AKRISONER

to date I have owned A motorguide Tour cable drive minkotta powerdrive v1 Minkotta Powerdrive V2 ipilot A minkotta Terrova Gen 1 ipilot minkotta terrova gen 2 ipilot Garmin Force and I have multiple close friends and first hand dealings with Minkotta Fortrex Minkotta Ultrex For your type of fishing I would most highly recommend a Minkotta Terrova gen 2 with ipilot (non link) or if you want to get crazy a Garmin Force (totally dependant on your boat...please remind of me of what kind of boat you are running...this is a very very heavy robust motor that I would not suggest for any aluminum boat under 18 feet long. Having experience with all of these motors, Minkotta has very much disappointed me hence my move to garmin this year. Out of all of those motors, only 3 have operated without signficant issues/are now dead. The Foretrex The Terrova V2 ipilot and the garmin force are the only motors that have worked to expectations with the Garmin Force being literally on another planet as far as trolling motors go. You pay for it, but its by far the best trolling motor on the market (I havent used a lowrance ghost yet but my understanding is that its comparable) That being said...i think for the type of fishing you enjoy (judging by your past reports) an 80lb thrust terrova V2 Ipilot without a link is the ideal motor for you. You dont need the link because 1. to run the link youd need a networked humminbird sonar GPS which as a whole other investment and 2. the ipilot follow contours function is based off of the use of either lakemaster or a humminbird zero lines chart card which requires you to map the lake yourself. The Lakemaster canada card simply put...is terrible. Its honestly pathetic in Canada and I would highly recommend to anyone to not bother with it. In fact its so bad I would outright consider it dangerous due to its complete lack of accuracy. Hope this helps.

dont be so critical....im a weather nut and I was following that forecast Thursday morning. 10am I read a report published by the weather network showing the main convection and wind sheer points indicating the specific tornado threat for Thursday afternoon. I then sent a text to both my brother and a good friend of mine who was camping at Earle Rowe Provincial Park warning him of the threat that afternoon, and to ensure he had his head on a swivel for inclement weather so that they would not get caught out hiking or at the beach when the severe weather inevitably arrived. The map provided by the weather network clearly showed wha areas of Southern Ontario had the most "tornado potential" and wouldnt you know it, the tornado ended up hitting dead in the middle of the area they indicated had one of the highest threats. I think environment Canada could have definitely issued a "tornado watch" earlier in the day, however the super cells that formed didnt start rotating until they were already established and moving at 50kmh. By that point they had already issued the tornado warning and sure enough it hit and caused damage. Its difficult for them to provide any more warning than they already did considering the storm popped up out of nowhere and then produced a tornado within half an hour of the storm not even existing anywhere on the radar. As much as the weather people get hated on, id say their ability to predict that happening 6 hours before is actually pretty impressive. To ask them to pinpoint the exact location is ridiculous, but they painted a reasonably narrow area and were bang on with their prediction.

we recently ran a honda Eu 2200 generator on a trip into crown land. The thing was amazing. The eco mode kept the lights on and the radio playing, we then were able to easily crank it up when we needed power to charge batteries etc. Thing hummed so quietly we put it an extension cord's length into the bush and you wouldnt even know it was there. Very very impressive and the thing seemingly weighed nothing. Hauling the one jerry can of gas we used for it to run when we were at camp for 4 days was way worse then hauling the genny. Kids making memories for sure. Awesome.

Lord knows I need it lol

This is why Garmin put a two gas shock system in the force. One for up one for down.

not to "hate" on your purchase at all, i really hope its works out for you...but man do I hear a lot of bad stuff about motorguides. Its a shame whats happening to these companies. Same goes for Minkotta lately. Long gone seemingly are the days of these things lasting 20 years.

if i could tell you what the market was going to do ahead of time...$800 would be what id use to wipe my butt...cause I would be the richest man alive

Please extend an invite to me when this happens! I need more help on the fly!

Smitty, I was referring to spraying of weeds in lakes. Quite literally dumping herbicides into the water to kill off plant life for the purpose of improving recreational boat use. It’s pretty wild.

this same factory is the one that destroyed lake okechobe a few years ago right? Politicians down there getting lobbied to allow this company to dump that fertilizer in the water ways...good stuff. lets just say im glad I live in Canada where we dont let corporations destroy our fresh water resources at a price. If you can believe it, they still "spray" weeds down there. We used to allow that kinda stuff up here too, im glad we dont anymore.

