craigdritchie

Nice brownie. Atlantic salmon have forked tails and generally aren't so deep-bodied.

Pretty fishies. Nice coho in that last photo.

If you just bought the boat recently, then it's worth taking it back to the marina and talking to them about it. They may offer to fix it, they might not. It depends on the establishment and what their policies are. I used to have an old 12-footer I used for hunting ducks, and it had a couple of leaky rivets where the keel came into the bow. I fixed them with a metallic paste called Aluminox. It's like grey toothpaste ... you smear it around the rivet then let it dry and sand it smooth. It worked pretty well. The boat never leaked again (well, at least not in that spot) despite being run into a couple of beaver dams and up on shore repeatedly.

mikeymikey is absolutely right on the money. Your ability to check a rod tube depends on the aircraft being used. Twinjets like 737s, 757s, A319s and such can swallow canoes in their cargo holds, never mind rod tubes. The problem comes when you have to fly on a small regional jet or a turboprop, since most of those were designed for business travel and can't handle anything bigger than one overnight bag for each passenger. If you're going to a small town in NW Ontario on a scheduled flight, you will almost certainly be in a small turboprop like a Saab 300 series, a Beechcraft 1900 or maybe a Convair 560, and none of those will take a tube much over four feet in length. You better call the airline ahead of time and confirm what kind of plane you're on, and what size tube it can accommodate. Otherwise, you might have to leave your rods behind. (That happened to me on my first trip to Kesagami. Air Ontario couldn't fit my rod tube on their Beech 1900, so my rods spent a week in storage at Pearson Airport. Of course they only told me this after I arrived in Cochrane and the rods didn't appear. Thankfully, I bumped into Bruce Leeson at the lodge, and he was kind enough to loan me a couple of his outfits for the week. Thanks again, Bruce!). You can fit large rod tubes on small float planes (Cessnas, Beavers) by running them down the floor under the seats, but they won't do that on scheduled commercial flights. Having worked for a couple of TV fishing shows and a few fishing magazines since the early 1980s, I've taken hundreds of flights with rod tubes, and on just about every type of plane imaginable. Trust me, don't leave anything to chance. Call the airline and confirm exactly what they can handle.

From ice-out till late May you get mainly carp and some rainbows, plus the odd brown, coho and lake trout. Cleos, or spawn under a float, are most dependable. By the end of May there will be lots of carp, including some really huge ones. There's pretty good fishing for sheephead off the Lake Ontario end of the piers through the summer. You'll get them on Cleos, Rattle Traps and Shad Raps. Most are about 3 - 5 pounds and they're a lot of fun on a bass rod. By the end of August you start to get some chinooks show up at night. Rainbows, browns and lakers return by October and stick around through the winter. You can catch pretty much anything there -- smallmouth, pike, white bass, you name it. You'll need a net with an extension handle, as the water is about five feet below the top of the pier.

This news release from MNR is dated April 28, 2008. Notice the specific wording in section 8. I wonder if this will become an issue at tournaments. [post=http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Enforcement/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_164557.html]http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/Enforcement/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_164557.html[/post]