NAC

Actually sounded like fun with all the fish and (mis)adventure mixed in!

If anyone is considering a VIA train trip into Wabakimi from Armstrong this year, then be aware that the train sched has been turned upside down and I think it now drops off at 2am. Kinda a bad time to be put out in the wilderness with all your gear. I believe it is catering to the Americans who now get dropped from the US direction in the afternoon. Correct me if I am wrong.

Seems a little messed up that a Canuck train service gives Americans the preferred drop time?? But on the other hand, if there's a lot more of them than us doing it....

BTW if anyone is considering a wilderness paddle-fishing trip please let me know if you are looking for others.

I hear you all to on the spam issue and have been thinking the same since these posts came on like gang-busters over the past week and a half or so.

Here's my take;

I don't use spinners for steelhead very much, but when I do it's Blue Fox 90% and Mepps the other 10%. I have no reason to change because they work very well and always have.

For floats and there are many, I stick with Drennan primarily due to quality.

For worms Berkley or Exude and pink is definitely not the best colour all the time.

I have never used Riverwood anything and don't feel compelled to because I'm very happy with the production of what I have stated above. So if you aren't sponsored by them or selling for them, you should consider it.

The topic of this post is no line twist spinners and I would have to agree with MikeTheBassFisher.

Peace!

next time bring the yak!

just you wait and see!!

Sorry Team 8 forgot my sign and sure would have given us a huge boost.

I only started fishing the Niagara for steelhead last year and was amazed at how hard those fish pull. Have the minnows started coming in yet?

There's definitely some strong fish coming out of there and they need to be to navigate those currents. I didn't see a lot of baitfish around in the areas I was fishing, but you could definitely see the steelies chasing them around close to the surface nearby.

The water level was very high(4-5ft more than I'm used to) and never seemed to drop in the time I was there later in the afternoon.

Hopefully I'll be working in Niagara again soon before the run really tapers off!

Nice Silvio! definitely a succesful season.

How come you are capping it at that? Still lots of drop-backs to be had, or are you moving on to another species?

I hit the big river after work today and the fish were very cooperative. It was my fourth steelhead outing of '09 and the first 3 only yielded 2 fish.

It started looking like things were going to be very slow after only hooking 2 fish in the first 3hrs... lost both... my fault. I used the same rig as the last outing without cutting back the line. I should definitely have known better by now.

The last hour was very productive and I ended up landing a pile. I tried doing the self portrait by using a tripod and timed delay function on the camera. Things didn't quite work out as hoped, but you get the idea from the pics. I even did a trial run to make sure, but didn't account for these feisty fish trying to escape during the shot.

I never caught a single fish on roe. Flies, jigs, Berkley worms(orange peel) and spinners all worked well.

Trial run.

I need to work on the self portraits, but it was a lot of fun regardless.

real nice!

the third laker down looks like a hybrid... possibly?

I stared out at Black Bear camp from a friends cottage just south-west about 1km. The boat's only motor where I was staying was out of commission, so fishing was limited. Caught some pike and smallies from my kayak, nothing huge but one pike around 36". I found/followed a stream while bushwhacking and was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch specks hanging out at the log-jam where it enters the lake. The neighbour went out most nights from 7-9pm and sometimes brought back some eater size walleye.... never offered to me.

Apparently there is a good whitefish pop there too.

It is definitely a place I'd like to go back and spend time at.

Good luck and let us know how you make out!

Poor elderly folks never even saw you coming!

Great looking boat Mike!

How about putting together an OFC trip? Lots of paddlers on this board.

Minden-Dorset area is prime for a trip right now.... as are many other areas, before the bug season starts.

Im going to give you a great bayfeild location..( from 21 turn east on 3 then turn north to go into Wildwood camp))..just before you turn into Wildwood Camp

Wildwood is in St Mary's... and ditto to what BillM said.

I would gladly pay and extra 50 bucks a year for my license if they could show that the money was going to improve our fisheries

ditto here....

very nice!

Hopefully this is the start of what will become a great comeback species for the Lake O fishery.

