MJL

Excited about opener? You bet…It’s been a long standing tradition for my dad and me. We go to the same river each year and leave the house waaaay earlier than any other trip during the year. Crowds are usually pretty insane (but they fluctuate from year to year). The opener for us is our chance to revisit a few beautiful stretches of river we haven’t seen for a long time – Kinda like meeting an old friend for the first time every year. I also get to see a few people I only see once a year now…Some of whom played a huge role in helping me along in my own steelheading career. Fun times if you have the right frame of mind.

Great pic Doc...Almost looks like a water colour painting. Well done!

Awesome fish too TDunn!

Congrats! You are now on your way towards, living, breathing and dreaming steelhead for the rest of your life. There's no cure for it. You'll be looking at weather and river forecasts on an hourly basis in fall, winter and spring. You'll fondle dozens of centrepin reels and 13ft float rods in tackle shops convincing yourself that owning 1 just isn't enough and off the shelf factory rods just don't cut it. You'll never look at rabbits in the pet shop the same way again. Every bead, sponge, piece of yarn and wine cork you see in your daily life becomes more than the inanimate objects that they are. You get over stimulated when you see rain and anything emerald green in colour.

You just screwed yourself for life

Nicely done Stonefly

Who knew there was so much to learn about carp!!!

No worries TJ...The article should be on its way in the coming week

700 words was definitely not enough ...I got a little bit excited when I wrote it

Fantabulous report Mike...Congrats on the new PB too Bill.

Eagerly awaiting your Michigan adventure report.

Great catch Dan! A beauty of a specimen. I can count on a single hand the number of fully scaled carp I've caught over 20+yrs of fishing for them. Well done.

A fully scaled mirror?? I am clearly confused

A fully scaled mirror carp has large irregular shaped scales - at least by normal common carp standards - covering its whole body. It’s a rarity in terms of North American carp.

You have a standard common carp which has regular scale patterns over its body.

You have a mirror carp (which has irregular shaped scales. Leather carp have no scales whatsoever. Linear mirror carp have a single row of scales along their lateral lines.

These are regular mirror carp

I normally get 1 mirror carp for every 200 common carp I get. Some places have better concentrations than others.

Definitely can't go wrong with carp

It's common knowledge that you can't fish within 25 m of a dam.

I was referring more to your statement to JP about anything north of the 407 being a Sanctuary. It could mislead others to think that this is the case right now...It isn't...Anything north of Eglinton is a Sanctuary till the Last Saturday of April.

If you're new to fishing the Humber you'll be surprised how many people don't realize that fishing 25m below a dam is illegal throughout the year...Or they just plain ignore the fact.

Actually the regs say fishing sanctuary from north of highway 407

 

http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/MNR_E001335.pdf

 

 

 

Did you notice the shack with a random fence surrounding nothing? Someone's growing a garden there, it's some spooky gypsy village.

Take care when reading through the regulations. Read them thoroughly.

The year round section for the Humber is:

- Eglinton Ave down to Lake Ontario

The extended season stretch for the Humber allows anglers to fish between the 407 down to the Lake between the last Saturday in April to December 31

Anything north of the 407 is open between the last Saturday in April and Sept 30 (General trout season)

You are not allowed to fish 25 downstream of any dam or weir on the Humber at any time. There's about 5-6 of them in the lower Humber below Eglinton Ave

I recommend that everyone read the regs themselves and re-read them again. I'd never rely solely on someone else's ability to interpret them for me.

Just wondering what type of shrimp people use, how to cure them/or do anything to them and how to present the shrimp.

I've wrapped small chunks of frozen ones to my Kwikfish with moderate success - Works better with medium sized or bigger lures. Saw guys on a TV show wrapping sardines around one and thought I'd try it with shrimp we were going to have for dinner instead.

Don't leave them in your wading jacket for a week unrefrigerated like I did...It wasn't pretty

the winner can take on my Piranhas

Let me get my electric eel ready

(...runs out to the Amazon to catch one)

As Jacques mentioned, your frog can also eat tubifex or frozen bloodworms. Frogs will eat just about anything.

Mike, I think it's only fair for the froggy to eat about 50 more gupppies first, so maybe in a month or so ...

 

DSN froggy VS MJL arowana

haha

I hope it will last longer than the 7 inch pleco I thought was big enough. His name was Jaws

Carp have regulations?

They did in the Kawarthas up until they changed the regs last year. No fishing for anything until the panfish opener in April.

I've tried fishing for them in the Kawarthas in early May a number of times without luck...Generally the water needs to heat up a bit till the action gets good. Always worth a shot though if you've got a local spot close to home...I'm pretty interested in seeing how you do up there (geographically speaking from someone who's from Scarborough).

The carp in my local swims generally don't start going until late April/Early may when we've had a warm spring. I look for shallow flats (2-4ft) or marshes adjacent to deeper water or channels (10-15ft is normal). Usually you can find carp cruising or sunning themselves during the day in the flats. When they get warm enough, they start to feed. If they're not in the shallows, they're nearby in the deeper channels or drop-offs.

Corn, bread, worms, boilies, doughballs work...They're coming out of a long winter of not eating...Any food on or close to bottom will be eaten...They're eating machines in spring!

Picked a few worms from the garden in my backyard a week and a bit ago during the rain we had. Only could find them right next to the house - probably due to the warmth. This time of year is my favourite time to pick worms...Don't have to mow the grass first

Your frog is saying "feed me" from his butt

I've got a great home for your frog if you get bored of it - can't promise you'd ever see it again

wool gloves I would say are the worst for removing the slime and are the norm for most because of the cold weather that comes with steelhead fishing. Maybe there should be a law that says nets are mandatory when fishing. That way you can stand in the water and never have to take the fish out of the water. As far as dragging a flopping fish up on the sand or mud because you probably don't have boots or waders on and don't want to get your feet wet is just totally wrong unless of course you are going to keep it.

