fishingisliving

I agree with Roy. Your heart is in the right place, but you deliver your ideas very negatively. Instead of bashing or patronizing all of us, why don't you share a picture of a fish you have hooked? or several pictures , or even a fishing report?

then wait till you get a 40 lber.. all lures are good man. Once you find where they live in the water, on days where they are agressive you can throw a Coke can with a hook and they will smash it. Sometimes you will throw the most expensive lure that you saw on musky hunter and not see a fish the whole season on it...

I would of gotten her! lol just kidding. These things often happen when we are distracted. focus man! focus! :-) Love reading that.

I cant wait to go fishing!!!!!!!!!!

So no fishing for me in quite a while. (over a week, feels long) but my buddy finally got his 50+ musky, by himself. (good thing he knows how to operate the tripod and camera timer) very happy for him, as he has been working to get one for a while now! not easy to net your own fish like that. So here is one thing I came across while I was not fishing... did she deserve it? Did he deserve it? Should we not even tak about it? :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLTi0L3mPM

Lures break, it's that simple. What every angler does with lures every day is a break waiting to happen. We smack em on rocks we snag em on rocks every fish that bites it starts the lure on it's inevitable decline where one day it will be retired to the wall of lures in your garage when we unhook it from a fish's mouth, we add some stress damage to it, sometimes less, sometimes more. some lures beat themselves up simply by being retrieved in the water by it's own hooks.. Some lures lasts long, some dont but personally I dont worry about lures breaking.. rods, reels, electronics.. different story.

That's not the case in every waters. Although some places only require a foot behind the prop wash, some areas require very long lines(hundred+) in order to get the big fish to move, and the fish are released just as well as any other, its about how you treat em when you get them at the boat, read the signs before you pull em out of the water and use the proper gear so you can keep the fight short and you will have no problems. To contradict myself a little bit... I would not long line troll muskies when water temps are very warm on very very hot days..

absolutely right. The biggest crankbait you could use on a big off-shore board would be shallow runners. big baits that go deep will bring your board with them, it's that hard. If you find it uncomfortable to hold to the rod with a lure on, odds are the planner wont work well, or at all. But you can troll spinner baits (not big cowgirls they pull too much) and bucktails using planners. It get's your lures over cover where you would not want to put your prop into. But in that case.. go cast the spot for a more effective cover. For me trolling is such a precise application that using planners would just mean that lures on the outside would be off and dirty. When it's a trolling bite, hugging the tructure is so key, without going over too much, or being too far off it, so unless you are looking for suspended fish over big water and can have multiple rods per anglers with a few anglers in the boat.. ok you will cover some ground... but that's about it. Everyone does their own thing I guess, so try the biggest boards you can find and troll some lures, see what happens.

stunning!

We are going up to our annual trip to see friends at Sharbot lake ,anybody got tips on what species aside from bass swim in the lake up there? We all love our puppies right?? Here's mine, a 2 year old female american bulldog. she's a water tease.. pretends she is scared of the water until you throw a stick in. when the trip is over.. this is her favourite thing (and mine) to do for about 3 days... alright alright... no fish porn... why?? I GOT SKUNKED LAST TIME!!! SKUNKED!!! NOT EVEN A FOLLOW! :-) anybody else have some shots of their pups??

TJ will you adopt me??? Those trips are the best!! I hate to repeat what everyone else is saying.. but it's true!!!!

thanks, I try to keep everything looking clean, I figure if you have to hide elements of the picture, better do it carefully with a some discretion not to ruin the shot.