Wilmer Ponds near Durham has nice trout.

Boston over San Jose in 6 or 7

I soooo would love to see a Caps - Pens series ending with Ovechkin doing a fist pump over Crosby(whiner) after scoring the series winner!

Wow! Hope I catch just one pike that averages those sizes, in the open water season.

great report.

I always tip the Johnson Silver Minnows with a 3 or 4 inch twister.

my personal favorite for casting over top of weeds... very effective.

I haven't tried the using salmon spoons w/ siwash, but it sounds like a winner. Especially since I have about a 100 of them in defunct colours. Can definitely see how the thinner, lighter spoons will help slow the drop and create more flutter.

Looks like a I now have a hobby before Pike opens.

See you there!

Stop by my booth for a chance to win some SCOTTY prizes! or if ur real lucky, a guided trip with yours truly.

being landlocked all winter starting to get a little stir crazy, seeing I'll have the boat ready to go, may either go to the pickering nuke or the niagra river to pester some trout or something any advice for fishing the lower river would be great seeing i 've never been there and will be fishing out of a 18ft ranger bass boat

JWL may be able to help...

please next time stop in the store when it Opens to pay for Parking

That's one of the strangest requests I've heard in a while.

Excuse my ignorance for not knowing how things work down there, but if these fellas tried to pay and you weren't open, then why would you expect them to go back after if the entrance allowed them in? It would seem more reasonable to keep the entrance closed until business hours start, if it is pay per useage.

Nice fish Pure.

nice looking assortment. That pike looks very healthy.... actaully, they all do.

tourism in Ontario will take a big hit this summer because there's a lot less Americans with them than Canadians.

Americans make up a large portion of our tourism revenue.

isn't that Bronte?

My first trout for sure!

My Dad had taken me out on several occassions to inagurate me to small stream brookie fishing close to our rural home near Wingham. I wore his patience thin on many of those trips.

It was myself, older brother, Dad and his buddy on this trip... all experienced brookie anglers. After only several minutes of hiking into heavy bush, I was already getting the death stare from my old man, the hard .

"ur never gonna get anything makin that racket u dumb , and either will we!"

I was workin all the thickly covered undercuts that those sods were to big to get into, cause I was just a skinny nine year old and they were men. I hadn't caught anything after a few hours, but they each had got some pan size eaters. My Dad turns to me and snarls " get the over here and watch what I'm doing." He hands me his great little custom creek rig.... a nice old mitchell reel he'd put on a fibreglass rod, sawed back to the last eye... cause that's what you used back then. I took it cautiously from him and snaked the big dew worm under a huge fallen trunk spanning the creek with a large undercut bank and a lightly foamed eddy on the opposite side. "You won't get anything there, cause I just worked it. But that 's where they hide, so try it anyway", my Dad whispers. The dew worm gets sucked and the eddy side of the log by the current and I gently pulled it back, "thinking he didn't get anything so I won't either". Next attempt, I open the bail as it passed under the log and gave it a second before I reeled it back. BAM!

Without hesitation, I yanked it right out from under the log and up onto the bank behind me. I sprinted over to where it landed to see a beautiful 16" brookie(coulda been 14" ) wrything in the grass and gurgling for freedom. I picked it up, examined it, removed the hook and slipped it back into the hole it came from. As I turned looking for approval from my old man, I was greeted by three sets of piercing eyeballs and a look despair on my Dad's face.

That was it, I was a brookie chaser for the next 15 yrs and my father and I never spoke of it again until I was about 30 and we remenisced old fishing memories.... I said to him "do you know when it was the I really got hooked on fishing"? He turned to me and said, " I remember an adolescent dumb that pulled a 16" brookie out of a hole I'd just worked for twenty miuntes and then released it", he said with an ear to ear grin on his face.

Sorry for the long winded story(best as I recall it), and that's actually two moments I wish I could have back but will never forget.

great topic BTW!

Even Italo uses them...

http://www.canadian-sportfishing.com/Video...amp;VideoID=219

There no better method to locate river smallies than in a yak.