums, great site.

There's fluoro and then there's fluoro "leader material". I didn't know there was a difference until recently. The fluoro "leader material" they sell is incredibly rigid and wants to spring out of your spool, so be careful with how much you put on. Personally I'm a big fan of fluoro. This pike was caught on a whopper plopper earlier this year. It was wavy, cloudy but I was antsy to try it out and got this baby on my 2nd cast.

Very interesting. I sold my "write-off" boat to my dad. I'll ask if he was able to insure it. The boat had two dings on it, 100% cosmetic. If you're right, I wonder if you could still get marine insurance on the remainder of the boat's content. Electronics, etc.

On that note, great deals to be had from US insurance write-offs. Especially if you're a DIY type person or mechanic. It's amazing what sort of damage can write off a boat, when zero functional damage has occurred whatsoever. This is truer for aluminum boats than glass. Probably going to get some flak for that. I'm ready.

Shame to see historic Temagami Pine burn :(.

A few years ago the only way to chart "on the fly" was with Navionics + t-box and with the expensive Humminbird Onyx units. Now it seems every chartplotter has some sort of auto chart capability. The Garmin autocharts are smooth as butter from what I've seen. Limited experience everywhere else aside from Lowrance... saw my cousin's Helix 9 auto charting and it didn't look great. Any else care to chime in with regards to other units' capabilities?

I read your post in your voice, haha. Thanks for sharing the vid.

Correct, both hogwash, it's nearly 50% for mental illness and 3-5% for homosexuality. Estimates vary but it certainly isn't 10%, in fact it's theorized that sexual orientation is a sliding scale. Direct contradiction? Think of how badly you want to avoid death at all costs. This isn't unique to you; every organism is programmed that way. Lucid minds don't simply manage to bypass this hardwired survival mechanism. Depression is powerful and happens with or without drugs. You seem to suggest that drugs and alcohol are chiefly responsible for these problems, to this I posit a few facts; Use of cannabis is rampant in Jamaica yet their suicide rate is in the 5th percentile (lowest). There's also Israel and several other countries in this bucket. Countries where cannabis and alcohol are less prevalent display strangely high suicide rates (Singapore, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Japan, etc etc etc) I would suggest that there IS indeed a relationship between drug abuse and mental illness/suicide HOWEVER they are not the principal forces at play.

I love these videos - fun to watch, but also VERY telling. What really stands out to me is how frequently fish will abandon a chase. This isn't exclusive to pike, lakers do it lots and also miss their mark frequently.

Could definitely be it (caterpillars). Same deal here on Nipissing with the mayfly hatch. The fish gorge themselves in the damn things.

Noticed a similar pattern a bit further north. The fish ended up being in small rivers.

Pikeslayer8, I just read the previous pages and saw a mostly complete recipe for the panko/parmesan. I would still like a more detailed recipe for the cooking challenged like myself. But most importantly, how is your wife holding up? If she finding the chaga beneficial at all? If so, I can send you a boatload of it. My parents drink the stuff daily and swear by it. We've come up with many ingenious/hilarious ways to harvest it over the years, including grappling hooks, tree climbing kits, etc.

Thank you for the write-up. Would you mind posting the panko/parmesan recipe? Looks scrumptious.

Well I'm back from the trip and figure I would update this! We spoke to locals early in the trip and they told us fishing from shore would be pointless since specks would be hanging deep at this time of year. This was definitely the case, as we did try our hand at them in some lakes and came up empty. Went that route initially. Set up a time and place to meet the guide, and he no-showed. Pretty frustrating when you get up at 6am and drive an hour to the meeting spot. The guy no-showed not once, but twice... Good news is that we did locate some nice specks. You were onto something Chris. I kept this in mind and asked a local guy. He agreed and said big brookies would be in the rapids, but would be skiddish. In addition to the factors you mentioned, he said brookies are avoiding big rapids due to the presence of pike at this time of year. This theory was proven correct when we fished the big rapids. He suggest trying small to medium rivers, such as the one above. We did locate specks but they were hard to catch. Old native man said you need a casting rod with a huge weight, casted in while standing 20ft from shore, lol.

