MJL

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

 

You been watching the old Spice commercial to much.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!

PS

Lew,I have my old suit up for sale in the clasifieds.Just saying.

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

and the problem is

people can do whatever they like, as long as they follow the regs. they can post names photos and gps waypoints all they like

 

this whole thread is based on someones opinion

 

I am sure the guy posting backgrounds feels just as rightest as you

 

and your post may make you feel better by airing it

 

but I would think that's about as far as it will go

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.

Eggzakly, FF! Naming a river will bring new people to the

river,showing backgrounds won't.

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

Eastern ditches..... What a crappy little term. I have never understood why steelheaders speak of these creeks with such derision, yet they will all flock to them as soon as a run is in. It's like sucking all the enjoyment out of something that you can, and then running it into the ground!

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.

I too fished South Hampton over 40 years ago ,The gentleman described it to a T. I never went back.

This same stuff is starting to pop up in the carp angling scene here. If you can believe it. The most under exploited fish we have in Ontario . found virtually every where in Southern Ontario and guys are getting into it for the same reasons that are talked about in this post. Monster egos, greed, selfishness, jealousy and even violence are starting to creep into the sport. We also have the added incentive of the sport being relatively new to a lot of anglers. So we get the guys who think they are writing them selves into the history books. Even though the book has been written and they are not in it.

These guys are relatively few in numbers but they can cause a lot of problems because carp angling here is a very social recreation. Half a dozen guys fishing together is fairly common here.

Pro Staff are mainly used by bait manufacturers in carp angling. You can actually get one man band operations that make carp baits and use pro-staff.

The term "swim jumping" is being bandied about. We call a spot that we fish for carp a swim. So the words are a take off from the old gold rush days " claim jumpers" .

Different pot but same old stuff in it.

 

 

It’s the same yearly cycle Lorne

1. Newbie gets into carp fishing
2. Newbie watches the DVD’s and reads the forums
3. Newbie starts getting into numbers of pre-spawn fish when fish are at their easiest to catch
4. 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)
5. Newbie starts spamming message forums and facebook with ads for the company
6. Newbie thinks people flaming him are idiots when forum rules explicitly say no spamming
7. Company who Newbie pro-staffs for drops him
8. Newbie loses close friends who he used to fish with before he became a pro-staffer
9. Newbie exits carp fishing 1yr later and moves on to another hobby

Uh oh, i think i may have commited my first "spot burn"

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 ”

I've never fished a river and I have absolutely no plans to ever do so, and reading posts like this one only re-affirms my feelings.

 

I have NO idea how any of you guys can find enjoyment in this type of fishing when your shoulder to shoulder with guys, ducking under each others lines to land a fish, and actually getting into fights with each other.

 

Thanks, but I'll gladly stick with the solitude of my boat.

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

Were you wearing you Gucci underwear when you did so Bill?

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”

 

 

Long gone are the days of fishing a day,coming home and asked how was the fishing eh Mike.

 

Blame

 

 

Technology

 

I guess I'm one of the few people that doesn't use a cell phone

I think if there’s anything Ironic about it all, while attempting to take underwater shots of salmon (unsuccessfully…The river was a little too stained), I overheard one of the pro-staffer wannabes complaining about the crowds while taking hero shots of his friend (for over 4 minutes with the fish out of the water, possibly killing it in the process) and posting the pics to a facebook group…If only there was an emoticon to describe the level of my bewilderment.

NPS showing background shots of east tribs ?? You make it sound like there's secret spots or something !!!! Lol... Like misfish says it was no different 35yrs ago !!!!! Trust me they are by far not the first to find steelhead in the secret spots !!!! .... Lots of us 30yrs ago walked every inch of every trib creek ditch river and stream from Toronto to Kingston !!!!!! Long before the Internet or google !!!!! And with a population of 2 million people living 30mins away you should be lucky there isn't more !!!!! There is no secrets there

It’s not 'where' that’s the issue, it’s 'when'.

You can walk every inch of every trib that flows into Lake Ontario. You can memorize every bush, rock and tree along the river. And after all of that, you still might not have an idea of when the major pushes of fish for a particular river are going to happen (not every river rises or falls the same after a rain, not every river freezes up at the same time, not every river has fish running at the same time despite being only 5 mins away from one another). I started fishing the eastern ditches back in the late 80’s and yes, in many cases, there was a lot of shoulder to shoulder fishing. But there were also a lot of times where you can show up to a popular river at 9am, be the only one there and never see another soul in sight for the day while hitting 30-60 fish (or till you ran out of bait or lost the last of your flies).

For some strange reason, people nowadays need to give up to the minute reports via cell phone and social media. I see it often on the river. One guy hits a fish, calls his friend who shows up 30min later with 3 other people who car-pooled with him.

The last 3yrs, my strategy is to choose a few rivers that might fish well and select the one that doesn't have a recent report...Seems to work and I probably catch a lot more fish because of it.LOL

Thanks again guys

Mike how about a calendar for all your awesome pics. It would be really cool.

I would first have to photograph fish that are meaningful/relevant to each month.LOL

It wouldn’t make sense to put pictures of me carp fishing in shorts & T-shirts for the month of February.LOL

Don't know your background sir, but if you aren't a professional photographer/videographer you missed your calling.

Absolutely amazing images. Thanks for sharing.

For a few years I used to take product photos for Whirlpool/Maytag/Kenmore (of washing machines and dryers). At the beginning, when they said I'd be taking photos of 'models', I was thinking of something very different.LOL

I don't really have a problem with the "pro-staff" concept. The pro is for promotion not professional. Some guys get their panties in a bunch when they hear pro staff but there is nothing wrong with it. Fishing companies use pro-staffers to get the word out about their lures, rods, etc. as long as its done tastefully, i dont see it any different than other marketing initiatives. Mostly I see, "I hit 10 steelies today, couldn't have have done it without my streamside float rod" lol.

 

The site is a joke and most good guys on the site are getting paid by nps to be there and/or their sponsors make them.

 

If any OFC'ers are NPS'ers, please, enough with the full background hero shots. Steelheading is not hard, and you obviously prove that in your reports.

I understand the concept of promoting products. I still don’t understand why the average Joe would pay $50/yr to promote someone else’s products with the possibility of receiving nothing or very little in return (as in the case of many amateur pros on that site).

Someone recently asked me if they could include me as one of their pro staff on that unfortunate website.

I think the NPS shirt and hat would look nice on you. Especially while you pose with a dirty, black, lamprey scarred, fungus encrusted chinny from out east