AKRISONER

18 minutes ago, BillM said:

I've talked to those boys before.   No drama, just wanted a peak in the livewell.   I don't think they even asked to see my fishing license. 

I was in the lake trout sanctuary too, glad to see them in there after hearing some of this Bull about guys “fishing salmon” running spoons in killbear/rose island channel absolute garbage. 

We also had a what I would consider to be solid opener.

most certainly could have gone better, the morning cloud cover seemed to have the smallies pretty negative. We broke down and had to finesse fish to entice bites until the sun came out, then a flurry of fish hit the boat.  Our bag was 18+lbs, couldn’t complain about that. 
 

20 minutes ago, siwash said:

Tried a wacky this weekend on the French. To be honest I didn't give it enough time and the presentation wasn't perfect. I did catch a fish with it! A rock bass 🤣

 

What are your favourite senko style colours? 

Like anything, I keep it very simple when it comes to colours. Senkos, brownish, green tones. Green pumpkin and whatever flake fits your fancy.

2 hours ago, akaShag said:

Interesting.  I have had a LOT more success with an unweighted hook.

Except when the wind is up…

Got stopped yesterday in parry sound by the MNR. 
 

was an awkward one because I had literally just caught a 4lb smallie and they came racing up on me. Sure enough I didn’t have my physical card on me, but I always keep my license summary on my phone…so I thought turns out I only had photos of the front and back of my physical license and my license summary was of my older license that’s since expired.
 

The CO was really good about it though. I think sometimes you get a little bit of the benefit of the doubt If you look like you at least know what you are doing out there a bit.

was good to finally confirm with a CO though that a pdf of your license summary saved to your phone is considered to be valid. I always have such a hard time keeping track of my physical license because between fishing rivers, ice fishing, fishing in my boat and others, it’s much easier to just have it on my phone.

They checked my live wells which were empty, and seeing me release that bass, we didn’t seem suspicious. Clearly a couple guys with 15 rods out all over the boat catching and releasing bass. 

the co couldn’t have been much over 35 years old, good to see some young guys joining the force. Talk about an awesome job, working this management zone, driving boats around parry sound all day I’m a little jealous, I’m not going to lie.

On 6/11/2023 at 4:58 PM, CrowMan said:

Huh...sure it's easy to keep your kitchen knives sharp when you're a bachelor...talk to me when you have kids, especially teenagers ...lol

the number 1 enemy of my sharp knives is my mother in law.

She loves to throw my knives in the dishwasher with the glasses 😪

12 hours ago, v007 said:

I hear you but when I go I will go with the family and i am family of 5 (5 x$7=$30 ) with car $14 total is $44 per visit, if I go every weekend starting this weekend until summer end, it's really a lot of money. What is hamilton harbour? that is for lake ontario I am afraid to go to lake ontario, big lake. if I have to go to lake ontario I was thinking to go to from the beaches in missisauga there is a beach i know is friendly for swimming i can push my boat there.

Bay front park in Hamilton is free

also I very very strongly suggest you review the capacity limit of your vessel. What you are describing, taking 5 people onto an inflatable dingy sounds extremely dangerous

1 hour ago, siwash said:

What do you guys think of these kits? Seems like a good deal...

Basically everything in that kit except the weights looks useless

i don’t know why you’d wanna drop shot with a giant ewg looking hook. No idea why they have some weird looking nail weights then there’s no need for swivels or snaps to drop shot.

go to Canadian tire and get some gamakatsu drop shot hooks in size 2 and some drop shot weights in 1/4 and call it a day. Should cost you about $15 

I wouldn’t worry so much about free launching, go somewhere closed, save yourself the gas money and go catch some fish.

 There is a free launch in Hamilton harbour. No danger in a small boat in there

Because they are all conservation areas at minimum you will typically have to pay parking during the open season

There are not going to be many free public launches on small lakes trust me our bass club struggles to schedule our clubbies on lakes with free ramps, they are few and far between.

Interestingly some of the greasy junk I fish in the kawarthas flipping for largemouth would fit the bill

3 hours ago, siwash said:

So are these knots best for similar diameter lines or can they work well with varying widths?

