Rich

Welcome aboard! Glad to have ya here.

Nothing I can add to the list the others have made besides - make sure the carpets are in relatively good condition on the decks. VERY pricey replacing the carpeting in a bass boat unless you do it yourself.

Hate to play devil's advocate, but how does the amount of posts one makes define whether or not they are a reliable source of information? I don't have an opinion on the subject either way. I do believe basing judgment on only a newspaper article is very biased. Half the time their information is wrong or embellished.

Though I am a believer that in clear water braid can shy more fish away than mono or flouro, my main reason for using lighter line is usually it's overall castability and sensitivity.

Salmon run's the best I've seen in a while on the Lake Erie tribs. Ours are about 98% natural with 2% strays from the US.

Yesterday on Erie, I was slaying fish (though mostly sheephead) on tubes there for a while. Only problem is, every third cast I was breaking off (using 6lb test). So I switched over to my spinning rod with 10lb braid, assuming it wouldn't matter. Nothing, for like 20 minutes would touch the tube on the braid rod. Switched back to the 6lb mono and they started hitting just about every cast again. I'd say if a sheephead will shy from braid, anything will!

That'd be it. Dad called it a skeg. lol

I am by no means a welder, and hiring an aluminum welder is pricey. The skeg (middle runner) on the bottom of the Filth Hound is cracked. It has been since my dad gave it to me. He says it was from trailering with a motor that was way too heavy for the boat to handle (typical dad). It doesn't hurt the boat any but it does lower my top end speed and always gets caught on the truck bed.. and after launching on the beach today, it's full of sand too. Basically it's a minor annoyance that I want to do away with. Any ideas on cheap fixes for this? I was thinking of screwing a piece of sheet metal over the crack, then using epoxy to seal around the sheet metal. My other idea was the simplest, to simply use Mega Metal and fill it in. I wasn't sure if the Mega Metal will bond to aluminum though. I'll try to put a pic up tomorrow to show what the damage really is. Like I said, it doesn't really hurt anything.. it's been running like that for 8 years now, but I'm in a "fix up the boat" mood lately and it's something I'm definitely going to fix if I can. If it's gonna be an expensive fix I'll just leave it. The boat's probably not worth as much as the repair in that case, lol

Awesome as always Justin! And congrats to your buddy Andy on a true trophy largemouth. Boat looks great too. Gotta love having tons of casting room. 10 years, lol the Filth Hound is going on 30!

Not really Future Shop's fault that the shipment never came. I hate that, when we have meat on sale and people whine and complain to ME when the stupid truck driver's don't bring us what we ordered a WEEK in advance. I try to explain that to them as nicely as possible how we're just as PO'd as they are because we have to hear about it from customers all day, some people just can't be pleased. Ya know what, go to a butcher shop and get it then and see how much you pay. For now just take my gawd dang rain check. GRRRRR Okay, not related, but in the same way it is. Anyway, glad you finally got your camera at least. lol

Beauty!

Great fish - if cooked fresh. Never freeze them, ewww

Wow, bad pic or not, I love the colors on that fish. Beautiful! Mine are never that defined in color, usually green with some orange or light red on the pectoral fins. Awesome.

"Night fishing for salmon at night" I find it's much better than night fishing for salmon during the day.

