Ramble

Sounds like you had a blast. Good post.

yeah Bushcraft is a good show for sure. But between Les and Bear i'll side with Les any day. Man VS Wild is a joke. he shows tips and tricks to survive but he isn't in a survival situation like Les...and some of the things he shows are down right dangerous, and you'd have to be in the SAS to do it. Les spent a good part of his life learning about survival taking courses and what-not. I think this quote alone shows the main differance ..."my wife Sue and I lived for an entire year in far Northern Ontario as if it were five hundred years ago; no metal, no matches, no plastic - just nature - on its own terms" (From an interview with Les). That is simply impressive. Man VS Wild is a blunt form of survival entertainment, where as Survivorman is a survival experiance on tape, which requires a little more thought in my opinon. Anyway that's my 2 cent on teh subject lol -Ramble

Hey Hookset...I think she had some idea of what she was doing. She gave me all the tools i needed to hook myself on fly fishing. She was one of those people you meet that you know there is more too them then meets the eye, and at the same time you are comfortable around them at once. Thanks for the link poobah....that's going to come in really handy. -Ramble

great post. It reminded me of one of my favourite quotes. "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not the fish they are after." -Henry Thorbeau It also got me thinking about my grandfather who spent a good part of his life out in the bush travelling around enjoying the country side. He was probably the greatest influence on my life. They would go for weeks at a time. I dug up this picture of him on the "Obabika river West of lake Temagami from August 1942." (that's what it says on the back of the photo) Great post. -Ramble On

Nice report, and even nicer fish. Keep the reports coming!

Great Report, and awesome fish!! That lake X is fantastic no matter what time of year it is.

Nice fish! Sounds like you had a good time.

Once again I am trapped between the hard and soft water fishing seasons. The winter semester has also begun for school, which manages to further limit any fishing opportunities to weekends when proper conditions do exist. I am however left with one, glimmer left on the metaphorical horizon…my fly tying. I can remember back when I was around 9 years old and dad bought his/my 1st fly rod. Neither of us really knew what we were doing exactly but that wasn’t really the point. An instructional video, and a glance at a couple black and white illustrations later, and we were out at the river experiencing the finer points of a “back cast” and hooking trees with the best of them. That Christmas Santa brought me my 1st vice and accompanying paraphernalia. Much to my mother’s dismay, I began hoarding large amounts of strange animal products, as well as raiding her sewing kit for string. I spent hours at the vice tying weird and wonderful creations, most of which would never touch the water. But in my mind I could see each of them in the corner of a hungry trout’s mouth. We would spend hours at Milford in Prince Edward County catching 3 inch sunfish, after 3 inch sun fish on the fly at the millpond. Dad would spend more time dozing in the shade then fishing as I recall. Over the years spin casting took over, with fly rod rarely leaving the wall…but I kept tying flies. Then when I was about 15 I got back into it again...why exactly I can’t remember. Now I was more coordinated and was a much better at casting. Every spring at the end of May I would head up to the Algonquin area with my grandmother and my sister and stay just outside of the park. On one of these trips we stopped at Tea Lake Dam picnic area in the park and I broke out the fly rod. Later that day I met a lady and her husband who were fishing the area for brook trout. She lives around Huntsville and at the time held some fly tying classes. We fished together for about 20 minutes and then she had me up in the parking lot teaching me how to cast. Seems I hadn’t improved much since I was 9. Forty minutes later and I had a proper cast, a couple of new flies from her private collection, a new definition for stripping and the roll cast under my belt. This was probably the single most important moment in my fly fishing career…certainly the most valuable. The next morning we showed up that the picnic around 9 am. I set out with purpose on this day, and I had a new mylar fly tied on the end of my line that I was confident in. On my third cast I had a fish. I can still remember the runs and the sun filtering through the trees….every detail is still burned into my mind. That 1st fish was a beautiful brookie about 14 inches long. It was the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. All the excitement had hardly died down… when it all happened again on the very next cast with a similar fish. I was hooked for life at that point. Since those early days in my fly fishing career I have learned lots of lessons…about fish and fly fishing. However…I’m not sure I’m any better at it. One of my favorite lessons I learned is a simple one. Everything eats aquatic insects. I now fly fish for all kinds of species: trout, bass, pike, panfish, suckers, carp and fallfish. Early season I target suckers and fallfish since there is very few trout streams around my area. Fallfish Then I add on pike and carp in May…although I have a poor success rate for both on the fly. August means bass and whatever else will cooperate. When the opportunity arises I also do some casting for trout. Like the species list, my equipment list has also grown. I have 2 two rods. a 5/6 weight, and 8/9 weight. Neoprene chest waders and I’m in the market for a 2nd, light weight set. Also I have a float tube, and am figuring out the finer points of casting from a canoe. But getting back on topic, I love to tie flies. Since I began I’ve up graded my vice, and now have a wide range of tying materials that is still growing. I am not above scrounging road kill….I may have a raccoon skin stretching in the shed at my parents place from last summer. I find the raccoon fur makes a good dubbing for big meaty flies. Here are a couple of raccoon dubbing flies. The White nymph is rabbit fur. When I start off a tying session I usually tie a couple of fun streamers, poppers, or bright nymphs for fun. Then I get down to business and tie some that are a little more boring to tie but I like to use. I have a hard time tying the exact same pattern in a row so each time I’m tying I work in 2 or 3 flies of the same type into each session. Personally I love tying and fishing with poppers for bass. Smallies on surface flies can keep my attention all day long…and size doesn’t matter. Here is a picture of two poppers that had a rough season. This popper is one of my best producers and needed some attention this summer. Some 3/0 thread a layer of 5 minute epoxy and it was back in action! Here is some more pictures. Here are a couple of Tom Thumbs that have seen more the one tour of duty. Here are some other poppers I ties and painted. Some streamers of different types. Pike Flies Big Top water Flies Big Marabou Streamers Small(er) Marabou Streamers Nymphs Foam Flies One of my favourite dry fly patterns I sure when caddis or similar flies are hatching. Large bead-head bugger in the vice. Here’s a pretty red one. I’ve been playing around with a very simple pattern for suckers, fall fish and panfish...here are some examples. I may need to shotren the tail. Here I am going at it over Christmas break. Note the all the “stuff” on the table top. I thoroughly enjoy fly fishing and fly tying. It takes a bit of work to learn bit it is WELL worth it. If you are of the opinion that fishing isn’t really about the fish, this may be just the hobby you’ve been looking for. Feel free to post some pictures of your favourite flies if you have some photo's of them. Till next time. -Ramble On

