AKRISONER

a cooler for your frozen meals and a cooler for whatever else. The meal cooler only gets opened once a day and stays in the shade. pack your food tightly with ice to reduce air. It can be tough to keep your food frozen for long enough. Dont rely on fish to eat...You certainly will end up with some act of god that prevents you from having food. 

Rope, mosquito coils for the evening as the sun sets surround your campfire where you hand out with them and you will be comfortable during the most brutal time of the day.

ive always said the fish fly hatch is the end of the spring fishing bonanza. Its usually ok though because bass opens in a few weeks.

jeeeez, dont even need to launch the boat.

how do you determine the weight of a 184 lbs fish, im assuming rapala digital scale? 🤣

seriously unreal though. What an experience.

they arent burnt off, the second wave is on now. Im down in the GTA and just got swarmed on my front lawn and its hot out.

God bless canada, 7 months of the cold trying to kill us, it finally gets warm enough to survive outside all day without devine intervention and the bugs come down and try to carry us away lol....at least our fishing is good.

i forgot about nip's whacky bass season. Catching them off of the dock? They are geared up and ready to go. That full moon mid june is going to be a firecracker with the cold spring weve had. Water temps were far too low up north to get things going on the last full moon.

2 minutes ago, BillM said:

Search Google maps, you'll easily figure out where you can launch that thing..   

kayaks especially, all you need is public land like a park of some sort, not even a launch. Simple simple. 

2 hours ago, duke2555 said:

Where to put in on Pigeon River?

Is there lots of boat traffic?

Thanks

if you are looking to avoid boat traffic, leave the kawarthas entirely and head north. Theres a public boat launch near emily park. Go out on a Tuesday morning early and you should be able to easily avoid any crowds.

Bass doesnt open anywhere for a few more weeks. Check the regs where you plan to fish for bass. Staggered opening weeks depending on what lake you fish.

pigeon river

21 hours ago, Silvertracker said:

 

Get yourself a power polisher - some high end polish and something to remove the old grime etc and it will be fine

 

 

 

i mentioned this earlier in the thread, and ill bump it again, you high speed polish that top coat (make sure to move the polisher quickly or it burns the gel coat! ask me how i know 😁)

You will literally be blown away with the results. The previous owner probably thought the boat was showing its wear, he didnt realize that for $100 he could make the boat look brand new again. Want proof?

Heres two pictures from my annual report thread after I did it on my 98 skeeter

i keep a very close eye on the boat market Flex.

Treat the motor and hull as two separate things. 

His pricing is probably in the correct ballpark for a quality boat if it is indeed an 06 115hp. You cant go by the "well i paid 22k for a boat in 2010" logic. The pricing has gone completely out of whack because of covid. A perfect example, Imagine you could buy a brand new 20 foot glass boat, with a trolling motor, electronics and a 200 horsepower engine on it for $27,000...youd buy it right now without question, well in the year 2006 you could. Thats how out of whack pricing is. My boat is literally selling right now for more than the new retail price from 2006.

2 things you 1000% need to do before buying the boat,

1. Take it for a test drive, a 115 on a 16 foot aluminum the thing should be powerful as all hell, in fact is that even a legal amount of power for that boat? Im a bit concerned that the motor is actually rated for more power than the hull is legally allowed to have. As such you wont be able to get insurance. Check the stamp. During your test drive keep an eye on the bilge area. Is the boat filling with water? Your hull may have a blown rivet.

2. Walk away immediately if the seller is not open to you compression testing the motor (google how to do this its very straight forward) and second of all, get him to start the motor from cold. Lots of motors will run once they've been got running.

Finally, you want my personal opinion? My best friend ditched their 04 smoker craft 2 years ago because the thing blew its rivets. That boat was the worst riding boat I have ever ridden in. Second of all, a 15 year old evinrude...There arent literal memes all over the internet about rolling the dice buying used evinrudes without reason. We also just had another board member post an entire thread about the fact that he could not get parts to fix the hydraulics on his 15? year old evinrude. Finally Evinrude shut down for a reason...

Im sure this post is going to absolutely bug the heck out of someone here thats driving a smoker with a rude on it, so be it. As i said to the guy with the evinrude, and trust me on this one having bought two used boats in the past 5 years, boats and specifically 15-20 year old used boats are a money pit and a total PITA, at minimum if things are going to go wrong, you at least want to be able to get parts to fix the problems. Knock on wood, at minimum you hope that your used motor you buy wont blow any time soon, the rest is just maintenance.

It will be interesting to see how far tampa goes. It will be telling of how well the leafs actually played. 
 

of note, tampa does not make major mistakes. There’s no kerfoot no look drop passes in their repertoire.

11 hours ago, HTHM said:

Yes I was, that was the shakedown cruise. 

Second launch today, two attempts one success. Here's the story:

Well, there I was with my wife about to take a cruise on the Niagara River at the Queenston Launch. Unfortunately someone had launched their boat without checking the fuel level and ran out of fuel in the launch port. They promptly tied their boat off, blocking the launch, of course, and buggered off to get fuel. I waited for about 45 min for them to show up, and made a comment to the tattooed woman in the boat that it was quite inconvenient for everyone that they were there.
She took umbrage with that and I could see this would escalate into me demonstrating a side of my personality one does not want to see, so I walked away and left it alone. They finally showed up, 6 boats in the que waiting to retrieve so I said screw it and left for a wonderful launch on the high side of the river. I could overhear her complaining to her compatriots about this bad man that had the unmitigated gall to address the error in judgement. (It was a good thing I left...)