Another day of scouting and prospecting. Early at the launch, the wind is not as it was forecasted the day before, it was expected to be 20km/h but ended up being more of a 40km/h. On our way to these new prospecting spots, we hit a wall of white caps with was seems to be 2-3 footers and maybe worse. We got lazy and did not want to make the brutal trip accross the big open in the big waves, so we stayed away from it and just looked at spots we already knew. This was not suposed to be a long trip, but just a few hours to look at a few new spots so we could hit them up on our next full trip. We even decided to do a bit of trolling since the wind was just unforgiving and required all the juice the electric motor could handle just to keep us on the spots in order to be able to cast. Troll, cast,troll, cast, troll, cast, and after 4 hours we did not see a single fish and wind just keeps wearing us down. It's getting close to lunch time and we decide that if we dont see a fish in the next 30 minutes that we would call it a day. We then chose to hit a very known, comon spot to see if we could at least pull up one fish. As we get to the spot we notice a boat is already fishing it, so we just kept going and chose to fish a smaller spot away from it instead. At this point we were both thinking of calling it quits and going back home to enjoy a snack and maybe a nap. Mike pulls the boat up to the spot and I drop the electric in (usual drill) and even before I can put my foot on the pedal: " YEAH FISH ON!!" What a scrapper! Gave a really good fight, turned out to be a decent fish in the upper 40inches and a solid release. These fish are all healthy and seem to be feeding well judging from the belly. Another busted lure! It's frustrating to have to put aside your confidence lure and switch to something else.. But as we are often reminded, confidence baits is sometimes something we care about more then the muskies do. Mike's next cast saw a big lunge crush his new lure 5 feet from the boat. This one was the whole show, acrobatics, head shakes, runs and all very spectacular! Big head, big girth and a long fish, A TANK! Away she goes, another great release. Without any hesitation, we were done, packed everything up and kissed the wind goodbye as we pulled up to the launch. Now for a nap!

I wish it was the case... I leave ou the blisters that form on my hand after that and the carpal tunnel syndrome that is starting to form from burning big baits all day. all worth it tho!

great fish! was she just 50? what's the measurement?

We headed out at 4:45 am and did all the big fish spots that we know first, then worked down to lesser spots where we have hooked a few small fish in the past. That was the plan anyway. After 2 hours, we had not seen a follow or boil.. nothing, zip, zero! It was discouraging. So the fish were clearly not feeding on our spots, so instead of doing all the smaller spots that gave us a few small under thirty inch fish in the past we decided to only look for new spots. So we stoped casting, looked at the map, and established a route for areas that seemed promising on the map so we could get a look at the vegetation and structure. We scouted the first two spots, which had little to no weed growth on it, and only big rock reefs, but still not a follow or any sign of life, so we kept moving. The third spot we tried had a rock reef where you saw the current break and loaded with the right sort vegetation on a shallow shelf. First cast, FISH ON! Mike hooks a scrapper! It was a very cool fight. You cannot help but immediately feel good about yourself when you look around to try new things and it pays off. Great looking fish, markings are very clean, and so was the rest of the fish, not a scratch on her. Second cast: FISH ON! another decent fish.. on my Mike's spinner bait. Wow, two fish in two casts. A perch's worst nightmare... That's why you use long pliers to unhook muskies. Third cast: big fish (upper 40s) swipes at Mike's spinner bait at boat side, then missed the bait during the figure 8 again then took off. Less than five casts later, Mike's spinner bait again, has a follow on it all the way to the boat, he is about to do a figure 8 and she crushes it! Fish on, I start reeling a bit faster to bring mine in to land the fish... Suddenly my rod heaves over... (no way?) I set the hook, DOUBLE HEADER!!! We were so excited from the adrenaline of having two decent fish at the same time, both fish rolled and threw both our baits.. My spinner bait was bent backwards, which is probably how I lost mine and was unfortunately the end of that spinner bait's life, the wire had been bent so far over that when I tried to straighten it I noticed the wire was about to break off. We had finished casting the one of several sides of the structure, so we moved up and casted the second side of the structure. My first cast over a patch of weeds 2 seconds into the cast, rod heaves a bit, I set the hook FISH ON! Another decent musky! At this point we are just laughing as this is the coolest day we've ever had (short of catching a 56incher or a 40+ pounder in the fall of course). We saw another 4 fish hit our lures and throw our hooks in that same pass, all low to mid 40s, nothing really small. Mike decides to throw top water at em now. His second cast a big fish grabs it and runs deep with it. Mike set's the hook hard! Fish on, Mike fights the fish up to the boat and again the fish spit the hook out.. DAMN!!!!! Two more casts by the edge of the reef, top water hit! She let's go yet again. Mike keeps reeling, she comes back for it, but the excitement at this point is starting to make us lose our focus and we start making mistakes, hook set to soon, or too late.. missed another one. The other sides of the structure we saw five or six fish more take a swipe or come at the boat looking for a snack with one or two close to the big 50 inch mark. Then just as it was on, it turned off! No more follows, no more boils, no more fish.

