craigdritchie

According to a story in today's Hamilton Spectator, health officials are advising people to stay out of the water and not eat fish from Hamilton Harbour due to a bloom of potentially toxic blue-green-algae. Here's a link to the story online: Spec Article

$200 is a bit of an odd number where a centerpin is concerned. If you're looking at a new reel, then in my humble opinion you would be farther ahead to hold off until you can scrounge another $150 or so, because the difference between something like a $200 Raven or Okuma and a $350 Islander really is day and night. For two bills I would look for a good used reel. A gently used Islander is a great value IF you can find one - they tend to get snapped up pretty quickly. You might have more luck finding a good used Stanton, a Loomis/Tournament Drifter, or maybe an Aurora Barrington. I own all three, and they're all wonderful reels. You can sometimes find good used reels on eBay or Kijiji, but I'd suggest you watch local boards like this one. Chances are, you'll know something about the person you buy the reel from and even if you don't, you can probably pick it up in person and avoid extra charges for shipping or customs.

Good grief - that thing's built like a horse. Amazing how many really large fish wind up being identified as genetic freaks. The Royal Ontario Museum has a replica mount on display of a 102 pound lake trout that was netted in Lake Athabasca many, many years ago. Its body shape looks more like a sunfish than a laker. When the ROM examined the actual fish, they found it was a naturally-occurring eunich, neither male nor female. With no sexual organs whatsoever, it grew like an embryo its whole life. It makes you wonder how many record fish over the years may have actually been genetic mutants, naturally occurring or otherwise.

Couldn't agree with you more, Roy. Well said.

This pic is now rotating on the Ludington newspaper website home page (www.ludingtondailynews.com).

I have news for you, the vast majority of the digital scales out there are no better. It is important to understand that when we're talking about fish scales, the term "digital scale" simply means the weight is displayed as numerals on an LCD panel instead of by a needle going up and down a little index or around a dial, and has nothing to do with how the weight is actually calculated. In fact, many "digital" fish scales still use the same type of internal mechanism to determine the weight of the fish that we first saw 50 years ago on the old Zebco De-Liar. In other words, some sort of cheap spring mechanism. They just display it on an LCD (i.e. digital) display. Hence, digital scale. At Real Fishing we once weighed a five pound weight with a bunch of different digital scales and spring scales. None of them were right. We even gathered up three identical digital scales - all the same make and model - and all three gave different weights. Precision? Pffft. Tackle manufacturers love digital scales because they are one of the biggest profit grabbers out there. Made in China, 50 cents worth of parts, $44.95 retail price. And people line up to buy them. Talk about money for nothing. Bottom line is, if you want an accurate weight you need a very high quality scale, and those cost serious money. One of the best (Chatillon) is a traditional spring scale that shows the weight with a metal pin, not an LCD panel. You can have it IGFA-certified. Of course, they start at about $100 and go up to about $180 depending on size. Cost for IGFA certification is, of course, extra. Or you can get a Boga Grip - another $100 to $150 spring scale that can also be IGFA-certified.

Wow! According to the Ludington (Michigan) Daily News, some guy caught a 41 pound, 7 ounce brown in the Manistee River. It's a pending world record. www.ludingtondailynews.com/news.php?story_id=45793

Sandy Cove Marine (off the 400 near Innisfil) has a boat recycling program. I'm not sure if they can help you out, but it would be worth a call.

Liquid dish soap and a small handful (maybe a tablespoon) of sugar. Works like magic, and the wifey will never even know you've been fishing!

I'm told the dealers are the go-to contacts. If you visit Crestliner's website (www.crestliner.com) there is a dealer locate tool on the top right-hand corner of the main page. Type in your postal code and it will show you who's close by.

A few weeks ago there was a post concerning Crestliner Boats issuing a recall on aluminum fishing boats that do not meet Coast Guard requirements for level flotation. Brunswick Corp., which owns Crestliner, apparently discovered this problem while making a new model prototype from an existing hull, when someone did the math and figured out there wasn't enough foam under the floor. It now turns out this recall is a bit more extensive, and involves boats sold since model year 2000. Models affected include portions of the Fish Hawk series, the Canadian series, Kodiak series, the 1850 Sportfish SST, 1650 Sport Angler and 192 Tournament Series. If you own one of these boats, from model year 2000 to present, you need to contact your Crestliner dealer with the serial number to see if your boat is affected. It doesn't matter if you bought it new or used. If your boat is subject to the recall, then over the winter you will need to have them install the update kit that will bring the boat up to Coast Guard spec. I am told this should not affect storage space in your boat. It's important to note that the affected boats are still safe and are not going to sink. I've been told by Brunswick spokespeople that in many cases the discrepancy is within a few CCs of where it needs to be. Still, standards are standards, and they need to be met. Brunswick Corporation bought Crestliner from Genmar Corp. in 2005. Genmar Corp. is now bankrupt, so guess who's left holding the bag on this one? Kudos to Brunswick for doing the right thing, and voluntarily looking after this situation at their (considerable) expense.

People may be fishing, but I haven't heard of anyone actually catching much - sheepshead and smallmouths aside.

:clapping: :clapping: Completely and absolutely accurate. The original strain of ouananiche that once lived in Lake Ontario are long gone. Atlantic salmon (or ouananicche) introduced from other systems are genetically every bit as exotic as the brown trout, steelhead, coho and chinook salmon. This is why the Atlantic salmon program is such a complete and total farce.

