craigdritchie

Cheaper to go to Scotland.

About a week ago, in some places

Thanks for that, I really enjoyed it. Wonderful pictures, especially the first two. Wife and I are visiting Germany in September, and I'm looking forward to trying my luck. And, trying the beer, of course!

Green heron. There are a few at Bronte too.

A friend of mine has a cottage in the Kawarthas. Each Saturday morning during the summer, anywhere from four to 10 boats will come along and fish his dock. Same deal on Sunday. You can be standing right there with a coffee in your hand and guys will still not even think twice about bouncing tube jigs and Senkos right off your feet. It's even worse when there's a tournament. With respect to Bill M's comment about not casting around swimming kids and all, it's unfortunate that not all anglers feel the same way. I always thought it was just the cottagers who were dickheads, until I experienced it from the other end of the dock. Now, I completely understand why they get so bent out of shape. I find it interesting to read through this thread. Docks are a non-issue for me, because I very seldom fish them anymore. Why? EVERYONE fishes docks, and I think for a lot of guys, it's probably the only pattern they know. Personally, I find I catch a lot more fish by focusing on other areas that no one else bothers with.

Every policy is different, but if you have a deductible, then you have to pay it - simple as that. The other person being from out of province has nothing to do with it. When you take out an insurance policy you can negotiate the deductible. You can take a higher deductible against a lower overall premium. Or have no deductible, and probably pay a bit higher premium. It depends how many claims you expect you might have.

D'oh!!

Sandy Cove Marine Recyclers in Honey Harbour recycles fibreglass boats. Not sure what happens to the glass once it goes through the shredder .... I think it becomes park benches or playground equipment.

Can't say I blame the buy for being ticked off. If some jackass hooked the upholstery in my boat, I would be steamed too. There are clueless idiots in every group, fishermen included.

I'm a magazine publisher. I was a full-time outdoor writer for about 25 years, then eventually came to my senses, went back to school, and now work in strategy/business development for one of Canada's largest media companies. It's a fun gig.

Salmon fishing in rivers is a good news/bad news deal. The good news is they can be a lot of fun to catch. The bad news is that nothing attracts hordes of inbred idiots like a salmon run. So they quickly become just about impossible to catch legitimately as a result of all the morons wading in up to their chins and snagging the bejeezus out of them. Actually, snagging is the least of it - it's fairly common to see jerks chasing them up and down the rapids with landing nets, night and day. Popular rivers like the Credit, Humber and Bronte can be absolute war zones on warm autumn weekends, so little wonder the fish get just a wee bit spooky. If you can find undisturbed fish (and it's a big if) then they can be caught legitimately on regular steelhead tackle. Truth is, in most rivers they can't really go too far, so if you're patient, they're fairly easy to land on a medium to heavy steelhead rod and mono from maybe 6 to 10 pound test. Fluorocarbon is even better. Forget braid - it looks like rope in the water, and this is one kind of fishing where you want to be as subtle and low-visibility as you can. Your St. Croix should be fine providing you don't try to horse the fish. Regular float fishing techniques with roe or small dark-coloured flies will work just fine on fresh salmon. In larger, deeper rivers, you're probably better off to use a heavier spinning outfit and cast small crankbaits like Flatfish, Kwikfish, Hot Shots etc. Cast across the pool and slowly retrieve so it swings across in the current. You might want to add a split shot or two, maybe a foot in front of the lure, to help get it down in the current. For what it's worth, this works really well in the frogwater down by the lake, and in harbour areas too. In fact it's probably the most reliable way to catch salmon legitimately from land. I've completely given up stream fishing for them in favour of this approach. The best harbour and stream fishing is for freshly-arrived fish. They deteriorate quickly in shallow creeks like Bronte or the Humber, especially if the weather is a bit warm. Once they reach spawning condition, it's basically game over - they're focused on having fun with other salmon, so leave them be. A good rule of thumb is, if you can see the fish, then they can see you too. Move on and try somewhere else. Chinook usually show up in the lower end of bigger rivers by the end of August, usually following a good cold rain. Coho are normally a bit later, normally October or November. Coho seem to respond to lures more consistently than chinook, but that's just my opinion. Best advice I can offer is to get as far away from other people as possible. Some of these guys who show up for the salmon run are real Neanderthals. Honestly ... it's a wonder some of them can even walk upright.

Give this man a cigar. Overall, the number of people fishing is declining. License sales have been dropping off steadily for at least 20 - 25 years. Beyond that, even though Canada's population has grown steadily since the 1970s, the size of the fishing industry has shrunk considerably. How else do you explain that? Out on the water, I think we're seeing more and more people crowding into fewer and fewer spots. I agree with Ironstone74 - a big part of that is due to irresponsible internet posts. Guys go online and post pictures of their day on the water - nothing wrong with that in itself, but when the locations are obviously recognizable, it can't help but put more pressure on a spot. I've seen it too many times - someone posts a picture and the next day you can't even find a place to park there. It might look like there are more people fishing than ever, but it's just an illusion.