 

Don't get me wrong fellas I respect your opinions and am not trying to pick a fight with anybody I am just saying we should all do whats best for the fish, thats all.

No worries...Everybody has their own opinions and views. I've met anglers who despise even the fish friendliest of nets one can possibly buy and would rather tail or beach their fish instead. Others feel boga grips are the way to go (which I don't entirely agree with).

It may surprise you to hear that using nets is mandatory by law in the UK for their carp fishing as well as many parts in Europe (like France). Many waters there require you to have a minimum net size of at least 36 inches wide and on the majority of waters with specimen carp, it’s 42 inches. These nets are soft with fine mesh. It’s also law to have soft, padded, unhooking mats (like a small sleeping mattress for carp) to place your catch on the bank while you take pics and unhook them etc. They really do love their carp though.

For the majority of anglers in the UK, they consider our fish handling skills here in NA to be barbaric. Post pics on a UK based carp forum of a carp, pike or catfish lifted over short grass or rocks without a mat or inside a non-fish-friendly net and you’ll be flamed more than a BK whopper . They have soft-meshed nets for just about every species of course and game fish they have – sticklebacks included.LOL

Do I see rubber or soft meshed nets becoming law in Canada? Not likely.

Its just like having Clampett back on the site...insert random image here....

Or when Danbo went through that David Hasselhoff phase for a couple months

The ads do get pretty annoying though...Some of them I can't even tell what they're for.LOL Adblock filters out the rest and leaves a blank post.

Tailing gloves are great especially when they’re super fresh and super chrome from the lake. Those fish tend to be the most slippery I find. The rest of the time, they don’t seem too bad to hold onto.

Some styles of glove I’ve seen used on the rivers:

- Standard cotton wool gloves (a staple out west)

- Michigan mesh gloves – Made out of PVC mesh I believe.

- Rapala fillet gloves

- Seal Skinz waterproof gloves with polymer gripper dots and a plastic coating on the palm and fingers (I use these sometimes when I remember to bring them).

Some criticisms I’ve heard about for using a glove:

- The sanitary conditions after you’ve handled a number of fish. Bacteria can grow on the surfaces and spread to each fish you catch.

- Removal of fish slime.

As Bill mentioned, if you can grab them while they’re still in the water (and quickly), it sure beats dragging them up onto dry, rocky, sandy or muddy banks to subdue them when they’ve fought to total exhaustion. I would imagine fighting a fish to total exhaustion in order to properly subdue it would pose a greater risk to the health of a fish than the use of a tailing glove. For a lot of my fishing trips the last 2-3yrs, I’ve been toting along my heavy rubber meshed net as a means to land them quicker and in deeper water.

If you’re really worried about causing further damage to a landed fish, you can grab the leader, pull the fish close and pop the hook with a pair of pliers while standing knee to waist deep in water...You do risk breaking the line though.

Had Firefox No script going...Disabled it now it's working

I don't think its working......

I was promised web-cam + chat with April Vokey before the upgrades

Chat may not be working

Hire a guide or tag along with someone who fishes as much as one. It will cut your learning curve in half (or more). A lot of the time, changing one or two small things can make all the difference – In my experience with guiding beginners (similar to you who've already put a lot of time into it), all I had to do in most cases was add more shot to the line, slide the float up or tell them to keep their line off the water.

I love fishing rivers. Rivers are a lot like women. They’re full of nice curves and sometimes you get lucky

I use Firefox to browse and use the 'all in one gestures' mouse thingy to go back to the previous page. Right click with the mouse (anywhere on the page), drag mouse to the left (you'll see a red line coming from your arrow) and release. To go back to a page you just looked at (essentially the forward button), do the opposite and drag the mouse to the right. Pressing the Back button is so last century.LOL

Welcome back Carole. Good to see you back online. Looking forward to hooking up with you and Cliff for some night time carp or steel this season

Been using Firefox since 2004. Love it much better than IE. Some websites only load up with IE so it’s good to have around – There’s an extension you can load on Firefox to get it to load 'IE only pages' but it only works sporadically for me. You can have both browsers on your computer with no problems. Firefox is easy to uninstall if you don't like it.

I find FireFox loads pages faster than IE on my computer and the extensions you can download for it are useful. All-in-one gestures and adblock are my favourites.

My dad switched over to Google Chrome and likes it. I might check that one out myself. It’s another browser option to play around with.

If you're referring to steelhead, most years The Humber on average is rarely fishable till about mid-April (at least by my standards). This year may be different with less snow melt. I haven't fished there yet this year to take a look.

It tends to blow out for weeks after ice out and spring rains definitely don't help. Usually runs a chocolaty brown colour. The majority of the steelhead blow right through the lower sections really fast when the water's high - You'll see them jumping. I spent tons of time there in between classes and after class watching them jump the first dam. You get dropbacks later in spring but I normally get 1 for every 30-50 suckers I catch - Them suckers are aggressive.LOL

Doesn't fit in a backpack but the 12'6" Shimano Exage travel carp rod has come in handy in the past for bus/subway travel during rush hour. Bought it for $120 at a small tackle shop in Peterborough - Seen the odd one go on ebay (in Canada) for as low as $65. I have the older model which I find incredibly stiff. Depending on the size of fish you're getting in your local swims, it may not be the right rod for you.

DAM also has the telescopic carp rods (DAM Green Cross Power). Not sure about the price but from what I remember they were (or still are) going for $35-$40. The people I've talked to who owned them had no complaints. If anything, I found the guides a little too small for my liking but I use advanced shockleader rigs with big knots that very few people actually use in their average fishing.