Sterling

As most of you know, fishfinders get their information from a cone-shaped signal sent from the boat to the bottom. Near the boat, the signal is narrow, and at bottom, the signal is largest. For this reason you're more likely to mark fish on bottom than right under the boat, often giving the illusion that there are more fish at greater depths. In reality, marking 10 fish at say, 8ft depth vs. 20 fish at 30ft means there are more fish hanging out at 8ft. It's a simple matter of trigonometry, but in this example fish density would be 3.75 times greater at 8ft! I would love to see this as an automated feature on fishfinders. Maybe a vertical axis on the left or right of the screen showing roughly fish density. This wouldn't be perfect because units can't always differentiate fish vs interference or junk, but it would be a start. And for trout fishing, recognizing exactly where they're hanging out in the thermocline would be dandy. Thoughts?

I'm watching all their videos. So cool. They have evidence showing that fish learn from being caught & released. That's hilarious!

Always thought sticklebacks were an invasive species and not allowed as bait. Did some research and guess I'm wrong. Pretty disappointing that a vendor would sell sticklebacks though.

crap answer. Park access will be free for a year, fees will stay increased forever.

Welcome aboard Chad, While this thread is getting attention, I should point out a flaw in the board that I brought up in June 2015 here: http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79315 After some additional research I can say with confidence this is a major problem. As in, possibly/partially responsible for a major loss in traffic. In the forum header is an "ad container" called ipsAd. This container is used for, you guessed it, ads. Clearly defining where ads are located on a web page helps search engines locate content. Notably in this case, it helps AdBlockers locate ads. AdBlockers are on pretty much every machine these days, and even come native in some browsers like Firefox and Safari. In April of 2015, the ipsAd container was expanded to contain the entire forum root, ie; all of the content. I'm not sure why this was done, whether intentional or not. Perhaps it was done to prevent people with adblockers from viewing content. Either way it's a huge no-no. Take a look at the site snapshot from March 25, 2015; http://web.archive.org/web/20150325095208/http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums All of the content is viewable. Now look at April 8th, 2015: http://web.archive.org/web/20150408125844/http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/ All of the content became hidden at this exact point. If you go to the yearly summary for the site in the year 2015, you'll notice that after this change occurred, WayBack engine stopped recording frequent snapshots of the site. That's because it recorded little to no changes in the snapshot. This in itself is a problem because crawlers started perceiving the site as stagnant and may have stopped indexing content as well. I'm positive that at this point, site ranking took a hit. http://web.archive.org/web/20150315000000*/http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums Google is not seeing the content either, if you look at cache; http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KQFj2U-uqCIJ:ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/index.php%3Fshowforum%3D2+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca Luckily it appears to be indexing content just fine. Site traffic corroborates this theory; from April to December 2015, first-time visits dropped 50%, as did unique visits. There is a seasonal drop every year in this period of about 30%, so one might conclude the change resulted in a net traffic loss of 20%. As expected, returning visits were not affected as much, as these users know to turn off ad blockers in order to view content. I hope I'm overreacting, but these don't seem like coincidences to me. This is an easy fix that should be #1 priority!

Size of engine? Looks like a great deal to me.

Not sure if this belongs in classified section... but my old man is looking to rent a boat from June 7th-13th. North Bay area (will travel a bit if needed). Beat up tinner is fine, so long as the trailer and motor are reliable. 14-16ft preferable. He plans on taking it 885km north and back. Thanks!

Isn't everything 25% more to begin with? Always found that store pretty expensive.

Over 100ft deep on the west side. And about 80ft deep in the center. There are shallow bays where we fish strictly for walleye. In fact most of our fishing was done in these bays, I believe this is why we never hooked onto a laker (assuming they're populous in the lake). The locals said there are lakers after I inquired about the big one. Yes, the Weh-Sees-Indohoun. You can camp all you want in the area. In several northern Quebec zones you are required to "right of access" (Droit D'acces) for fishing though. You're 100% correct. We fish walleye in the morning/evening and lakers will be a side activity. If I'm not successful that's ok, walleye will be plentiful otherwise.

Here's the lake for the curious; https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Lac+Jolliet/@51.531796,-76.8958439,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4d1d14c4e884e877:0x619b39ed95a61aa1!8m2!3d51.565845!4d-76.8345822 Don't mind sharing as I doubt anyone will actually make the trip. Limits in this area have been cut in half and you need a right of way from the natives in order to fish the lake. Good point, I'm sure it happens more with white fish. I haven't been around during white fish season, only when they were harvesting walleye. Definitely possible. This area is affected by the LG hydro dams, which as we know can kill off entire spawns if water draws are timed right.

