BillM

Nothing like ditch fishing for scruffy steelhead.

Rink seemed really small lastnight, lol.

I'll ask them if they had permission to use it, lol

Just put #2 on the board.

You should see all the idiots saying things like... 'That's fake!!!' No ****!! lol

Yeah, I think that's the best part about that river. Doesn't matter how you fish for them, you'll catch them. After the first few hours, I basically tossed top water mouse patterns the rest of the trip. Although a spinning setup would have been a lot less tiring

If the water is that cold, you should be in a floater/survival suit anyhow... Life jacket isn't going to save you from hypothermia.

Although, a bear meal was a definitely possibility

The bear didn't even flinch when I fired off 3 rounds into the air. It entered the water upstream of us and swam downstream and towards us, probably popped out of the water about 50ft away. Shook off, looked and just walked up the bank and into the trees. Zero interest in us.

Full of gobies or eggs, lol.

I have tracks/waypoints from our trip. We started fishing south of where the Warchesku enters the Sutton, saw fish as soon as we entered the river, it was pretty crazy. Caught fish as soon as we got out of the boat. According to Albert it was a high water year and honestly I wouldn't have wanted to fish it any lower, it was perfect. Didn't have to get out of the boat once to get over any gravel and it made some of those long gravel stretches downstream some of the best water we fished. I'll have to dig into MapSource but some of our best fishing on those long gravel stretches were above the Aquatuk. We zipped through the 'Freezer hole', that's the big bend pool just DS of where Albert has his tent. We only fished the tailout as there were two old boys already there, I really didn't feel like sharing water with anyone, lol. I'm still pissed I pulled the 12g instead of the camera when we encountered that polar bear at the Aquatuk. Pictures would have been unreal, lol. I'd love to get back, but I really wanna knock the big brother Arctic char off my bucketlist before that

This guy actually made me laugh, I usually can't stand many fishing hosts to be honest. He's a riot!

Sandals? Butler service is awesome! Take advantage of it.

I'm guessing the price is close to 3k PP just for the fly in these days. When I went a few years ago it was $2500. Great read Drew, brings back a lot of memories. Looks like the water was up, making for easy paddling and no portaging over those shallow gravel beds (Which held some insane fish for us) I'd think the prices would be on the Hearst Air website as well.

Weather was fine. I was fishing out of Port Hope that afternoon/evening. Water temps were 75-76 and the wind was SE maybe 5-10km/h. Nothing that I would consider rough or bouncy.

I think we all knew what the final outcome was going to be. I'm glad the family has some closure now. Big loss to the fishing community as a whole and definitely to OFC. It sucks, no other way to put it.

If he had a PFD he'd probably be alive. The water was 75 degrees with a SE wind that day (I was fishing out of PH), even if you can't swim you'd be able to float around for hours without having to worry about hypothermia at all. BTW, nice to see ya Mike

Yeah I don't think the Minn Kota is going to over power a kicker, but hey anything that helps in a situation like this would be useful. Instead of a spot lock it could go full left or right turn so at least the boat would go into circles and you'd have a chance to re-board. I gotta admit, I'm looking into a manual inflating PFD now. I've been out in some hairy weather but never alone.

The remote for the I-Pilot Link isn't line of sight. I've used it pointing the exact opposite way of the trolling motor before and it responds just fine. Although the range is what you'd have to worry about.

Yeah I hope so, I'd like her to get a few while casting at night. That's a riot.

Yeah it was nice to pattern them out fairly quickly. Funny thing is there was a spot that just produced fish after fish, every time I circled back and trolled through a rod went off. I should have vertical jigged them just for the fun of it, lol.

Weekend isn't too bad up here, looks like Monday isn't going to be very nice though.

I didn't wanna overwhelm her too much, lol!

Decided to head out on Lake O yesterday evening to see if we could get a few staggers to go. The winds finally changed to the north so I was hoping the warm water would finally be pushed off the shore line. Plan was to go out for a few hours before dark and mess around with the riggers and dipsys then come in close once it got dark and cast. Started in 50FOW with a blank screen, wasted 10 mins doing that until we pulled up and headed a bit deeper. 80ft seemed to be the ticket as I was marking fish hugging bottom. Figuring they were lakers I decided what the hell lets at least move some rods. Ran SD + flies + Nasty boys on the dipsys and a JPlug and a Nasty boy off the riggers. Figured out real soon these weren't lakers but chinooks. 80ft down over 85-100ft was the ticket. Tally for the night was 8 chinook and one beauty Coho. Most of the action came off the deep stuff, but we did get the coho on the SD+fly and another chinny off the dipsys once it started to get dark. Once it got dark I pulled up and got ready for casting. Water was way to warm, wasted 2hrs casting and packed it in. Need a few days of strong N winds to get rid of that warm water then it should be on. Kept a shaker for a friend, the rest are back swimming. I let her do all the reeling, she complained about sore arms