Joeytier

Ice is fine, didn't really get much warmer than +2 or +3 around there all last week.

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Pretty substantial price difference between this and a flasher. I saw one of these on sale for $149. I haven't seen a flasher for less than $500.

I didn't say buy a flasher. Get a higher quality sonar. Take a good look at the Garmin Striker 5

I have one, works well, not excellent but it is a low-end unit. Personally, I would spend an extra hundred or so to get a better unit, I will be upgrading.

Depends on the kind of tip-up, but if you're referring to the 'flag' style tip-up with the submerged spool I usually just use whatever 8-10 lb decent mono I have lying around. 'Tip-up line' does exist but I don't find it neccesary. I only run a leader if I'm fishing for trout in clear water, otherwise no, walleye and pike wont shy away from clear 10 lb mono.

I don't think you can have the same discussions on Facebook as you can on a message board. From what I see, most of the Facebook sites are full of filler and not much meat.

This site is about 99% filler. Lots of great discussions on the FB groups I read, off-topic stuff gets deleted. Just my personal experience.

MYou all forget there is a kill factor to catch and release, an optimist may put it around 10% and a pessimist maybe 20%, anyone that fishes hard on a long weekend and catches and released several times his limit each day has probably killed more fish than the dude who put the first 5 keepers on his stringer.

This is important. I have buddies that are 100% c and r for brookies but handle them like ragdolls, no doubt killing a great deal of them, and then give guys a hard time for keeping a few fish. Idiots.

 

More on topic, the only thing I really have to contribute regarding panfish is that people should be considering releasing the big fish and focusing on keeping a limit of the smallest size of fish worth cleaning, this should help with the stunted population thing.

Don't regret posting anything because we live and learn. With public sites they'res always a greater caution to "handle with care." Keeps it interesting... even challenging sometimes. It's living doods!

 

The days of forum reports, blogs and even magazines are coming to pass though, sad to say... Much as I'm on Facebook, I'd throw that away if all boards could be what they were a decade a go. But yeah, with public sites and social medias comes lurking and even some other dark sides of human nature... it can be damaging and turn people off.

You are right about that. The past 2 yrs have seen a sharp decline in content on just about every board I've ever looked into.

 

I think people have been moving away from message boards in general, since social media has successfully made it simple for people to have the same discussions they were having on boards like this all through their single Facebook or Instagram account. Localized fishing groups, or species specific groups have a ton of good reports and discussions with essentially zero off-topic banter and bickering. It is easy to understand why all the diehard anglers made the transition.

Those sorts of drives are all too common here lately, too. Maybe not quite as bad wind-wise...yeesh.

 

Turning into a kickbutt sledding season though

Yeah, but the ice is already there, and it ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

A high quality graph (like the Helix) will provide just as much detail as a flasher, especially if you dial in the zoom properly. Even my crappy little PirahnaMax. I understand why people prefer flashers, and if I could afford a good quality flasher and a portable unit for backlake ID have both, but I can't so a good portable graph does both very well

If your ice fishing season is dependent on Simcoe freezing, you're gonna have a short season lol. Lots of snow and ice in zone 11. Zone 15 probably has even more snow and generally decent ice now.

Don't expect to light up the walleye there, lol. However you do have a decent crack at some eyes and maybe a laker or two if you're willing to work for them. Not the kind of lake where hanging out in a shack all day is going to yield much.

Nice crappies and what a musky! Lol

If all you wanna do is run across lakes, then I see their use. They seem to work well in deep snow, but they absolute destroy every trail they touch, fuel economy will be awful and it will be pretty gutless on that 450 motor. Sure that's the best price you can get for insuring an old sled?

Damn Chris, one trip and you're already into bigger specks than me

I'll be out on 'flats' chasing jumbos tomorrow. Heard nothing but good things from opening day.

It's just warmer.

Less busy is a bit of a stretch. Nosbonsing has full time residences from end to end, and a ton of traffic once the ice sets up. There are definitely some nice walleye to be caught, but you're not going to be able to catch fish steadily in the shack all day. You will probably have to work for them, but you should have some good evening bites. Good luck.

Awesome, great job. Figured Simcoe would have had a skim by now at least.

Go to Nipissing if you wanna you wanna keep the rods bent and stay close to the shack. Like others have said, there's many good options, I'd recommend Rob Hyatt's or Tama Kwa on the south shore

I've been happy with my pfleuger supreme, I believe it was in that price range when I bought it

This. I want to say Sahara but the Pfleuger has honestly been surprisingly bulletproof, whereas the Sahara has a couple flaws that are very common and very annoying.

90% of the back lakes here have less than 5" of ice so I wouldn't expect to see much fishable ice in Central Ontario this weekend

Nice, Nick! The ice looks decent enough? Obviously hard to tell from pictures. We got into the splake Saturday, drove the machines on the lake too.

'Apply fertilizer only as needed' is a bit of an oxymoron don't you think? Residential use of fertilizer for purely cosmetic reasons should be illegal if you live on the waterfront. That should apply to golf courses too.