Excellent Fish and great report...keep them coming

That is definatly time well spent.

Yesterday seemed to offer decent weather for getting a newbie out on the ice so I ask my g/f if she want to head out onto the bay of Quinte to do some very basic perch hunting and she was all for it. A half hour of scrambling later and we were in the van on the way to Cara’s to get her fishing license for the year…then we drove straight down to the Herchimer launch, for easy ice access. We went straight out from the launch and drilled a couple of holes to check the depth and stopped at about 15 feet of water. I punched 4 holes and got the lines all set up. By this point it was about 1:30pm. There was somewhere between 8-10 inches of pretty good ice where we were…I didn’t put a tape measure on it, but used the ice spoon to make a rough estimate. There was no action for the 1st half hour. Then Dom says to me she thinks she had a nibble on the line she was jigging a spoon. In about 10 seconds she has had 2 more nibbles…so I fed a minnow onto a plain yellow headed jig and swapped it for her jigging spoon. Back down the hole her line went, and after 2 jigs she had the 1st perch! Her second fish ever on hard water. She was so excited. A little while later she had another one. Then my set line went and I had one. Then all the action stopped and I switched Dom back to her spoon. About half hour later my set line went and I had another one. It was on and off the whole time we were on the ice as the schools moved around. We didn’t hook any jumbos but we caught some fish and all were released. I played around with different lures and had the most jigging action on a small gold spoon with some pink on it. Dom was most successful by jigging the spoon (black and white with a gold back) then switching to the plain jig. The plain jig used by itself didn’t attract as many strikes. The set lines however saw the most action of any lines. After about 3.5 hours Dom was getting cold, and since the wind had picked up, and the nice day had changed to a mixture of wet snow and rain it was time to go. I was still eager to stay out until dark…but I knew not to press her. So we packed up and headed in. All-in-all it was a good day on the ice. -Ramble

If it makes you feel any better my 1st year up their i had a motor do the same thing on the very last day of the year and we were on the main lake. According to charlie there is money ear marked for motors this year....i assure you that the entire staff is excited lol.... even those who arn't returning this up coming season lol. You are hardly indebted to me... the weather was BRUTAL that day anyway and nobody was enjoying it really...you're rescue gave me something else to do lol. -Ramble

AWESOME report.