she was loooong

56

It was early, too early even, we wanted to put a couple muskies in the boat before the storm which was in the forecast had a chance to keep us off the water. We hurried and pulled up to the first spot and started casting, fish on! A big walleye had attacked a big spinner bait, but it was not what we wanted, so we did not waste any time and released it immediately. The storm in the distance seemed to have had cleared up and all we had was rain. We kept moving, casting those big lures and working every inch of each chunk of weed and rock for a musky. Muskies took turns taking swipes at our lures but kept missing with a follow or two that would not commit to taking the bait. The excitement was high as we saw the fish were on fire and it was just a matter of time before we had a couple in the boat. Thunder started cracking in the distance, the clouds formed up again and started to darken while the wind started blowing and the rain just kept getting heavier, the storm was on us! We packed it in fast and ran to the launch to wait it out (good thing we were not far). Although the storm did quiet down the rain was relentless and non stop, so be it, we were fishing anyway. Moved over to a farther spot that we had wanted to target as we had a good feeling it held a big fish. Started casting the spot and after a few dozen casts each with no follow or any sort of action we feared the storm had maybe put a stop to the feed this morning. Given this spot being quite large we kept going to cover it all, and just before getting to the end of it, a giant came out of nowhere and "crushed" the bait and ran for the front of the boat hard and fast. The knees started shaking as we had a serious ball player on our hands. After a few minutes, the musky was boat side, and unhooked for a couple pictures. safely released!

You got it! every time of year has a particular species that is open and is on fire! which make all species a blast to catch and actually easy in their proper times of the season, without having to poach for them.

If forums existed 30 years ago, people would of been arguing about if its really important or not to wear your seat belt in a car. :-)

I was meeting a freind at a launch a few days ago, and met a man who was fishing with a big spinning rod, with bottom bouncer and a worm. I asked what he was fishing for: -Sturgeon! -Aren't they out of season right now? -yeah but I just do catch and release so its ok. -really? seasons only mean you cant keep em, but you can still catch and release? -yeah for sure, my buddies were out bass fishing last week, now is the best time to catch the big ones! -really? so they catch a bunch of big ones this time of year? -oh big ones.. and lots of em too. I saw a test filmed on tv once, where two guys wanted to prove that if you catch a bass off it's nest that it takes a long time for it to find its way back during which predators move in the take the eggs. In fact, one guy casted at the nest to catch it, while the other was underwater with a camera filming the bass. It took forever for the bass afterwards to make its way back to the nest. that same day(in May), I saw a boat trolling 2 heavy rods with giant spinnerbaits at 4+ mph. gee I wonder what he was fishing for... what's wrong with poachers? all you have to do is wait a couple extra weeks, then you can fish for your favourite species the whole summer! In the mean time, try and learn to catch other species!

I just need one or two, 3-4 pounders for a good meal. If I am not going to eat them all right away, they go back. I never keep any over 4 pounds. (even 4 is pushing, 2 or 3 pounders are better) If for some reason I have any frozen fillets at home.. I keep none! weekend fisherman who fish for a bite, tend to keep their limit if given the chance.. species specific fisherman do not keep their limit, they keep a few for lunch and the rest go back. Tournament fisherman let everything go... after the weigh in! Perch fisherman keep their limit every time! Trophy hunters, will ocasionaly keep a couple eaters, but mostly let em go so they can grow.. Musky fisherman treat their fish like gods of the freshwaters and never keep one, and should they accidently kill one, they go to confession at the muskies canada meetings. Saltwater sport anglers dont even have a clue what the limit is... ice fisherman, freeze their buts off. foreign anglers are seen filling their buckets to the top with all kins of fish regardless of the limits or seasons. what was the question again? oh, yes Bass taste great!

GREAT WALTERS!!! NICE PICTURES!