Nothing like smelling a photo. this is far too political of a subject matter to survive an actual full thread. let me just say, it’s fun to sit and say nothing is wrong, while the west faces historical heat waves, while the east gets 100 year floods every year, and hurricanes form in the spring

We got smoked…one of the toughest days of fishing I’ve had on that lake, and when we finally hooked a couple of decent ones, we lost them. im still waiting for the day when, as Dave Chong says, “everything has to go right” ive yet to have a day competitively where we haven’t lost our big fish. It stings hahaha.

Man are they fun…

I hope so too! Hahahaha We went not even knowing if there were bass at all. Turns out there was, and they were eating frogs. It was awesome!

Let me know where I can get one of those new $50,000 bass boats, thanks.

Got myself filled up yesterday. the new gas station there has a marine specific pump to the side for those of you looking for it. wish wolf energy had one Diesel was 98 cents a litre too!

Can anyone confirm the supplier of curve lakes gas? Is it Original Traders Energy? they supply wolf energy on the 400 as well.

Hello Once again, 7 months ago, is where I last left off. The beginning of 2021 a year of promise had just arrived. Vaccines developed, a chance to end covid on the horizon, and a lockdown greeting us in the new year. The winter weather taking its time to arrive, me waiting for my home body of water to lock up had me itching to learn a whole new world of fishing seemed to slow time down to a crawl. Between completely re-doing all of the electronics in my boat including the wiring and house projects, I was keeping busy. Being locked down as many of you can attest to is a strange experience, but one thing the ice offered this winter was a sense of “normalcy”. Right off of the jump, I apologize for the heavy doctoring of the following report photos, but I feel like my new home water is wayyyyy more prone to pressure and the peering eyes of the internet. As such, if you want to talk fishing the area, and I know you/you are a long time board member, my DM’s are always open. I’m not one of these crazy guys who wont tell a soul about what colour bait he likes to use, I love to talking fishing, I just don’t like giving everything away to strangers and lurkers. This report is somewhat different from the past, it has a wide range of species included maybe even enough salmonids to wet the whistles of a few of the guys that don’t like me because I drive a bass boat So without further adieu its once again AKRISONER’s (EH-KREE-ONE-ERS) (Scott, that’s me as many of you know now) semi annual review! Ice Fishing…it may have saved me from insanity. It may have also saved you from insanity as well. Here is the beauty of ice fishing in a world where social distancing, health measures and lockdowns prevents you from hanging out with your buddies. There is perhaps, no better way in the world to distance from someone while being able to maintain a mask less, normal conversation then standing out in the middle of a lake, 30 feet away from your friends ice fishing. Everyone brings their own gear, you show up, you are normally spread out apart from each other anyways, and you land your own fish. So that’s what we did, Finally, my friends could drive to the lake, and ice fish as if covid didn’t exist. Man, did it feel great to be fishing with my buddies again. At times I realized we spent hours just standing not even fishing, just standing out on that ice shooting the poop like the good old days. Below us though was a fish…one that I had only targeted a few times in my life prior, one that peels drag from the depths, and hits your bait so fast and hard that you don’t even get a chance to see it show up on your sonar. Lake trout, the ultimate ice fishing fish as far as I have experienced thus far. A trip out, a skunk, a couple of lost fish, another skunk and a return to the lake for redemption the following weekend finally had me stick my first laker on my home water. If I could figure some things out, this was going to be a very fun winter. A promise to my girlfriend that if we moved in together that we could get a kitten I went home that weekend to meet Lenny, or as we affectionately call him now 5 months later…the devil. He is a terror, and I’m fairly certain his cuteness is the only thing keeping him alive most days, that and the fact that eats spiders and house centipedes to my girlfriends relief. As I type this, I just had to go to the kitchen to investigate a crash, Lenny had gotten into the recycle and pulled his used food cans out of the trash lol. More cold weather, a bit more reading, better ice, no wind thing set up beautifully for a mid February weekend of lake trout ice fishing, and deliver did it ever. The fish long but very lean. I’m thinking the population of escapee rainbows is having an affect on the lake trout and their population of eating fish. More on those bows later. Back home, more snow and wintery weather I made one of the scariest boat related decisions of my life. Recessing my foot pedal. Now, most will say, why is it such a big deal…well how does cutting a 2x1 hole in the front deck of your boat sound to you lol. From what I could tell, the procedure seemed simple enough, the instructions