Pete, $100 is a very good deal for that outfit, and $80 is even better. Ryan didn't mention a price, and I confess I just expected he was looking at spending more than that. It will definitely sell, and someone will be happy with it. If Ryan (or whomever winds up buying it) ultimately gets bitten with the muskie bug in a big way, he won't be happy with just one rod anyway - we all know how this works! Next thing you know, you have a garage full of them. Cheers

Ryan, The outfit you described will probably work just fine in the Kawarthas. But I have to agree with Lew and Roy where longevity is concerned. Providing you're not paying too much for the Abu/Fenwick setup, it will at least get you started. You mention you've never fished for muskie. If you decide you like it, I suspect you will want to upgrade the rod and reel before too long. When that time comes, you might want to consider a St. Croix, Shimano or G. Loomis rod (all make several models appropriate to the Kawarthas) and a more substantial reel like a Calcutta 400. It's like anything else - you get what you pay for. Quality gear costs more to begin with, but it lasts forever.

Appropriate tackle depends on where/how you're fishing for muskie. The ideal rod for hucking bucktails in the Kawarthas would be just about useless for trolling big body baits on Lake St. Clair, for example. If you can think about how you will be fishing, and in what kinds of water, that would make it easier to determine the most appropriate outfit.

It was only the fourth time on the water for the father and son when they found themselves stranded 1.5 miles off the Whitby coast at about 2:30 p.m. on July 27. “The boat started vibrating quite heavily so we anchored up to go have a look and we noticed there was lots of water coming in from the back of the engine,” said Mr. Reynolds, who moved to Ajax from England a month ago and just purchased the boat last week. 1.5 miles off Whitby ..... how long is this guy's anchor rope?

Here's another thought - a 30 minute time slot on Versus TV costs $175,000 US. The cost of actually producing the show are over and above that, of course. I have all the respect in the world for the Lindners .... great fishermen and classy guys in every sense of the word .... but I suspect MAYBE they just prefer the look, feel and performance of a Quantum sponsorship contract. TV is business - personal likes and dislikes have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Loyalty? Pffft. You can't eat loyalty. Al might not have a mortgage any more, but he definitely has huge costs associated with producing his show and buying air time to get it on the air. It costs an enormous amount of money, even if you air it on a crappy network. So you go with whatever sponsor will pay the bills, or you don't have a show. That's pretty much the bottom line. TV fishing shows are a business. That's precisely why I can't watch any of them. Well, that and the fact 95 percent of them really, really suck.

Top professionals always choose to use whatever the sponsor tells them to use. Simple as that. It's all about paying the mortgage.

If you have a Mac, Garageband works great.

Last summer I'm bringing in a nice smallmouth and about 10 feet from the boat it gives one of those last-ditch headshakes. Hook pops loose, rod recoils and a half-ounce tandem spinnerbait drills me right in the shin. Good God, did that ever hurt. I dropped to the deck like I got harpooned. It left a baseball-sized bruise that was there for weeks.

Received this press release from Yamaha in this morning's email: Yamaha launches new advertising campaign to include real world Yamaha owners For years Yamaha Motor Canada has been asking “What kind of Yamaha are you?” and more and more Canadians are answering back. So much so, that for 2011, Yamaha plans to include pictures of real world Yamaha owners in their promotional materials. “We agreed it was the next logical step to our advertising strategy,” says Yamaha’s National Manager, Marketing, Tim Kennedy. “In our first run of ‘What kind of Yamaha are you?’ we used generic images; last year we featured Yamaha celebrity figures like motocross champion Colton Facciotti and Facts of Fishing’s Dave Mercer. Now we want to showcase those who have walked into a dealer and purchased a Yamaha. It’s a great way to bring a ‘real world’ perspective to our products.” Yamaha is currently creating advertisements for every product group (motorcycle, ATV, side by side, snowmobile, marine, and power product) and searching for just the right “This is my Yamaha” candidates. Do you want to show the pride of ownership of your Yamaha with the rest of Canada? If so, please submit your favourite photos to their Facebook Fan page, facebook.com/YamahaMotorCanada. So ... who wants to be a star?

Caught a nice gull on a Rapala in Lake St. John ....... a fine pelican off a pier in Florida ....... about 100 feet of copper wire in the Trent River (fought well too - I thought it was a good walleye) ..... and most recently, this nice turtle, which hit a medium-sized jerkbait while muskie fishing. Crappy cell phone picture, but you get the point.

Bob Izumi is not afraid to gamble, so sometimes he wins big ... and other times he's roadkill. I remember fishing the Kenora Bass International tournament with him about 10 years ago. We absolutely bombed the first day when the big, suspended smallmouth we were targeting never showed up. But they did show up on the second day, and we went from 134th place to 29th place in just a few hours - it still stands as a KBI record for a one-day improvement. We wound up finishing in 8th or 9th, I think, out of more than 200 boats, and within about three pounds of the winner. We would have won the thing easily if those dang smallmouth had cooperated on the first day. The guy is an amazing angler, plain and simple. It was a real treat to watch him keep his cool and stick to his game plan, even when it wasn't looking very good at all. Talk about confidence. Mark Kulik is very similar. He's another guy who is not afraid to gamble, so he's always a threat to win regardless of where he is in the standings.

Redneck or not, that looks like a riot!