Palomar knots truthfully are so bloody easy to tie and basically work with all diameters of line. 

to a point, when using heavier gauge fluro for pike leaders etc I will tie it to connect to my lure. 
 

I like the eugene knot for fluro under 20lbs. 
 

the number one reasonwhy I use these knots are they are what I’m able to tie when I lose dexterity in my fingers essentially any time the air temperature is below 10 degrees C (raynauds syndrome is a PITA)
 

once again I simply complain about breakage. With the palomar knot, but to each his own. Learn the knot though, there are many times you will be fishing with straight braid, frogging, flipping, throwing a jig at cover, heck even whack rigging if you are fishing pads…in that case just run a palomar knot with straight braid and give err

so heres the catch with the palomar...it burns light fluro and is prone to breaking. I went through it for a few years thinking I was getting bit off, and once again ive then watched my tournament partner be adamant that he is getting it off...but then spending too much time with him fishing on the tri-lakes no one hooks into musky that often. 

The thing is that the line always breaks clean to so it can be mistaken for a bite off, however speaking from experience, when you actually get bit off, typically the break is very very unclean and your line looks more shreaded than purely cut.

Yes hes always extremely careful to not twist the line and ensure that it has clean grab ahold of everything, the knot gets so tight on a hard hookset it literally cuts itself.

I actually might start playing with the Alberto…how do you find it for actually holding?

also I’m just going to throw this in here because I spent years playing with knots looking for simplicity due to my hands, but when it comes to tying fluro or mono to your hook, I swear there is not better knot than the Eugene knot.

I find it so simple to tie because once you pinch the lead, you just wrap and can grab ahold of the loop at all times.

getting the tension perfect of the tag end does take some refinement, but that knot is one where if you didn’t tie it right, it’s obviously visible and you don’t literally feel it lock. When done right you always get the same result and it’s literally bulletproof and never failed me once.

also, this is how you tie a drop shot, I saw this video and never looked back

https://fb.watch/liItm9kDyk/?startTimeMs=2000&mibextid=v7YzmG

4 hours ago, siwash said:

 

So are you keeping the leaders short because the double uni doesn't go through the top eyelet?  Or can the leader length be longer?

You can tie it longer for sure, it just doesn’t go through the eyelets like an fg 

my logic, is that for bass? They aren’t line shy at all from experience. A few feet of fluro 2-3 feet is enough to be invisible at the bait. The braided line doesn’t seem to bother them in the water, heck largemouth live amongst weeds they can’t tell braid from the weeds surrounding them. The only thing I will tie longer is a drop shot rig, that’s less of a rig I’m hoping to absolutely bomb casts with though so it works. 

my other complaint about the fg is that it’s a knot that needs to be masterfully tied or it will fail. You can ask my tournament partner about that one. We have a very innapropriate name for the knot now after it lost some giants for us. 
 

I see it fail so often that I just can’t trust it. Although the same can be said with most knots, there’s usually some feel to get them just right. 

I’m going to counter what crow says because I have issues with my hands and therefore don’t bother even attempting to tie the fg knot.

because I’m stuck tying a double uni I typically tie a leader as long as I am willing to cast without the knot going through the top eyelet. I guess 24 inches is long enough.

the double uni is so bloody easy to tie, that even I can tie it with cold raynauds syndrome hands.

they literally never fail. Your line will break long before a uni knot fails.

Funny I’m thinking back now and I realize talking to some old timers, they referenced grass pike as well, I’d never heard that before. 
 

when I moved to Ontario I’d never heard of a “pike” in fact I think I probably didn’t start using the term until I started fishing with my friends regularly here in Ontario. My old man still calls em a jack.

im glad I started fishing more with my friend Zac. He prior to fishing with me did more of his fishing for pickerel up near timmins, so I’ve gotten away from calling them walleye again. It’s back to pickerel, and I’m happy to not use American terminology 

1 hour ago, CrowMan said:

