Fishnwire

As I've mentioned before, my camp is quite secluded and a fair distance from civilization of any kind. The bears out there are not used to people and always keep their distance from the camp when we're there. I know there are bears around. I've seen them from the boat on the shoreline and there is sometimes evidence that they've been sniffing around the camp after we're gone. These aren't city bears and they don't like the smell and noise of people...like I say, they do a good job of keeping their distance almost all the time. For this reason I've got in the habit of leaving my coolers (food, beer, pop, etc) outside on the porch. They sit right against the camp about three feet away from the front door and right underneath a large window. I never had any problems, not during the day when I'm out fishing (or whatever) and not at night. Can you guess where this story is going? Tuesday night, I'm all alone at camp, having stayed an extra day than my father-in-law who had to leave for a doctor's appointment. At about 3 am I'm suddenly awakened by a huge bang. For a second I thought the wood stove had burst. Then I realized it was coming from the porch. Right away I knew what it was. I grabbed a flashlight and looked out the window. I saw the cooler lid (which was previously affixed to the cooler) and a trail of food and beer going off toward the bush. I threw on some clothes and my boots (it was raining hard) and went outside. Standing about 15 feet away from me and making his way back toward the strewn about contents of the cooler is a big black bear. I started yelling at him and he started to take off. Then he stopped for a second, looked at the pile of food by the porch, then back at me...like he was trying to decide whether the risk was worth the reward. I started screaming my head off and jumping up and down on the porch, and he reluctantly made his way into the bush and out of flashlight range. I quickly gathered up my food and beer. I know I was taking a chance "stealing" a bear's dinner in the dark by myself...the term "mauled" kept coming to mind but I didn't want to give him any reason to come back. This was one of the few times in my life I wished I had a firearm. It would have been comforting just to fire off a shot or two in the air. Like I said, he wasn't in a big rush to move along when I was yelling and him. I wouldn't have taken a shot at the bear, but it would have been nice to scare him off with something more than curse words. I could only find the cooler's lid and not the cooler itself but I had a spare one I put all my stuff in, and then I put that cooler INSIDE the camp. I guess that's where I'm going to have to keep them from now on. It's too bad because the ice lasts longer out there than in the warm camp and they take up a fair amount of otherwise useful space. In the morning light I went looking for the cooler. It was a good twenty to thirty yards out of my yard past the tree line. This is one of those great big 5 day coolers and he dragged it through some pretty dirty bush like nothing. It had a few punctures in it, claw marks they look like, and the lid was torn off, but it's still a usable cooler. (I think I'll be able to re-affix the lid with the right size screws) He didn't get too much food (possible none) as it fell out when he pulled the cooler off the porch. He must have been ticked off when he got that big tub in the bush and realized it was empty. Good. Hopefully he won't waste his time coming around again. I doubt it though. If you spend time in bear country...you're gonna have bears, right?

I'm going to do a little pre-ice fishing icefishing-type fishing on Monday. My buddy says the crappie are stacking up under the docks at his marina. We set up a fishfinder and use an ice rod and vertical jig the same as we would do in the winter. He told me that another guy we know was down last week and apparently he got over 50 in a day. My wife is dragging my to Ottawa for her nephew's wedding this weekend or I would be going tomorrow. I'm eager to do a little ice fishing...but I know darn well that by the end of January I'll be craving the "plop...plop...plop...SMASH!" of a SMB destoying a top-water bait. I'm not ready to pull up my dock or flip over my boat just yet.

Sometimes I think that licence fees should be higher and applicants should have to pass a test to prove basic knowledge of the regulations and maybe even the concept of conservation. That's probably a bad idea...I have little confidence that the government would do it right. It's just that the resource is so precious and yet we allow anyone with $20 to "have at it".