I was blessed this week. I had two days off and both of them were just beautiful days. Sugarpacket and I never waste a nice day, so on Monday we packed up the waders and headed to the Grand River. We actually fished several spots from Cambridge to Brantford and the fishing was the slowest I've ever seen it. No smallies landed (saw a couple jumpers), and just a few suckers to show for our efforts. It was still a fun time fishin' the river and seeing some spots I haven't visited since I was a kid. Sugarpacket had never been to these particular areas of the grand so it was all new for her too. Last night I called up Sleded and asked if we could borrow his outboard for a day on the Lake Wednesday. He was kind enough to let us borrow it (thanks again Eric!) and we also had a good time shootin' the breeze at his place over donuts and Busch of course. Today was a toss up. It was down to the last minute on the decision whether to chase Long Point Bay pike or take advantage of the calm, warm weather and hunt down Erie smallies. After looking at the weather we decided there won't be too many nice days like that left this year and calm days on Erie are a rarity anyway. So we dropped the boat in and headed out on the big water for early fall smallies. First we trolled crankbaits for a short time and didn't even get a bite, so we headed to a very popular spot and dropped anchor. We changed up between tossing crankbaits and tube jigs for a bit, and finally I had a bite. Odd lookin' smallie! Oh well it was a fish to get things going. After getting a couple more sheepies on jigs & spoons I look up to see Sugarpacket with a nice smallie on! She had started tossing a spinnerbait and one just nailed it! Unfortunately at boatside it shook the hook. So I decide, hey, if they'll hit a spinnerbait all day I'll be in heaven so I started tossing one too. I cast to a spot where current flows around a bunch of boulders and in 2 casts, WHAM! My first real Erie pig of this year came out to play. A decent fight and Sugarpacket was ready with the net. Just as the net went under this girl the spinnerbait came flying in the air! Good timing. Put her on the scale - an honest 4 pounder (scale said 4.5). Beauty! The spinnerbait bite continued with a lot of 1-2 pound fish. Man oh man, nothing beats smallies on a spinnerbait. When you're rippin' as fast as you can and suddenly they smack it, there's no bigger adrenaline rush. Sugarpacket tossed her spinnerbait a little differently after things cooled down, straight behind the boat in heavy current with a really slow retrieve. Almost like trolling without moving the boat. Wasn't long before BAM and she was into a nice smallie of her own that weighed in just a little under 3 pounds. To the dismay of the other boats in the area, these smallies were all released to fight again. Sugarpacket showed up a boat of 3 men nearby who couldn't stop staring at our boat. We weren't sure if they were looking at our fish or at the pretty girl outfishing them. lol They tried mimmicking our every move and even fishing in our spots, great guys. Didn't seem to work for them though. As the time pushed closer to noon our average sized bass went down to this. Sugarpacket also found the hot Lake Erie largemouth bite, she can give GPS co-ordinates to this baby if you want! As she was flipping for those hawg largemouth she noticed a little creature that we couldn't completely identify. I assumed muskrat at first but it didn't have the muskrat tail. Any OFC'ers have an idea what it was? Mink? Otter? We tossed him a couple snacks (tiny white bass) and he was pleased with our offering. Sugarpacket had to use the ladies room, unfortunately there was no ladies room nearby and she was too shy to use the Filth Bucket I was so pleased with myself for having aboard so we decided to just head back and pack the boat up. The smallies were pretty much done hitting until the evening bite anyway. By the way launching from a beach is in no way easy! Talk about a workout. Notice our huge pipes in each picture. lol If you want a good worker for hauling your Filth Hound, look into hooking into a farm girl. lol Anyways, after a quick visit with Grandma & an attempt to pick up Splenda (who happened to be having a nap when we showed up) we decided to kill a couple more hours, grab some lunch and hit the Port Dover pier. Sugarpacket had devised a pattern yesterday when feeding the ducks that these carp were following the flocks and eating the bread that didn't get devoured by ducks or seagulls. Sure enough we showed up with a loaf of bread and the carp weren't too far behind. There were some beasts down there but they were a little smarter. I had a couple hit bread balls, then Sugarpacket drops a 1" grub of all things and a carp annihilates it. One of the best fights all day, and of course being that Dover's a tourist town she had an audience of about 15 watching the whole thing. Next was my turn after leaving the bread idea behind and switching back to faithful canned corn. Wasn't long before I was into my carp, another great fight. Holy cow this thing had plenty of open water and it used it to it's full advantage, running and running non stop. After playing with the local shiner and goby population for a bit we decided it was time to take Splenda back and retire to the confines of our home, only to dream about fishing for another week. We really lucked out on the weather, and couldn't have asked for better fishing today. It just seemed that everything worked in our favour.. except we've both got colds now. Well ya know what they say, the best cure for a cold is a day of fishing!

My uncle used to run the Whispering Pines on Rice Lake. The new people there are good people, not sweatshop owners, lol

You may not be as comfortable as the guys in bigger boats, but provided you know how to boat in high waves, you'll be okay. I've had my 14' out in 4 footers in the outer bay on Erie. Scary, but made it back safe and relatively dry.

I still have about 40 spools with small amounts of line on them. I packrat them, I'll figure something useful when I retire. lol

Great fish and a great spot too!

We have Wednesday off and Grandma agreed to watch Splenda to allow us another SP/BBR adventure! You pick it. It'll be cleverly narrated by Sugarpacket of course.

Spinning for me. I just don't get enough sensitivity from a baitcaster's rather heavy line. Need all the sensitivity I can get when my hands are numb. haha

CTC has sucked my money away lately because I don't have any local shops. The one "local" shop is basically a minnow dealer.

Did you people who replied actually read the post? It's for a project - the store is imaginary, lol

Mighty creek chubs!

Unfortunately, though I can't agree with the "99%" comment, I agree PAZE. One spot I fish for salmon/bows on a Lake Erie trib gets very little angling pressure. The regular guys that go down there have set up garbage bags on the bridge and the shoreline below to prevent litter. These guys regularly take the garbage bags once a week and put it out at the road near their house. Yet - everytime I go down there, there is STILL litter everywhere. Up on the bridge I can see non-fisherfolk littering, but below.. well there are worm containers, roe containers, timmies coffee cups, beer cans, everywhere! People are so bold as to toss it on the ground right next to the garbage bag, I've watched them! These people don't realize that their littering will indeed cost them their fishing spot in the future. That's okay they'll find out about another one after and ruin that one for everyone else next. When I'm down and the fishing slows down (actually it's usually slow) I take the time to fill a garbage bag of my own. Actually I fished it almost daily last year and kept it pretty clean. This year it's disgusting. Stuff like this really turns me off river fishing.