even indicated that boat brands such as ranger are known to have stringers running the width of the boat that would need to be addressed. So I drilled the holes and said a few prayers and went at it with the jig saw. Things were going smoothly until I hit a section that really really seemed to slow the jigsaw down, then it basically became right impossible to cut…then I noticed smoke billowing out from any of the “cracks” (behind access panels etc.) from the boat. I immediately started to panic, oh god I’ve lit my boat on fire! Scrambling to try and cut a notch into the section I had cut so that I could fit a hose into the hole to fill the boat with water, I finally punched a hole with a circular saw and saw that there wasn’t a fire, but the entire hull had filled with a thick mix of burnt fiberglass and marine plywood smoke. It did not smell good at all. Finishing the job with the circular saw, I realized the culprit. I had a 2x4 lengthwise stringer coated in fiberglass staggered off of centre on the front deck. A weird construction to be honest, but man was it absolute hell to notch out and fit the tray into. Who knows if I have fatally weakened the structure of my boat, its been fine thus far lol. My boat which I had finally managed to clean up after all of the wiring I had done, was an even bigger mess than before lol. I vacuumed that dust up for hours. Things were coming along with the boat, a few work trips to Timmins Sudbury and Pembroke filled in the weeks Carling has a brand new beautiful covered outdoor rink that on one of my work road trips, I stopped in at my parents and had the opportunity to skate for the first time in over a year (I normally play hockey twice a week, thanks covid) While on this trip I finally also got to see what my parents had been telling everyone about their new place, my dad saying it reminded him of being back on the farm, my parents had their very own herd of deer. The most my dad counted was 50 head, this particular day I counted 28. I spent february continuing to fish those lakers and us rookies started to get the swing of things more and more as the season wound on. The end of March was arriving and the temperatures spiked, the ice was getting eaten up fast. We went out for one final trip on the laker grounds. We left the snowmobiles at home on that sketchy spring ice and hiked it. Fishing was somewhat slow, and the ice was getting cooked. It was interesting knowing during that last walk through 3 inches of water that boating season was coming. I was ready for it! Sure enough 5 days later, the weather got very warm and I decided to throw down a wildcard and go launch the boat in Hamilton harbour. Owning an old boat, the great mess. Heres me pulling the boat out of the garage for the first time in the year, as you can see I didn’t make it more than 10 feet out of the garage when my trailer lights all failed lol. (ended up rewiring the entire boat trailer a few weeks ago) We got skunked, but i got to officially throw a jig on randal reef...who knows how radioactive that jig is now. It was awesome to be out in the boat again and testing out the new Garmin system. We even found a sunken boat on the panoptix. My birthday came and a gift from my family was a high speed polisher, I touched up the old skeeter and was honestly blown away with the results. Before and AFTER Trout opener arrived and I spent a couple of weeks wading around, watching my friends that centrepin and throw hard tackle catch a few trout while I got skunked fly fishing…again lol. I still haven’t figured out how to catch rainbows and browns on the fly. Everything I read tells me I’m doing things for the most part right, but clearly I am not lol. I headed north once again with the boat, spent a weekend getting skunked fishing shallow for rainbows and lakers, I clearly had no clue what I was doing. A long time OFC member then shot me a tip related to his success, so I put it to work…and boy did it ever work. I even added to his tip…the panoptix seriously was a complete game changer for the type of fishing. Id scan around, mark the fish off in the distance, cast to them and catch them. My best trip out I caught 10 by myself over the course of just over an hour. Wild! Lake trout have quickly become one of my favourite fish to target. They are ferocious strong as all heck fighters, can be caught in deep water and will aggressively smash your bait. My brother even managed to stick his first ever laketrout. A trip planned a year earlier to celebrate a friends sobriety, A promise made that I along with another friend would go with him on a trip to crown land south of Timmins was finally getting truly organized. I tuned up the old Suzuki (you may recall the thread with me looking for parts) gear was packed, trucks were loaded and off we went for walleye opener in the near north. The fishing, wasn’t the “greatest” we did catch a limit one day, We also got to catch a few in season northern bass. Some of you may remember that late May snowfall we had in the GTA. Well it was -8 where we were camping, and lets just say the gear I was in was not made for that kind of cold. To say that night was long and uncomfortable is an understatement. Funny enough by the end of the trip we were fishing tarps off in shorts. We managed to catch a few snot