MJL

From my understanding, Brad was referring to this thread where he posted the online tool for looking at water levels last month. http://ontariofishingcommunity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=71605&hl= I can understand where Brad is coming from. In the past, I’ve replied to PM’s in great detail (particularly from 1 former member) only to have it ignored and have the identical question posted on the board multiple times because the member was too lazy to do the rest of the footwork. For the OP. if you don’t really have a clue on how to catch steelhead, I’d recommend picking the closest river with steelhead you have and stick to it for a season. Fish it as often as you can. Record the weather conditions, the river conditions, depth, the time, how well (or poor) you did, what baits you used, what baits other people used, which part of the pool, run, riffle you hit fish, etc in a journal. You will not catch fish every time you get out but you will learn way more about fishing for steelhead than if you try and chase the numbers on multiple rivers. The numbers will eventually come but only if you really know what to look for and IMO you can't get that knowledge from being told on a forum or elsewhere on the internet. Once you master your home river, you can apply what you know to other rivers big or small all over North America. If you're really desperate for fish, hire a guide for the day and that will speed up the learning curve considerably.

If it's at the Firehall again on a Friday, you can flip a coin at the end of the night and see if your fish n' chip dinner is free.LOL *should've picked tails

Eagerly awaiting my return to steelhead heaven

Year round sanctuary = HWY 401 to Jocelyn st (It's been like that forever) Year round open fishing = South side of CN bridge down to the mouth Extended season fishing (4th Saturday in April to Dec 31) = South side of CPR bridge down to the mouth General season (4th Saturday in April to Sept 30) - Applies to the river upstream of the CPR bridge As outlined here: http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/stdprodconsume/groups/lr/@mnr/@letsfish/documents/document/mnr_e001336.pdf

Put a Zip-lock baggie under that fish in the 4th pic! LOL Nice to see you had a great time Not sure what river you are thinking of, but for the river as seen in this report, the sanctuary is from HWY 401 down to the south side of Jocelyn St.

What Burtess said. Many tackle shops in the GTA sell those packs with multiple diameter/size tubings specifically for the Drennan floats. On that note, you can save some $ by buying generic tubing in the diameters that you just need (tackle shops and many hardware stores carry it). I sold off all my Drennan Loafers for almost nothing mostly because I couldn't stand using 2 different sizes of tubing.LOL

You’re probably a little late now but hit the fish cleaning stations where the charter boats come in. 99.9% of the time you get skein in the cans but it saves you the time and hassle of catching a fish yourself just for eggs. In my case, this year my neighbour asked me for a fish to try on his new BBQ. Middle of last month I caught a smaller chrome hen off the pier on a crankbait (smallest fish of the night – I didn’t want to carry the bigger ones back to the car). I brought it home, kept the eggs and gave him the meat…Have to thank Young_One for the fillet job he did for me that night

Cool vid Maybe for Christmas I might ask Santa for a GoPro...And a few spare batteries.LOL

Personally I’d try to turn it into the police. A few times a year they have those Pistols for Pixels programs going on where you can swap the gun for a free digital camera so that's another incentive. Not having any experience with guns (aside from the old school Nintendo duck hunt gun.LOL), I’d probably call someone to retrieve it (most likely the cops). I wouldn’t know if the gun was in a position to fire or if the water somehow damaged the gun putting it in an unsafe state.

Nice! Fly tying can become an addiction. You’ll never look at road kill the same again.LOL

No Brian…But if that was the case, it would go something like: "Hello Ladies. Look at your man. Then back to Lew. Then back to your man. Then back to Lew. Sadly, your man isn’t Lew. But if your man started using a Shimano Calcutta for a muskie reel, he could be like Lew. Look down. Then Back to Lew. A 65lb Muskie in your hand. But wait, that 65lb muskie is now 75lbs. Anything is possible when you’re Lew. Lew’s in a Lund." And to the OP, while I'm definitely looking forward to this coming ice season, there's still a ton more steelheading to be done!

Being the manly man that Lew is, he doesn’t need anything to keep warm from the cold

Sure, they can Terry. It’s their decision to do so. But it’s naïve to think that everyone who reads the report on OFC follows the regulations (and many of the gut & chuckers don’t even use fishing rods – let alone bait - on the smaller creeks). For me, if I want to post a report, I could always do it from a massive body of water where pin-pointing the exact location is impossible, I could wait a week or few, I could wait till the river is blown and unfishable, I could wait till the season closes, I could post pics from a large stretch of private property that I have exclusive permission to fish, I could wait till the river freezes over, etc.

It’s not the new people you’re worried about going to the river. It’s the people that recognize the background and decide to fish it the next morning because you said you went 5/7 today...And there are lots of them out there.

Honestly, along with my polarized glasses, sonar, technical clothing (fleece, gore-tex), chemically sharpened hooks and decent quality mono & braided line, my underwater Marcum camera has to be one of the greatest investments I’ve ever made. You learn so much by watching fish (There were things I’ve seen fish do on camera that just blew my mind). On the ice, I have my sonar and camera next to one another and I learned a great deal on how to better interpret my graph. I also used it to help my dad track down squirrels that made a nest in our wall.LOL I'm sure you will have a blast with it.