In-Fisherman had an article a couple of years ago on this. They concluded that holding a bass vertically by the lower lip generally doesn't hurt the fish. Different story if you crank the jaw downwards, so its mouth gapes wide open. Then, the fish's full weight goes on a couple of small tendons, causing permanent damage. At best, the damage makes it more difficult for the bass to feed. At worst, the fish cannot feed properly at all, and dies a slow death from gradual starvation. You see guys show off their fish like this at tournaments all the time, and it always makes me cringe. The research cited in the In-Fisherman article said up to 50 percent of these fish croak a couple of weeks after the tournament. They suggest that the heavier the fish, the more likely anglers are to cause permanent damage this way. Totally agree with previous posters .... there's generally no reason to handle the fish any more than absolutely necessary.

People have occasionally copied and posted my published material too. If they're clearly doing it to make money, i.e. using my work to populate their website, I usually send them a polite note and ask them to either pay a license fee, or remove the material altogether. But in a case like this, where someone posts a chunk of an article simply to share information, then as long as they include the appropriate credits (as Jocko did) I see no harm done, and am usually flattered they felt my work was worth passing along. Having said that ... If you find information on a website that you would like to share, instead of copying and pasting the text into your post it's better to list the URL or provide a link to the web page where the story resides. Most people don't realize it, but many websites pay their writers based on how many clicks the story gets. If you copy and paste the text, the writer doesn't get paid for all those extra eyeballs. It's a small thing, but over the course of a year it can add up to a surprising amount of money.

Definitely agree on the dead-slow stickbaits in the shallows. I'll only add, you should not be afraid to upsize your lures when fishing at night. A seven-inch Rapala is not overkill - two pound walleye will hammer it without any hesitation.

There was tanker unloading there Saturday morning, so I doubt it.

I'm a very lucky guy since I've already fished with most of the TV hosts previously mentioned, and in some pretty amazing places at that. They're all great guys to spend a day on a boat with, but my picks? In no particular order: Mark Kulik Mark Krupa Big Jim McLaughlin Mark Kulik is not just a great angler, but a very good personal friend for nearly three decades. Enough said. Mark Krupa never ceases to make me laugh - wonderful guy, great photographer and always shows up with a big bag of Montreal's most awesome bagels. Big Jim because he's the picture of 'class act' in every single way - truly wonderful guy who knows how to fish and who always makes a day in the boat magical. I couldn't care less where we went, but Munro Lake, in northern Manitoba, would probably be my first choice. Average pike is about 12 pounds, there are lots of honest 20 - 25 pound gators, and a slow afternoon would mean landing about 40 fish apiece. Oh yeah, the grayling run around three pounds on average, and gobble dry flies as fast as you can huck them out there. Heaven on a three-weight.

There do indeed be a few coasties along that coast. But it's all about doing the legwork. No work, no play.

Chinooks are normally stocked in April as tiny wee things, so the six-incher you caught would have been from this spring's stocking and, in turn, raised from eggs collected last fall. Contrary to popular belief, hatchery chinook are seldom fin clipped or tagged, partly due to the expense, moreso due to the greatly increased risk of injury/mortality from the extra handling (chinook are much smaller than coho or rainbows at the time of stocking). That being the case, you can not tell whether a given fish is wild or not based on it simply having all its fins. There are some naturalized chinook in Lake Ontario. The number of them varies from year to year, and depends on who you ask, since everyone seems to have an opinion on this. You hear people throw around figures of anywhere from 10 percent to 90 percent of the fish being wild, but the truth is, no one really knows. The actual percentage of wild fish is probably more than we think, and likely less than we hope.

Proper navigation charts from the Canadian Hydrographic Service will not only keep you from hitting shoals and damaging your prop, but if you look at them carefully, they can reveal all kinds of new fishing spots that most people will miss. They're totally worth the $30 price tag. I have charts for half of Ontario at this point. For Port Severn downstream of the dam (i.e. the Georgian Bay side) there are two navigation charts that apply: Chart 2202, Sheet 1 (Port Severn to Tomahawk Island), and Chart 2241 (Port Severn to Christian Island). For Port Severn upstream of the dam (i.e. Little Lake, Gloucester Pool) you will need Chart 2029, and specifically Sheet 2 (Big Chute to Port Severn). This is part of the Trent-Severn series. Note that the water levels shown on the charts are "at datum." Water levels throughout the Great Lakes are coming back to normal levels, but are still down a bit from where they should be.

It's not the first time DFO's estimate has been off by millions of fish. Do a quick Google search and you'll find several other instances where they've been waaay off. It doesn't exactly give you a lot of confidence in the way that fishery is mismanaged ...... er, I mean managed.

Drifter ..... he made amends last year - at Ruth's Chris. best steak I've had in a long time.

Thanks, I appreciate that. And I do remember speaking with you by the river ... that was a pretty good day as I recall. Lots of friendly silver fishies. I've written for a bunch of US fishing magazines over the years ... Fishing Facts, In-Fisherman, Outdoor Life, Saltwater Sportsman, Bassmaster, and a bunch of other little regional rags no one has ever heard of. They all paid fairly well, but one catch was that they would always forward letters and emails from readers asking for more info, and it took so much time to deal with those that in the end it just wasn't worthwhile. At one point a junior editor at In-Fisherman accidentally listed my home phone number at the end of a story, and I got calls at all hours of the day and night for months afterward. The now ex-wife was definitely not amused.

Mike, Now you know one of the reasons I walked away from a pretty good career as an outdoor writer. Keep a good spot under your hat and you catch flak for it. Name the place, and you contribute toward wiping it out. You can't win.