I have a camp north of Sudbury that is a two hour drive down a bush road (you need a 4x4 with clearance) and the last 3.5 km are quad only. In the 6 years I've been going there, there has been only two times that people came in there to fish who weren't my guests. I have the only camp on that section of river. It's basically a private lake. I mention this not to make you Toronto guys jealous (well, maybe a little) but to illustrate the fact that for a CO, it's a pain to get to and the pickin's are pretty slim as far as anglers to ask for licenses. A few days ago I'm relaxing at the camp's kitchen table at about 7 pm with a beer and whatever else...I hear a quad approaching so I step out onto the porch. It's a CO. My first thought was, "What the heck is this guy doing here?" After asking how long I'd been there and if I'd done any fishing (I told him I had fished) he asked for my licence... but it was in the Jeep at the other end of the quad trail! He told me to bring it into the Sudbury MNR office in a few days. Cool. He also asked if I had kept any fish, which I told him I had not. He asked if anyone else was there. My father-in-law's hunting partner Larry happened to be up, but he was out in the canoe, fishing by himself. I told him so. He said he would wait until he got back. I told him that he was over 65 anyway, so he wouldn't have a license to show him, but he wanted to talk to him anyway. I figured he'd be there a while, so I said, "I guess I can't offer you a beer with you being on the job?" "No," he chuckled. "But I'll take a water or pop." So I turn to the cooler, which is on the porch, and open it up. I noticed that he was right there making sure he got a good look at the inside of that cooler, obviously looking for fillets or whatever. The funny thing is that it had NOTHING in it besides beer and ice. I was leaving the next morning and had just finished dinner so I was completely out of food. I didn't have a thing in there for him. I found a can of warm diet coke in the pantry and he made due with that. Eventually Larry got back. Here's the part of the story where it gets a little sticky; Larry had a little pack sac with his fishing stuff and cigars in. the CO asked to see inside it...no big deal. Then he asks Larry if he realizes his truck (parked at the other end of the quad trail) has expired plates. The CO even tells him he called it in to make sure the sticker hadn't just fallen off. It turns out Larry bought a new truck last year and doesn't want to drive it down that bush road. He lives in the last little town on the way out to my camp so he can get from his house to the start of the bush road and only has to drive on public roads for about 5 kms to do it. Old Larry figured the whole insurance/registration thing was too big an expense for a bush truck so he didn't bother. The officer tells him, "Well I should call the cops and have you impounded, but I won't." He recommends Larry leaves his truck where its parked, get a ride back to town from someone else, have the insurance and registration taken care, come back with the sticker and papers and only then drive his truck back to town. Larry explained that he was actually in the middle of selling that truck. He said he's going to take it home and leave it parked until it is sold. "Well you can do what you want, " the CO told him, "but if I see you driving that truck anywhere, anytime I will detain you and call the regionals to deal with it." Now I'm not making excuses for Larry. He should have had the paper needed for the truck. If I was the CO though, I might have told him to drive it straight home with a warning, and that after that, if he drove the truck that he'd be in trouble. Its just that he had to get the truck out of the bush, give him a break. Besides that one example, the CO was quite laid back and easy to deal with. I've got nothing to hide so I'm just glad to see him doing his job. The fact of the matter it turned out I was unintentionally in violation of a regulation (I will omit the details) and he totally cut me slack on it. One thing that stands out in my mind is that he saw both our vehicles when he was coming in, had obviously called in our plates and knew a fair amount about us before he even got there. I realize now that there were a number of questions he asked me which he already knew the answer to. I think maybe he was trying to catch me in a lie, which would have been a pretty good sign I had something to hide or was doing something I shouldn't. I guess the lesson is that its always best to be forthcoming and truthful when dealing with these folks. The only thing that I'm a little curious about is this; We're all aware that the resources and funding available to the MNR are not what they used to be and don't allow them to do everything they'd like to do, They are limited on what they can do by restrictions on their time and budget. This being true, is a CO, a truck and a quad best utilized spending an afternoon/evening checking in on a single camp? How many violations would he have to find and how many fines would he have to levy for that exercise to even come close to paying for itself? Perhaps potential violaters thinking that "the man" could show up at any time is the whole point. Regardless, they are tasked with a difficult job and generally do the best they can. Has anyone else run in the MNR (or the cops) somewhere or sometime that seemed like an unlikely place for them to be? Sorry for the length of the post...I'm bored.

There's a little shimano baitcaster I've had for years...it's at camp and I forget the name. It was a little cheaper than the one you bought, but not by a whole lot. Anyway, I have never been able to throw a decent cast with the thing. I have a couple of other baitcasters, and don't have any real problems with them, but this one outfit is just a peice of junk. You can either throw a short cast, or throw a slightly longer cast and get a birdsnest. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that if that had been the baitcaster I first learned on, I probably would have given up eventually and never picked another one up. If you seem to be having trouble getting the hang of it, see if you can borrow a different one and try that.

Opps...I was worried about that. I don't want to tick off anyone who's helping to pay the bills around here. It's just my opinion and I'm sure it's not going to hurt anyone's sales.

I can't get over how many "energy" products are available now. Drinks, gum, candy, little shots...all marketed as a way to get "extreme energy" and all nothing but caffeine and sugar. People like caffeine and sugar, so that's fine, but what I can't figure out is this: If you're so freakin' tired, why not go to bed? I don't know about you guys, but I find sleeping somewhat pleasurable. There may be things I'd rather do, but it's certainly not something I'm obsessed about avoiding whenever and however possible. People need to learn to relax. Get done what you can today, get a good night's sleep and then start all over tomorrow. Why push yourself to the point that you're so exhausted you need that stuff? Different strokes for different folks I guess. What do I know?