Reminds me of the time a group of 6 at the causeway launch on chemong decided that the most appropriate way to launch  their dinghy was to offload it off the top of their car and onto the boat ramp. Fine whatever, but then rather than launching they just shuffled it slightly to the side while they proceeded to load their gear into it and stand around it 

If you have used this launch you will know that the approach is at a 90 degree angle, so sure enough I’m swinging the boat in and I realize that it’s impossible to not hit the dinghy and their fishing rods that are all sticking out of it. 
 

i make eye contact with one of the 6 and say, excuse me can you move that thing off of the ramp…stunned, no reaction what so ever from the group. I then proceed to back the trailer right up to the dinghy slowly hoping that one of the group will surely notice that I’m about to hit the thing, there are 4 of them standing right there after all…nope.

I give up, I proceed to get out of my truck with my buddy, we walk up the dinghy. Pick it up and literally physically carry the dinghy to an appropriate place out of the frigging way and seemingly the crew continues their conversation in their mother tongue as if we don’t even exist. They literally don’t even look at us as we are standing 2 feet away from them picking up their boat and carrying it. 
 

i go back and finish launching and they carry on as though absolutely nothing happened.

So it is a glass boat, what an interesting lay out, I don’t know if ive ever seen anything like it. It’s almost like the designer couldn’t decide if he wanted a bass boat, tiller or deep V lol 

no joke, get yourself a high speed polisher and some mcguiars polishing compound and go quickly over that thing and then finish it off with a title wax hybrid solutions ceramic coat it will shine like brand friggin new. You will literally be blown away by the results.

What an incredibly fast warm up, I’m thinking that hot water is a very thin layer

I always make a stop when I fish tri lakes, I take every single Jerry can I own with me for that ethanol free gas

Dirt and dust are easily taken care of. Good for you for being able to get into the market even during this economy/market.

I’ve spent the last 7 months cleaning up my new to me boat as well. Of course she’s thrown a few curveballs at me already, batteries, winch strap, a trolling motor rewire, but that’s part of what makes you feel like the boat is yours. I remember the first time I saw my boat vs what it’s like now, a little TLC and now my boat turns heads as I drive down the highway!

the shape/layout of this boat looks really intriguing, almost west coast meets bass boat. Care to share some pics of the interior when you get err vacuumed and scrubbed out. 
 

a recommendation after reading into it for a while, simple green extra strength (the purple stuff) and a scrub brush makes any boat interior look new. If you have carpet at all scrub on a diagonal and it brings old carpet totally back to life. 

If there is one thing that the US lakes get right, it’s their access to water. Every lake has multiple public launches. This greed is getting outrageous. It’s not as if the launch/parking lot isn’t paid for by the local ratepayers anyways. At minimum if you pay taxes locally you should be exempt from being charged for accessing your own park. 

2 hours ago, BillM said:

I'd spend the $$ you're going to pay for a new AliExpress special reel on a used Shimano or similar.  

pick up an old stradic, get it serviced or do it yourself and have a reel for the rest of your life

1 hour ago, CrowMan said:

Regardless of where the products are manufactured....I'm also a believer in supporting your local retailer...when you can. Whether it's a big box store or your home town shop, bricks and mortar retailers offer real people giving local advice. Over the last few years many local fishing shops have disappeared.

Especially with rods and reels, I would personally have a difficult time purchasing something without feeling it "in hand". As a die hard gear junkie, one of my simple pleasures is wandering the aisles of a fishing store and feeling or eyeballing the merchandise. Whenever I'm on the road, I always make it a point to stop at a local shop and support it with even  a small purchase...sometimes the local knowledge you gain is well worth it. I would hate to lose that experience to a Jeff Bezos vision of on-line convenience. 

Or maybe I'm just an old fart who should get with it....

still stop in peterborough pro tackle every single time im in town. I think the traditional tackle stores are dead because they are not specialized enough. You arent going to get far if your competing to sell canadian tire tackle with canadian tire. 

The way to survive is to cater to the crowd that takes fishing to another level, which is the exact business model of a peterborough pro tackle or a gagnons. 

cant beat this weather weve been having for fishing lately.

Still personally a believer that buying a quality reel is a far better investment as it will basically last you 30+ years. 

1 hour ago, Fisherman said:

I can't see the gas staying this high forever,  sooner or later people won't be able to afford to drive to work and you can only do so much car pooling. 

until you see an actual dip in the demand, the price will continue to soar. 

I’m gonna say, stay the hell away from evinrude Johnson no matter what. 
 

we’ve already had one board member now confirm that parts for them are an issue with them no longer being in business. Stay clear.

also, you don’t go out of business making great products…

22 minutes ago, CrowMan said:

Largemouth, Crappies and some surprisingly big Pike in Fairy Lake. 

i wouldnt eat anything out of there though...I worked for the town of halton hills once upon a time, that lake is gross lol. 

Also can confirm island lake allows electric only motors