Wagoneer

It's always tough trying to explain to stupid dog owners that their dogs aren't trained well enough to be off leash. And if it's not an actual dog park (ie. public park) they shouldn't be off leash anyways exactly for that reason. If you call up your municipality they'll have a by-law officer sit on the area and hand out dog off leash tickets. That's about the best you can do until her dog actually causes bodily harm to yours. If you're good with people trying talking to her and convince her to keep her dogs on a leash and try to give her some helpful hints on how to keep control of her dogs. But in many cases, dogs are like people's children and they get extremely defensive when you tell them they aren't behaving as they should. We had a similar problem in the old dog park I used to go where a woman had a giant black poodle that would just pick fights the entire time it was at the dog park (not just a wound up dog playing to get other dogs to play - attacking and trying to obtain dominance). She would sit on the far side of the park and read a book while her poodle would repeatedly get into fighting matches with countless dogs. This dog would pick on my lab/collie cross and he would show every single sign of distress he could until he was forced to turn around and snarl and growl until the poodle left him alone (luckily this worked - but I have never seen my dog do this to ANY other dog to this day, he loves every single dog/person out there). She was approached by just about everyone at the park and she would either just ignore the person or get angry at them and say, "they're dogs, they'll work it out in their own way." I'm pretty good with talking to people and getting them to see it from a different viewpoint but this woman was an ignorant brick wall. Finally her dog broke the skin of a little fluff ball dog and the police were called. She denied everything, but the cop took statements from the 10 or so witnesses there who all stated her dog attacked. She ended up getting the bill for the injury, was given a trespass warning (this wasn't a public park owned by the city, it was a park owned by a private club that basically kept it up by donations and volunteers) and ban to never return (she actually did return and got arrested for trespassing). So it's a pretty crappy situation where nobody will take any sort of action until harm is done to either another dog or person. Like i said you can call for a by-law officer to sit on the property for a bit and say you feel your safety is at risk. But then you won't be able to unleash your dog either.

You might have changed your download file location. Just check where you're sending downloaded files when the download bar is up.

You might have to unlock it first. Right click on the toolbar and look for an option that has a check beside that says "unlock toolbar". Once it's unlocked you should be able to left click on it and drag it to the bottom of the screen and then lock it again so it doesn't happen again.

Is this legal? I always thought you had to be MNR or part of a government cleared scientific study to tag any animal? Or do they contract tagging out to fisherman to clear a budget?

Just predownload the lake you're heading to if you won't have data service there. Then the map and contours will be loaded all you'll need is a GPS signal. You can't downloaded the maps with just GPS so that's why you're just getting a location with a blocky map. I downloaded pretty much all the lakes in Ontario and it was just a few hundred MB. The maps have great for me. All the depths so far have been dead-on with my fishfinder.

LED units are almost the same as normal ones now so it's a no brainer. Plus they last forever. I've done both my dads boat trailer and my own. They're also a lot safer as they're at least twice as bright. Make sure your grounds are all in good order as LED's are sensitive to need a good ground or they'll flicker or won't turn on at all.

I use 3 tear drop hanging weights at the front of the leader and they do a pretty good job of catching all the weeds before the lure. I think the key is to just extend the leaders so the weeds never make it as far as the lure. Obviously my 36" leaders aren't cutting it since the clumps of weeds were long enough to still cover the lures. The one musky I landed (err... I guess not really) hit about 10 seconds after I dropped the line down so there weren't any weeds on it yet. I have no doubt the lures covered in weeds was what was stopping me from landing anymore. I just got lucky with the one I hooked I think.

Well I tried the best I could and managed to get a huge musky up to the boat but before I could net it he flailed and spit the lure. That's all I could muster the entire day was the one musky. Trolled all the way to belle river and back from puce a couple times (tried everything from 8' to 16') until I ran low on gas. Tried all different lure depths, speeds, and every musky lure I own. The entire day I was pulling weeds off the lures. How do you guys deal with the weeds?! Even with the weight in front of my 36" leader catching the weeds it was still covering the lure every single time I pulled it up. Sometimes before I could get the 2nd line in the water the first one was covered in weeds. Talk about frustrating. I'm thinking of adding my 18" leaders in front of my 36" and maybe the weeds won't make it to the lure. Is that why a lot of people run with the tips of the rods in the water so the tips catch the weeds and not the line?

I guess it's true, don't know until you get out there and find one. I think I'll start close and just troll out into deeper water and see if/where they start hiting.

What happened to trolling boats always having the right away? Sometimes on erie if I'm jigging and I see a troller coming with planer boards I'll actually start up my engine and get out of his way. I know what kind of a pain it is to circumnavigate around stopped boats when you're trolling with 8+ rods out. I'd be extremely happy with 8 boated musky, especially if one was 48". But I'm just starting out, I'm happy when I land just one

No truer words ever spoken! The problem when you're young your broke, saving up to buy your first vehicle and house. Once you have those things you're stuck paying them off for the next 20 years. When you're finally retired and have time you're too old to do most of the things you've wanted to do! Trying to find that happy medium between going on all the adventures you want to and still being a responsible young adult is tough. Looks like you've managed pretty well though!

Tomorrow. But the weather looks really calm and consistent this week so I might dock the boat and come back a couple times. I was planning on trying the hump and then working the river mouths. Is it too early to think the musky are already making there way in?

Really? any specific spots? You're first person to tell me to fish anywhere but the hump for fall musky.

He's mostly an automotive journalist but he has numorous books published. Most of them are basically conglomorations of articles he's written but they're arrranged in a way that you can read through one of his books in a single day and not get bored. Very british sense of dry humour. Seems like you really enjoy writing and have similar sense of humour, I think you enjoy reading his books even if you aren't a gear head.