This was the first year I used flouro leaders. I tried Seaguar, liked it, but have never used any other brand, so what do I know? I like about a two foot leader of 12lb flouro tied to my 8lb Fireline with a small, good quality, swivel for SMB and even walleye. I prefer a swivel to a knot for connecting the flouro to the braid because it helps reduce line twist and I'm no good at tying a surgeon or blood knot. I was resistant to try a flouro leader (as apposed to sraight braid) because I was worried the overall breaking strength would go down a lot but I have found it really doesn't. That stuff is pretty tough and the knot strenght is good. For big pike I use 20lb Fireline and a steel leader though. I still don't trust anything but steel against a big, toothy pike. My Father-in-law refused to jump on the flouro bandwagon this year and stuck with straight braid. There were a couple of days when I lost track of how many fish I caught, and he got skunked or nearly skunked. I can't contibute that entirely to the flouro leaders (he's got a couple fishing "issues") but I'm sure that stuff makes a difference. One more thing. When attempting to "walk" a surface bait such as a Zara spook, I have found that the tiny weight of the swivel acting as a pivot point a foot or two away from the bait really helps the side to side action of the walker. Try it sometime.

I notice that while some guys at least attempt to snag the salmon in the mouth (I think this is sometimes refered to as "flossing") with a hook and egg beneath a float, (which is bad enough) I really have to shake my head when I see guys using a bare 4/0 treble, and raking it accross they're backs. How is that fishing?

Chillidogs are good and available in Canada. I make them at home with leftover chilli and they are messy, but still really good. If you have chilli you don't need any other topping or condomint. The taste of beans and franks together is totally awesome too. They should come packaged together in the same can.

That is good advice.

Try to keep in mind that if non-natives didn't buy it, they'd have no one to sell it to. What I'm saying is the people who create the market are part of the problem too. You can almost hear the sound of the lock getting ready to clamp down this thread.

Safety issues aside...I wonder which would be warmer and/or more comfortable, a one piece survival suit or a two peice system like Clam corp's Ice Armor. http://www.clamcorp.com/icearmor_blue.html Or this one?...http://www.snosuit.com/arctic/ I'm pretty sure that both of those two peice systems are around $400, and they don't offer the safety features of a Mustang type suit. I'm just wondering what the advantages/disadvantages are with each. Anyone have any input?

There's a 4x4 off-road club in Sudbury and I read about them spending a day hauling trash from an old road that had become an illegal dump site with their trucks and Jeeps with trailers. They were tired of looking at it and took it upon themselves to do something about it. About 20 guys pitched in and they helped clean up a mess that none of them had helped to create. Pretty cool, I think. They hauled out a couple of abondoned wrecks and around a hundred old tires along with tons of other junk. People can be thoughtless pigs.

I think I've got it firgured out. Thanks to johnnyb for helping a dumb guy learn how to post a photo. Here's the little fuzz-bucket in all his glory.

http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v105/137/6/619981752/s619981752_364252_5338.jpg[img/] What am I doing wrong here?

I always told every woman I ever dated, very early in our relationship, that fishing and being outdoors was very important to me, and that I would always devote a good portion of my time to those pursuits. If that was going to be a problem, that was the end of that relationship. My wife knew the score long before I put a ring on her finger, and she's OK with it. I take her with me occasionally. The last few years she hasn't bothered to buy a licence, so she sits in the boat and reads. She has basically no interest in the sport. She was in the boat one day when I was on a really good top-water bite. That's something you would think would be somewhat fun to watch...seeing big bass break surface to smash a popper...pretty cool, right? She never even looked up from her book the whole time. The thing is, she's just as happy to stay on shore, and even though I love the girl, I don't really miss her a whole lot while the bite is on. My point is, maybe you shouldn't force anything on her. You might be better off just doing your own thing and letting her do her own thing. There's plenty of time to be together...when fishing conditions are unfavourable. If you are really set on the idea of making a fisher"person" out of her, I'd say the first thing you should do is get her her own rod that she can get used to, and spend some time teaching her how to throw a proper cast. Go to a dock or section of open shoreline and show her how it is done and get her to practice. Those of us that have fished all our lives sometimes forget that casting is something that needs to be learned and is one of fishing's most basic and valuable skills.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and support. I really mean that, folks. It's obvious that many of you have been there and get it. I just really want to thank everyone who took the time to try and make me feel just a little bit better. Also, my heart goes out to those of you that have gone through, or will go through a simular experience. It sucks out loud, no doubt about it. I took something valuable away from each post, but I have to admit that John summed it all up perfectly. I tried posting a picture but can't figure out how. I have no idea what the "URL for this image" is. Anyway, thanks again OFNers, you're a good bunch. Kyle.