Thanks Bill! Unfortunately I'll be limited to the spot I initially linked, but maybe one day I'll make the trek downriver. What are your thoughts on this spot? https://zoom.earth/#51.464905,-77.072568,17z,sat It's a small river branching off Rupert. I'll be fishing out of a Cree camp on Jolliet, and will have the ability to travel to this specific spot without pulling and launching the boat. I may be able to get further if the water is high enough (which it should be).

Actually, you're in luck! I'll be trying Rupert River as well. Sort of a side-bar, but this river has specks for sure. This is where I'm going: https://zoom.earth/#51.385363,-77.16949,16z,sat From the bridge to the west you can launch a boat, and drive 20km to the spot linked above. The question to you is whether specks will hang out near big rapids this time of year? My guess is yes.

I'm headed to the James Bay lowlands for 11 days and once again will be catching lots and lots of walleye + pike. This year my goal is to find speckled trout nearby. Being a lowland area, specks are extremely hard to come by. All my threads asking for tips in locating these came up empty, and in fact most responses were along the lines of "good luck, there basically aren't any in that area". But I did see pictures of local Cree people capturing them, so they're in the area for sure. I went as far as reading a couple books on speckled trout just to understand their habits / habitats. I think I have a good grasp of where I'll find them, even in these lowlands. I have 5 lakes that I want to check. These candidates were selected based on several criteria, and with the help of some cool tools I found online. If I'm successful, would there be any interest in a how-to guide to locating these candidates? It was a pretty involved process, so there might be some value there for you guys.

Yeah it's not a bad option. 9 people tagging along... it would be done within 10 minutes.

I'd have to cover the entire sides of the vehicles, based on the amount of overgrowth I saw last time. Luckily we don't need to navigate this road this year, but it's always good to have a backup plan.

Wait - that thin painter's tape stuff? Wouldn't that take hours to cover a vehicle? Great product, awful website. Doesn't seem like they have popular models though like F150. Oh well - anyone want to partner up on a new business?

SAME. It's awesome yet problematic - I enjoy thinking and dreaming of the upcoming adventures, but it keeps me up so late, and I'm having trouble getting work done (at home or otherwise). Bugs are going to be so bad this time of year, I hope you bought that bug jacket. It's totally worth it. No bugs where I'm going though. In fact we were afraid it would be ice fishing in June.

I plan on driving through some nasty overgrown roads in June and have been looking at some options for protecting paint. One option is a spray-on goop that is like rubber. It can be peeled off like, like that stuff women put on their face. There's also rolls of "tape", not pretty, but effective. I haven't found a product of this kind that I like. Does anyone here have experience with any such products and if so, which do you recommend? Thanks

Did you pay the $5?

Man, what a great thread. I once "launched" a 16ft aluminum on a steep, muddy "ramp". It was so steep and I got greedy by untying EVERYTHING before touching water. The boat came off the bunks, slid off the trailer and 15ft down to shore. So we just pushed the thing into the water. It was a beater and the motor wasn't damaged so we had a good laugh. Those of you familiar with the Trout Lake launch in North Bay may know it was roped off for a while (if not STILL roped off). I'm the guy who "discovered" the cement slabs falling off into the deep. Almost sent my entire rig into the lake that day. Luckily there was a group of 20 drunken college kids nearby. They helped me literally lift the entire thing out of the water. Gave them whatever beer I had on hand. I wouldn't be needing it that day.... Third story, launching my 17.5ft crestliner with brother-in-law's $80,000 pickup. We're 10ft from the shoreline getting the boat ready and the whole thing starts moving backward. He had left it in DRIVE. He managed to get into the truck and hit the brakes just on time. He had some serious momentum going too. Good thing it was a dry launch.