rockets in the mix, but truthfully my favourite day of the trip was getting up before sunrise, and seeing one of the most beautiful mornings of my life. Needless to say that experience up in the bush fishing out of a beat up old tinner, grinding out bites changed my perspective on things. It also taught me a bunch about fishing up north. Sometimes the old school, simple, slow techniques will outfish anything you will every throw at the fish. Almost as if the fish have become accustomed to the old French logger ways. Humbled is an understatement. Back home, a few more lake trout to catch Bass season (the most wonderful time of the year in my opinion) was coming. I had a lot of gear to get back into the boat, cleaned up and rigged. A family friend hosts a small derby every year for the guys and I. We throw a few bucks down, fish all day, go home eat steak drink beer and make fun of each other. Its what I live for, its literally my favourite thing in the world to do. Heres a photo of us waiting for blast off Dave and I didn’t catch any lunkers, but a 3 and a half pounder plus enough fish close to 2, including a late 1lb cull got us the dub. This hilarious photo is the result. And then, back to my home water for a 10 day stretch on my new stomping grounds. The fishing is different, its more technical, and you really have to pay attention to what’s going on. I think overall the fishing is tougher than pointe au baril ever was…but I feel like the quality of fish when you find them can be higher. There is still soooo much more to learn about the area, but I’m not as depressed as I once was about leaving PAB. Especially when you get this kind of by-catch up shallow on a crank bait. To this day one of the best fights I’ve ever had, it jumped with no exaggeration out 30 feet off of the front of the boat 6 feet in the air twice, and then ran me 30 feet off of the back of my boat then into my motor before we landed it. Insane. My parents ate it for dinner and said it was delicious. I tried a piece (I’m not a big fish guy) but it was pretty darn good. I found me a secluded bay loaded up with largies eating frogs Then Jake and I decided to go on a mission. I’d known about this back lake’s existence, Id caught a small largemouth through the ice on it, id even hear rumours that it held very large fish that were “no good for eating because they are full of worms”. Ill let the photos do the talking. A 24lb 5 fish bag of largemouth in 4 hours of fishing eating hollow body frogs, chatterbaits and whacky rigs. We legitimately culled a few close to 4lb fish in search of bigger bites. I don’t know, but I personally don’t know if I’ve seen a bag of largemouth this big come out of anywhere in Ontario, at least openly talked about. As you can tell, I’m keeping details to an absolute minimum . I’m hesitant to share much about this special place but I figured id share them with you guys that like a bit of fish porn. The photos are staying cropped tightly and blurry lol but I’ve got the real ones for a framed photo on my wall. This to me is my Mike Borger’s Algonquin Brookie spot. I don’t register with a provincial park upon accessing, so the details don’t exist lol. After that day on the water Jake and I vowed to not touch the lake again until next year. We are leaving it be. I don’t know if I will ever experience a better day of largemouth fishing in my life. My goal for next year will be to stick a 6lber out of there, theres gotta be one if there are that many 5 and a halfs willing to eat. That’s where we land, I’m 4 days out from fishing the biggest tournament of my life the anchor bay Bassmaster. I don’t know if anyone here is partaking, but if so make sure you say hello, I’m of course in the old white 17 and a half foot skeeter! Until next time!

its based on an algorithm using stock volume. Pretty simple, limited number of vendors with limited stock the price goes up. The vice versa when you have multiple vendors selling the same item. When you shop amazon, also scroll through the options, often times you will find the exact same product at a cheaper price simply due to packaging etc. This rings especially true for higher volume stuff like tools, wire and terminal ends.

and I can’t say the same for my fancy cabellas non goretex suit. It just isn’t the same and you eventually always get damp.

the way i see it shag...is you get the stuff to wear it. I quickly realized that by attempting to "save" my good gear and getting wet. Its truthfully so rarely actually rainy while im out fishing all day, maybe 10 or less days per year...i may as well just wear it and deal with the consequences!

I definitely got really sick for a day, and then very achy and tired for another two. Ran 10k 5 days after though. Glad it’s done and it’s been absolutely fantastic to see and socialize with my fully vaxxed friends again. Life’s back!

Exactly, and even then sometimes you will see areas that seemingly should be holding fish, but alas, you fish it and get skunked. I’ve learned on g bay, if you aren’t getting bit, keep moving. When you find fish, fish the area well.

Theres good fishing, just not for walleye or musky. Lots of dead water for sure, but when you find them its good.

Ya, don’t try and navigate that water without a gps of some sort. At minimum using your phone.