The "locals" are a handful of native folk, we know them well. Been doing trips to this place for 18 years! And 2 years ago they caught a monstrous laker in their net while harvesting walleye. We had no idea they were even in the lake to begin with! Welp, nobody really fishes the lake aside from a handful of native people. They get a storage bin full of fish every few weeks, caught through nets. They only target walleye and white fish. I just happened to notice a huge laker in their bin and asked about it. Couldn't believe my eyes - fished there for 18 years thinking the lake held just walleye. But it makes sense, the lake is deep in some areas. Yeah my dates may be messed up. Earliest I've been was mid-June and yes, the water was cold!! How would I go about finding them? Go to deep areas, but fish shallow?

Wondering where you guys would target trout 2-4 weeks after ice off? I've done trout fishing RIGHT after ice off and they were pretty much right on surface. How soon do they start going deeper? This would be for a lake located near the southern point of James Bay. I suspect the ice comes off late April or early May. We're fishing the lake on opener (June 7th). According to locals, the lake has never been fished for trout. This is going to be awesome!

True

D'oh! I read this as well. However the MFFP website is offered in English. Confusing as hell though - the zone I'm traveling to (22) is divided into North and South, and then subdivided again in an absolute mess of subzones. See for yourself; https://mffp.gouv.qc.ca/english/publications/online/wildlife/fishing-regulations/pdf/impression/Fishing-Map-Zone-22.pdf I could see people getting in trouble over these new regs. If you seldom travel to quebec, and check these bait regulations real quick, it would be easy to assume live baitfish are allowed in certain zones. Zone 22 for example isn't even mentioned. So you could readily assume there are no prohibitions on baitfish at all.

According to the 2016-2018 regs that's not the case; https://mffp.gouv.qc.ca/english/publications/online/wildlife/fishing-regulations/general-regulations/bait-fish.asp Very confused

So I know minnows are banned as bait pretty much everywhere in Quebec. However can you use say, frozen herring? Edit: Correction, it appears I'm totally wrong, however I'm trying to find out the regulations for minnows in zone 22 south. Can't find any info!

I have an idea. We should get EVERYBODY to register their drones in a registry. That way, criminals will register their drones and we'll catch them even if they're unidentified!

Nipissing is closed to all species until May 20th this year, I believe.

That area is my destination of choice when I do make it out for a long, serious fishing trip. Great choice, you won't regret it. You'll catch more fish than you ever have in your life.

Well, alcohol doesn't benefit me at all seeing how I'm allergic, but I love talking about it. Isn't that the point of a forum? Find a talking point, get opinions, learn from the other side... hopefully without a heated discussion (lol)? I was actually defending against the point that "weed is bad because all the potheads in school were losers". Troubled kids are more likely to partake in delinquent activities such as skipping class, drinking, smoking, etc. Weed is a symptom of a larger problem, not the cause of it. This crapola is confirmed by every study ever done on weed's effect on the developing brain. Who would have thought that a psychoactive drug would alter a young brain??? Here's a gigantic list of scholarly studies confirming this: https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=cannabis+effect+on+adolescent+brain&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiahcet_ufSAhUm34MKHbrmBKkQgQMIGjAA As a regular user myself, I wouldn't care if my kids used, so long as it's past the ~20 year mark. Now please excuse me while i frantically light my next joint because I'm shaking and sweating from withdrawal (just kidding, that would be my caffeine withdrawal).

Yeah first thing that came to mind "this guy isn't right in the head".

Over 2ft of ice on nip and season's closed =(.

Yep the pharmacist told me I'm in luck because they just started selling Nasacort (cortisone spray) over the counter. Saved me. I would have paid $1000 to get rid of the congestion. It's called rebound congestion and is 10x worst than the initial congestion haha.

Some of you are making a crucial mistakes with anecdotes. The guys/gals we knew growing up that were apparently "jonesing" for weed were doing so at an age where the brain is still growing. It's a scientific fact that a growing brain will be adversely affected by weed. On the topic of addiction, I got addicted to decongestant spray last week. Goddamn is that ever hard to stop.

Pesticide on weed you say? Deplorable, I prefer to buy my poison by the 12 pack, Budweiser, to be specific.