Take into consideration a few things 1. Steelhead spend the vast majority of their time in the ocean (or in this case, the great lakes). They aren’t pressured to the extent that they are in the rivers. When they first enter the stream, they’ll hit just about anything. My friend who guides in Alaska says you can do donuts in a jet boat over a school of fresh steelhead and within 5 minutes you can catch them - They are so new to the environment that they really don't know what's going on. A resident brown trout on the other hand probably might’ve seen 100 different flies over the course of a 5 month period and have been caught several times. As the steelhead spend longer amounts of time in the river, they’ll be more wary of lures/baits/flies that they’ve seen on the way up. They will also revert to their juvenile feeding habits where more natural flies or egg patterns work much better – often you can see them sipping on dry flies when there is a hatch going on. 2. For some river conditions, bright colours can provide better contrast. For swinging flies down and across, you’re hoping to trigger the hunting instinct. When steelhead swim upstream, they are not there to eat (they have a way better food source out in the lake). For a split second, you flash your fly in front of its face causing it to hit or chase out of a reflex. In most cases when you are swinging flies, you want to use a fly that contrasts the surrounding river as well as the sky. The same thing can probably apply to float fishing too. 3. Steelhead are probably naturally curious fish (just like any other fish). They don't have hands to feel or touch things.

Dave, a few questions: 1. How clear is the water? 2. When can I come up with my camera & fishing gear? 3. Will I need those 10ft long augers in winter (as seen on youtube)? Sweet score!

I’ve been a Garmin Nuvi user even before I started to drive. I’ve been extremely happy with it. With that said, there was one time I was instructed to do a U-turn on the 401 while going eastbound after entering the city of Oshawa (jokes aside, I’m being serious). I’m also not a fan of the newest narrator on my dad’s latest Nuvi unit. She sounds way too demanding and doesn’t seem like she finds satisfaction in her line of work.LOL

For breakfast I normally have Bowl of cereal + milk (sometimes I'll have oatmeal instead), 2 eggs (either boiled or scrambled), An avocado or a banana (sometimes a bit of watermelon during the summer), and a mug of green tea

Yes, I am grateful for the health-care system we have in Canada. It’s not perfect, but I didn’t have to sell off a car, mortgage a house or fund raise in order to go through my cancer treatments the last 2.5yrs. Some drugs weren’t covered by my plan. In the case for the very expensive drugs, the hospital gave me the drugs on a basis of compassion and all I had to do was pay the dispensing fee. My ultrasounds, CT Scans, X-rays, blood tests were all scheduled in a timely manner. I might’ve had to wait 3-5hrs before each session of chemo, but I didn’t have to pay for it. I remember the names of all the doctors, nurses and pharmacists that I’ve had just because they’re that awesome

I can look at a few pics posted on NPS and say, "when I was his age, I was drifting right where he is standing now." Plus where else in Ontario can you drift for chrome steelhead, catch a new PB condom, snag a bottle of vodka floating down river and look next to you and think, is this Deliverance part 2? (seriously though, you meet some strange people on the rivers there). 15yrs ago, there was 2.5 times more water flowing through those creeks before development took hold. For me, I'd rather spend my time and gas money fishing where I'd want to be the most, even if it means fishing far less often. I have missed out on amazing spring runs in my local creek because I didn't want to deal with the crowds. I do far less fishing now in spring because the rivers I enjoy fishing the most are blown. If I'm miserable while I'm fishing, what's the point of going there in the first place? I grew up fishing the eastern ditches. I still go for walks along the rivers with my camera. Perhaps when my nephew who's 18 months gets older I might break out the rod again and fish. It’s the same yearly cycle Lorne Newbie gets into carp fishing Newbie watches the DVD’s and reads the forums Newbie starts getting into numbers of pre-spawn fish when fish are at their easiest to catch Newbie starts pimping the bait that he caught tons of fish on hoping to become part of the pro-staff team to get freebies (in reality any bait would’ve worked anyway) Newbie starts spamming message forums and facebook with ads for the company Newbie thinks people flaming him are idiots when forum rules explicitly say no spamming Company who Newbie pro-staffs for drops him Newbie loses close friends who he used to fish with before he became a pro-staffer Newbie exits carp fishing 1yr later and moves on to another hobby

No you haven’t…But in 5 mins when people who don’t know start asking me where that is, I might not be able to help myself.LOL On a more serious note, when people do ask me where I catch my carp, I send them to a certain beach on the Toronto Islands. Usually conversations there start with, “hey, nice rod ”

Lew, it applies to every species of fish. I’m sure if you (or anyone) was looking to get some walleye for dinner, you wouldn’t motor your boat to the local shoal where 40 boats are drifting/trolling around that 1 spot. The reason the eastern ditches are so popular is because they’re in close proximity to the largest city in Toronto. The paths along the rivers have been worn for over 60yrs by anglers before us and now, many of those paths are paved for easy travel. As far as reading water goes, at this point in time when there is no water, it’s easy to spot fish in water knee deep. I still enjoy my steelhead fishing because I’m not fishing with the crowds (usually I’m just alone or with a close friend). I looked at a map, sometimes knocked on a few land-owner’s doors, pushed my way through a bit of forest and found no one at the other side. I can fish a stretch of river and never see anyone else the whole day. There’s a lot more to steelhead fishing than those eastern lake O ditches. On that note, I value those streams even though I don’t fish them much anymore (I mostly just hike along with my cameras)…They have wild populations of trout & salmon. My license and tax $ weren’t spent to stock any of them with steelhead. My $ goes a longer way when they are not getting raped and exploited by other people (and so does yours).

I never had the itch but my friends get into the stuff every year. Calamine lotion for the most part with sometimes a steroid. I might actually have some of those steroids left from my chemo that I can hook you up with.LOL There was at least 2 times I ended up bathing in your local streams when I tumbled into several large patches of the stuff while hiking. Nothing wakes you up faster than a cold bath (57 degrees F too).LOL

And if he did, he should throw in some statistics in a statement like “And I wore Gucci boxers while typing this message. 10 out of 9 people agree that they are 45% more breathable than the next leading brand”