Thanks guys! West is kind of in the wrong direction for where I want to fish. I'm hoping to head out to the hump for musky.

Looking for some insight if there's an easy place to park and launch my boat around belle river marina IF the marina ramp is busy (on google earth it only looks like there's one ramp)? I'm not trying to dodge a ramp fee (actually I haven't yet been charged for ramp fees at any marina for my boat even after I try to pay them anyways. I usually buy a chocolate bar and pop to at least contribute some business to the marina), I'm just asking because I'm planning on going out solo and I don't want to set up my boat and clog up a ramp for any period of time if I don't absolutely need to. There seems to be a parking lot across from the river from the marina that seems to have some low shoreline but it's impossible to tell from google earth. Would that be an option? And I'd rather not drag it along the beach. Sand is not good to get lodged in the seams of an inflatable boat. I run it up on beaches all the time, but I'd rather not drag it along dry sand for too long or have to carry my motor a large distance (I'm a big guy, but it's 120lbs of pure awkwardness). But if the marina is deserted during the week like most others I won't worry about it and launch it from the ramp.

If you can get your big 4 stroke slow enough to troll then you can troll with it all day long if you're okay with wasting the fuel. If you have big 2 stroke you don't want to idle it for hours and hours. There's a reason why 2 strokes don't like to idle. And there's the even more obvious fuel consumption issue with a big 2 stroke. We never use my dad's evinrude 150 to troll, we always flick on the evinrude 8hp 4 stroke. On a 21ft boat it's pretty much infinitely adjustable for speed up to 6mph and it's quiet enough to run it all day long without being bothersome.

Awesome trip report! Thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I don't know if you've ever read any books or articles by Jeremy Clarkson but you have a very similar writing style to his; always poking fun of yourself and cliff hanger jokes. That is some crazy numbers for the trip! I'd be ecstatic with the amount of fish you caught. I actually purchased my boat, my vehicle and roof-top tent for exactly the same type of expedition fishing trip as this one which is probably why I enjoyed reading it so much. I've been using it this year as sort of prep to see what kind of water it can handle and what I'd feel safe in doing. Problem is getting my fiance to let me go out solo in bear country. How much fuel did your 60 end up sucking back over the whole trip? Good luck with your future endeavers with the feathery readhead.

I've been doing a lot of research lately and I think I've landed on the St. croix musky mojo 8ft and probably some sort of okuma counter reel. Seems to be best bang/buck combo out there for musky trolling. Maybe then I'll give my dad's equipment back to him

I've run into two sketchy situations with floating logs this summer. The first one was what looked like half of a tree stuck on the bottom about 10km out from mitchell's bay in LSC. All you could see was a tiny branch sticking up but when you got closer it was basically a wooden iceburg. That one I called into the MNR with the GPS coordinates because it was stuck in place and wasn't moving. The next week I went back to the exact spot on GPS and I couldn't find it again so who knows if they actually went out and cut it up or it dislodged itself and it's somewhere in the bay waiting for a nice soft aluminum hull to gouge through. The second was again on LSC after that really bad rain storm last week. Giant floating log in the water that I missed by about 6ft. My girlfriend who is supposed to be the spotter was definitely slacking on that one. She was answering a text when I finally spotted it from the back and dodged it. Hitting that at 40km/h in my inflatable boat would have probably meant paddling back a boat with one less air chamber. I've gone out night fishing but all the times were in a canoe or kayak. I can't imagine going out when it's dark especially in a lake with rocks. Even when we used to fished nippissing a lot and went to the same spot many summers in a row we would find a new rock that we never knew was there. Cost us a prop a whole days fishing one week. Had to drive 2hrs one way to a place that had a counter-rotating prop for my dads Evinrude (it's a 150hp and very few boats are sold with twin 150's so it's not a proper that's regularly stocked). That sure puts a damper on a holiday. Some good safety pointers though and a well written post!

Lake Erie has been really frustrating the last couple years around long point. Both bass and pike have been really hard to locate we've found. The last two years we haven't caught anything to write home about. Quantity is sometimes there on a good day, but size is defintely not. Not sure what's been up, but all the pike i've caught in the last two years have been REALLY skinny. Fish just aren't where they usually are, probably because of the cold summer this year. The smallies should be stacking by now, and the we haven't been able to hit any schools at all in our usual go-to places. I've been going to lake st. clair more and more this summer and while I haven't gotten into any big musky yet, I've boated some really nice nickel smallies. I keep going out of mitchell's bay for some reasons, but planning on making some trips out of belle river this fall and spend some more time musky hunting. I've had a lot more fun fishing LSC this year than I have fishing the inner bay / long point of erie. If you're up for the drive nippissing is always a good choice. Even if you get skunked on that lake the shorelines are so beautiful you don't care.

Happiest 3 guys in the world at that moment, haha!

I'm sorry for your loss. Sounds like a great man and a better father.

Hey I take offense to that Doesn't matter the size of your boat. A PFD isn't just for capsizing. You can slip on your deck and hit your head on the way down and drown in 3' of water before you get out of the marina. I have emergency training and have been thrown into some hairy situations for said training. Take somebody's word for it who's been through that stuff, wear a PFD. I have that training and still wear one. Everybody who comes on my boat wears one, even my dogs.

Everyone who is stupid enough to not wear a life jacket at least while the boat is moving should be made to tread water fully clothed (including shoes) for 1hr in a wave pool kept at 70°F at a random moment that they least expect. Anyone who says, "I'll just swim to shore" has probably never swam more than 500m in their lifetime let alone in open water. I've been really thiking about dropping the $$ on an inflatable life jacket for a while now just purely for the convenient factor (space, weight, coolness in the summer).