If I'm on unfamiliar water I like to troll with some kind of long bodied minnow bait (I find they're better than stubby or fat bodied baits) just to quickly cover a fair amount of water and watch my sonar, learning what I can about the lake's deepth and structure. I watch my fish-finder and look for fish and if I see some I might drift over them using a jig with a twister-tail, tipped with a worm, minnow or leech. Experiment with jig colours and baits till you find the bite. Go-getters (sometimes called Lindy rigs) with the appropriate amount of weight for the depth trolled slowly sometimes work great. I like to troll with something that stays near, and sometimes contacts, the bottom of the lake. 12-20 FOW is where I tend to find then on my lake, but that's not to say walleye prefer 12-20 FOW, it's just where I tend to find them in the summer months on the water I fish. I've always had a hard time catching walleye in the middle of the day when the sun is bright. I prefer overcast days, early morning and the hour or two before dark, but I've read that they can be successfully targeted just about any time, I'm just not very good at it. I tend to fish for SMB during the day and walleye after dinner. That should be a little bit to get you started...but like the other guys said, you've got to spend some time learning how to catch walleye, before you can catch walleye. Good luck and have fun.

I don't have one. I'm really not even sure how to go about getting one. And I have no intention of doing so anytime soon. My camp is way in the bush. I forgot to buy a fishing licence one year and would have made it through the season but I remembered on my own and bought one in September. No governmnent official has ever made his way out to my neck of the woods and the only laws that apply are self-imposed. We don't need your stinkin' boat badges where I wet my lines!

Although the weight of fish may vary greatly depending on the time of year, most fish of equal length which are weighed against fish from the same region at the same time of year, are close in mass. That's another reason why length is a better measurement of a fish's size that weight. While weight vaires depending on how far into the breeding season a fish is, length does not. Obviously, a fish full of eggs or one that's fattened up for the winter will weigh more that one caught at a different time of year. Big deal.

Wow. holdfast can relate this thread to an experience he had in the military. What are the chances?

I'm a little confused. Why is he so determined to catch turtles and frogs in violation on the law? Is he consuming them personally, selling them for commercial consumption, or the pet market? He's a criminal in any case, I'm just curious of his motivation. Particularly considering he was previously busted. Why do it again?

Well today was not fun. Late yesterday afternoon I came home from camp to find my wife in tears. Our 10 year old male orange tabby (Beanie) was off his food (he was a fat dude who liked his vittles) so she knew something was wrong. The vet did a million tests and the news was not good. The vet told us we didn't have many options...I knew she was right..,we nicknamed him "Happy-cat" years ago, but he was clearly not happy at all. There was nothing left to do but end his suffering. So that`s what happened this morning. My wife and I were there right to the end, he went out real peaceful which made it a little easier to take. I know a lot of you guys are thinking, "who cares? It's a cat." And truth be known I used to think that way. I always claimed it was my wife's cat, and that I was indifferent to it's existence, but the truth was that I really cared about that little fur-ball. He made me laugh out loud quite often. I could wrestle with him the way you'd wrestle with a dog. As an apartment dweller, I wanted a dog but knew it wouldn't be fair to the animal. A cat was a nice compromise and I can tell you, initial reservations aside, I grew quite fond of that nearly retarded little fuzz-bucket. It's like he knew I'd prefer a dog, and did his best to act the part. In addition to "Happy-cat", we also called him "Puppy-cat". He was a lot of fun. I know a lot of guys hate cats, and I've opened myself up to hearing all about it. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, so go nuts. All I can say is that if you share your home with any semi-intelligent animal for a few months and you don't grow to love it...I feel sorry for you. Sorry to "black cloud" the forum. I'm a little drunk and I felt like being a sad, little punk. Do yourself a favour and spend a few minutes with the dumb animal(s) you love. I'd give anything for another bed-top wrestling match with my best bud right now. Thanks for listening, Kyle

I don't care about how much a fish weighs. Length is where it's at. Tape measures are never out of calibration. Taking a measurement of length is usually easier and less stressful on the fish than weighing it and besides, there's usually little difference in weight between fish of equal length. I agree that some guys are poor at accurately estimating the length and weight of fish...it's hillarious how many folks think 18" SMB tip the scales at five pounds...they're more like 3 or 3 and a half. One time a guy posted a pic of his 53" muskie that was probably right around 40". The thing is, they're not hurting anyone by deluding themselves, so why burst their bubble? One final point. I've noticed that smallmouth bass seem to give the best (hardest, most acrobatic, and longest-lasting) fight in the 17-18 inch range. 19 inchers and bigger pull with more weight, but they are often less fun to catch than the more spunky, slightly smaller ones. It's just another example of how the actual size of the fish is something not always worth focusing on.