jimvanm

Hey wow! Thanks to all for the awesome feedback. Of course now (and I knew this would happen), I'm sitting at my desk dreaming of fish when there's work to do! :-)

Greets to all. First post here, and it's been far too long since I've done a proper amount of fishing in any one year. I've been doing a bit of surfing on the web regarding fishing in Ontario, and ended up here. Looks like I found the right place to hang out :-) When I met my wife, I stopped fishing the way I did when I was single. It wasn't so much that she was against it, but it wasn't of any interest to her, and there were so many other interesting things in life that I figured I could take a break for a summer and be none the worse off. Living in Toronto didn't help, since it isn't exactly easy to find a good fishing hole a few minutes drive away to just sneak off to for an hour or two. A dozen years and three kids later, I'd only been fishing a half dozen times or so. It was starting to eat away at my soul. I knew this wasn't something I could give up for life. I needed to get back on the water. I had always hoped that at least one of my kids would take to fishing, but I was reluctant to take them out when they were too young. Selfishness, fear of all the complaining ("I gotta go pee", "I'm bored"), whatever, I was just never able to talk myself into taking them out. But when my oldest boy turned 8, I decided the time was ripe. I had to know if one of my kids would fall in love. Rather than trying some uncertain experiment off a dock somewhere, I decided that if I was going to hook him good, I was going to need to make a good presentation. I phoned up Rosedale Marina in the Kawarthas (located in the channel between Cameron Lake and Balsam lake), and booked one of their 14' Princecrafts (complete with a 25 horse on the back, livewell and a nice, stable, flat deck that just wants you to stand up and fish). We headed East down the channel towards Lock 35 and Cameron lake. I'd caught my first and only Muskie in the Burnt River, and even though I was planning to focus on panfish, I figured just being back there would put me in the right frame of mind. It was a beautiful day; the one worry I had was that we hadn't managed to get any worms. While heading down the channel my son said "Dad, why are we going so slow? This is boring". Then, when we were in the lock and the doors were closing, he said "This is kinda freaking me out". I started to wonder if I had made a mistake, but I told myself to just relax; the day was young. The fishing was terrible. My son managed the first catch, a wee little Perch that was smaller than my hand. A few hours later we managed a fiesty little Rock Bass in the confluence of the Burnt River, and a little further up, Dad managed a Pickerel (yay). That was it. We were nearing the end of our rental time, and the wind was picking up. But all that didn't matter, 'cause my boy said "Dad, I think fishing is my most favorite thing". I had this dream of getting him hooked with a day full of one panfish after another, but he did me one better and fell in love with the whole experience, fish or no fish. So I'm back, and I got a new fishing buddy! But I still want him to have the experience of pulling them out one after the other, and that little trip was over $200 after all was said and done. I have to find a place in the city where we can drive the car, hook up some worms, and catch us some panfish. Any advice?