Regardless of the conservation or  science aspect....as a consumer/viewer/fan, I just don't find it entertaining. You could throw  virtually anything at a bedding Bass and it'll get bit...and then they do it to the same fish again and again.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't think the sponsors are doing themselves any favors if they're trying to attract eyeballs...there's little drama and frankly it's non- event for me

This is the entire debate right now with televised fishing…especially in 2023 with forward facing sonar

its just becoming less and less entertaining. You aren’t going to see many tournaments won throwing a frog or buzz bait. Up north it’s a heck of a lot of using floggers with hair jigs and drop shots.

down south it’s become a lot of throwing baits into brush piles using your forward facing sonar. It doesn’t make for great tv. 
 

gussy’s win at the classic basically gave everyone an aneurism, cap that with how decimated the fisheries in the south are becoming with every increasing tournament pressure and bed raping the fisheries, plus mix in a little herbicide spraying (I still can’t believe this stuff goes on” things are getting really ugly.

Crow...its america

On my most recent trip to Virginia talking with a couple of fellow bass boat central members/anglers that we met down there when explaining our closed season "they close fishing during the spawn? what liberal came up with that idea?!"

Theres a reason we have the best bass fishing on the entire planet without question. People will tell themselves what they want to think is right, no amount of studies/science is going to convince them otherwise. The funniest part is in texas they finally introduced strict slot limits to at least curb guys boxing spawning fish, sure enough texas in part with its share lunker program is absolutely taking off while the entirety of the rest of the country is literally falling.

The colloquialism is strong in Ontario. Basically anywhere north of muskoka they are still pickerel. It’s only once you get too close to the border people start saying walleye. 
 

I can assure you that the pickerel river is not named after the chain variety lol

If you really want to confuse Americans, we tell them that we fry up pickerel and they are lossstttt lol

here’s one of my favourites, in Manitoba pike are called jack fish. 

There’s not better sinking feeling then when the OPP asks you to “turn on” your waterproof flashlight that you haven’t turned on in months lol

I’m late to the party that is this thread but luckily Ontario has two openers

saturday morning I pulled up to our first stop with a ghost coloured vision 110 and caught a pickerel lol

suddenly noticed some suspended smallies off the shoal and quickly one fell victim. Then I noticed a school of gills getting chased by something surfacing, threw the 110 and proceeded to put 4 of our 5 fish mixed bag in the boat. 
 

headed off to flip in the afternoon and culled once, missle d bomb with a pegged 3/4 tungsten. Love me some slop.

this Saturday it’s most certainly going to be smallmouth. I’ll be throwing an evergreen shower blow and a Ned rig for a follow up for any missed blow ups. Once the sun gets high I’ll be grinding an evergreen cr-8 all over that shield rock.

I have a week off of work next week so later in the week I’ll go on a mission to get a tinner into a local back lake that’s loaded with giant largemouth. Our smallest bag ever out of it was 22lbs. 
 

this year I’m going to try pop my swim bait virginity throwing a deps bull shooter and see if I can crack a 6 out of the pond. Mix that with a big gabot in the pads. Swinging for the fences!

4 hours ago, CrowMan said:

Quick and easy hack for Ram mounts...rough up the ball and socket with some medium grit sandpaper, and keep clean with some rubbing alcohol every once in a while...stops any slipping

I need to try this out…my second graph on the front of my boat droops into my other screen up on the bow when I hit anything too hard going fast.

Had a home owner yell at me on Friday while doing some scouting. 
 

I guess what I was doing looked iffy, I’d just finished rigging for Saturday morning and took the boat for a spin. Rods rigged strapped on the deck of the stratos. 
 

im up on the trolling motor in a very weedy shallow area looking around and a homeowner says, “hey what are you doing?” I said, “looking around” 

here’s when I questioned his intention though, his reply “I never catch fish over here”

I made sure I fished his dock the next morning…obviously I caught fish.

1 hour ago, BillM said:

People are idiots.    I ran across a glitter boat on Lower Buck last weekend during musky opener tossing spinnerbaits right up close.    

Same ish different year. 
 

I usually go for a boat ride on the Friday of opener just to see how things are shaping up, check water temps and without fail every time I see guys beating the bank with spinner baits