Awesome 'eyes! Looks like you guys had a good haul. keep the big fish reports coming. -Ramble

Nice Mepps...and those lindy fish gloves could come in useful. They saved my fingers twice last summer....but they take a long time to dry out i find...and you're lucky she cleaned that garage without you THEN helped you organise the tackle box. My g/f just complains....just this morning she was complining cause she had to work and couldnt go ice fishing with me lol Enjoy your haul -Ramble

Well Dad and I finally got out on the hard stuff today now that Christmas business is subsiding. Yesterday we made a couple of very basic still lines, and they worked well. Last night we agreed that we would get up early and head north to good ice and maybe a lake trout our luck was good. Then we had some more rum, and went to bed much later then we had previously intended. The weather was terrible here(Belleville)…raining and about 0 degrees. We figured that as we went north from Belleville it would switch to snow so we left. We were out the door at about 11am. It was hardly the early start we were talking about the night before, but we were ready to go. As we went north the rain had more and more ice in it. We then stopped at Hook Line and Sinker on the side of highway 62 near Madoc and bought our minnows. Not to far from the rain switched to snow…and was it ever coming down. When we got to the lake, we threw on our coats and boots, and piled the gear on the toboggan and headed out. We drilled a test hole to check the ice part way out. There was about 8-9 inches of ice. There was 2-3 inches of good black ice at the bottom, with white ice on top. As far as white ice goes it wasn’t too bad. We got to our spot and punched a few holes and started fishing around 1pm. After about an hour of no action we started drilling more holes. We tried various spoons and jigs trying to entice the local lakers…no dice they weren’t interested in what we had. By this time dad had wiped out on the ice about 3 times and stuck a hook in his thumb once….while I laughed. We also noticed that the snow was melting as soon as it hit our jackets. So we did the only thing we could do... we kept fishing. While all of this was going on, the set lines weren’t getting any action… and I think the fish were still laughing at dad. Not too long after I was watching some ravens flying around the west side of the lake and my mind was drifting quite a bit. Then I remembered something from philosophy class… Occams Razor…which basically states "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." So I swithed to a yellow headed jig and a minnow. (my philo professor would be proud) Not long after this I had a “bite” but no hook up. Then I noticed the line jiggling on my home-made set up. I walked over and set the hook…a rock bass. Then while I was jigging I had another bite…another rock bass. The yellow jig was working but not exactly as I had intended. So I moved the still line to a new hole in deeper water. About half an hour later the still-line was on the move again. I walked over and set the hook… “this fish had weight”…I had just enough time to have that exact thought run through my mind before the fish was gone…whatever it was. So I re-rigged and we fished some more. Dad wandered from hole to hole jigging and hoping, while the snow melted on this parka. I sat jigging, content in the holes I was working even though they had failed to produce a trout thus far. The sun started to set behind the snow clouds somewhere, and the ravens quieted down for the evening. In the last hour I had 2 more rock bass. One made a brief appearance in the hole before simply swimming away after letting the minnow go. This is a rough drawing of the area we were fishing at. The red dots are the holes we drilled. The rock bass were caught in about 15-20 feet of water and the larger “mystery fish” hit in about 20-25 feet of water. At dark packed up the stuff and headed off the lake, sometime after 6pm. We only spent about 5 hours fishing, and didn’t catch one trout, but we didn’t mind too much. We stopped at Northway in Belleveille for a clubhouse before heading home. It was a good day out on the ice even without the fish cooperating. Can’t wait to do it again. And now…it’s time for a beer. -Ramble

Awesome shots....but i bet u already knew that. lol

Excellent shots. Deer are less then cooperative subjects, you did well to get as close as you did. nice job

I live in Belleville. It's been warm and we had a lot of rain last week which really put a hurt on the ice. Definatly check with someone who knows befre you head out, and dont go alone. If i were you i'd wait forsome more cold weather...or else you may be needing some water wings! -Ramble

yeah hooked i love caddis flies as well and have quite a few pictures of them. Snorkling is a blast in rivers....there is so much to see. Thanks for the comments everyone. -Ramble

Excellent report. You caught some beautiful fish.

i dont know what to say...

Those are some nice fish. congrats on a good year.

beautiful sun sets.

Im glad you guys enjoyed the post. i enjoy writting about my fishing trips, and i love the park. Cookslav there is a few old ranger cabins around the park that have bunks, a woodstove and a table in them that would afford a little more comfort to your "soft and wussy" brothers. Make sure you bring an air mattress to sleep on. In august the bugs arnt bad at all. if its a real concern, a mosquito coil left smoking while you go out for an evening fish will put a hurt on any would be blood suckers. You should work on getting them to go again. Tight lines fellas. -Ramble