Rich

If you're sticking to single hooks, a simple landing glove is more than enough. Muskies are easy to tail and cradle into your lap for hook removal. Boga grips can be dangerous to muskies' jaws. Another note, you might want to put a wet piece of plastic or something over your lap to prevent removing the fishes' protective slime. Or better yet, remove the hook in the water. Probably easier to take pics of your catch in a kayak that way anyway.

I'm all psyched for my kawartha musky video, 4 days not enough footage. You gather enough in 5 hours. Yer makin' me look bad!

I'd like to find the arse who strung that net across there! There's a heck of a lot more than carp that run that creek. If it was the MNR - BAD SHOW!!!! Nice work on the pannies though.

Long Point Bay! Never miss the bass derby.

Sleded and I annually hit a kawartha lake (a different one every time usually) and as musky opener neared we knew it was time to pack up and go. Thursday night Sleded couldn't make it, so we headed out at 3:30 AM Friday morning with high hopes in mind. Of course before leaving, we had to stock the cooler with our weekend's groceries. As we headed up we made a few pit stops for ice and drinks. But as we noticed the signs for the .... KAWARTHA DAIRY!! We knew we were getting close. As we headed up we stopped at a few spots to give a try just bouncing grubs around. This one was the most interesting I found which I was sure would hold a few walleye. Guess I was wrong. Funny thing, when we came back, this pond had completely dried up. Weird. Finally, we reached our destination. We decided to hold off on setting up the tent because we were itching to fish. So we just dropped the boat in and were on the water by about 10am, attempting to jig up some walleye. Wouldn't you know it, the first fish Sleded hooks (besides perch) was Mr. Musky. Just one day early. Eventually the walleye did co-operate however, clones of this size were the norm. 2 - 3 inch grubs on emergent weedlines were the ticket, in about 8 feet of water. If the jig had some sort of orange on it, they'd eat it up. Otherwise, you were perch (or OOS bass) fishing. We couldn't get into so many perch (some good ones actually) and walleye without taking a few home. Sleded was happy the fillet knife got some action. We had to run back to town to get gas, so we hit up a local shop that served .... KAWARTHA DAIRY!!!! for ICE CREAM!! We fished the local dam but caught nothing but OOS smallmouth bass and WGSF. We set up the tent and realized that setting it up late was a bad idea, as our camp area was infested with so many mosquitoes you couldn't breathe without sucking a few in. And that's NOT an understatement! After killing off the mosquitoes that entered the tent in the split second we opened the door, we hit the hay with high hopes of an early start for musky opener. Well turns out we enjoyed too much of our groceries and ended up sleeping in until 8am. We figured since we waited this long, we might as well pause and have some breakfast. Of course, we started the day off right with a carton of ... KAWARTHA DAIRY!!! Chocolate Milk Saturday felt as if it were about 40 degrees out there, especially with our late start to musky fishing. We tossed the big baits for a few hours, but eventually we just had to take a break and pound some panfish. Of course, this wasn't all bad, as Sleded was rewarded with a shallow water walleye that sucked in a panfish grub. Then it was lunch time. Half pound burgers and Ultimate chicken weiners!!!! Oh, and don't you dare forget the ONNNNIIIOOOOONNNNSSSS!!! A quick run for some KAWARTHA DAIRY ice cream perhaps? You're probably asking yourself right now, does this report contain any musky whatsoever? Did these guys even TRY?! Well try we did. We put in quite a few hours. Finally Sleded followed my tip and switched up to a smaller bucktail (Mepps musky killer) and was rewarded with the first and only musky of musky opening day. A scrappy little guy perhaps, but at least it was a musky. So Sunday rolls around. We slept in again. LOL This time it wasn't self-inflicted. A stinkin' mass of raccoons kept us up the night before by constantly getting into everything we couldn't fit into the truck. We eventually just gave up as there was no way to stop them. The truck cab's only got so much room! Luckily, they didn't get into anything too important. We just had a mess to clean up in the morning. After cleaning up the mess, we cooked up more chicken weiners and went for a swim. We were too lazy to actually swim of course, so we just used life jackets and cooled off. Did I mention we LITERALLY ate chicken weiners and went swimming? As in, both at once? Damn that's multi-tasking! Some boats thought that Sleded's abnormally large size mixed with the bright colors of a life vest meant that he was a navigation buoy! Eventually, we got on the water and began casting at those muskies. It was only when the rain came however that our confidence really picked up. I switched up to a 6 inch Awaker (topwater) in hopes of my first topwater musky. Well, soon after talking about it (and pleading with the musky gods for some help) came the greatest experience ever! A musky sure enough, 10 feet from the boat exploded from the depths and divebombed downward on top of my Awaker! FINALLY, I had caught a musky. Not only that, a TOPWATER musky. I thought musky fishing was exciting before.. holy cow, I don't know if I'll ever touch another spinnerbait or bucktail again! This fish looked like it had just been in a fight or just got done spawning. Maybe just a roughrider which would explain how active he was. To add on to the excitement, minutes later on the same drift ANOTHER musky smashed the Awaker from the side, this one was BIG (for me) but had bad aim. He caught the back hook and shook it in about one second. Either way, it was nice to have some battle scars on the Awaker (which before this had only ever caught bass). After a night like that we had to go back and feast (and allow the mosquitoes to feast on us). We had an excellent meal of 1lb pork chops and ONNNIOONNSS! And of course, once in the tent, the mosquito capades began once again. We made it through the night raccoon free and wouldn't ya know it? On our very last day we managed to get up early - to find an east wind, a strong one at that. First things looked great as we woke up to this sunrise shot: But things didn't last. We found shelter but the only thing to speak of was a little walleye who thought he was a musky. After a few hours on the main lake we headed back for breakfast. I found the last pop we had and enjoyed it with breakfast sausages and eggs on the Filth-BQ. We headed up a river for the remaining couple of hours. Sleded tossed the Ottonabee Wannabe spinnerbait that caught us so many muskies in the past and I cycled through baits trying to find something that would work. First thing I tried was my 10" Suick Thriller and after I got the hang of it and thought it looked awesome, I began to lose hope. I was just quoting Crazyhook's "Suick = Firewood IMO" when I had a little ski smash it at boatside. I had him hooked for a few seconds but he managed to shake all three hooks. Oh well, a learning experience and a confidence builder in a bait I would normally not use very much. Soon after, Sleded raised a BIG girl - high 40" range at least - at boatside. She came up from the depths and turned at the last minute. We both had our hearts jump and pounded the spot for nearly an hour before deciding that she wasn't coming back. In a last vain attempt before taking off back south, I tossed a bass sized spinnerbait just to see if they wanted smaller baits. Well - what report is complete without the World's Greatest Sportfish? It was the first thing to hit. That was it. 2 muskies in season, a heck of a lot of OOS bass while jigging and a few pickerel/panfish. But ya know what? It was a great experience. #1 - because of the KAWARTHA DAIRY. #2 - because of the food and #3 because I caught my first topwater musky and actually built some confidence in musky baits I wouldn't normally throw. All good stuff. On the way home, we hit up a little joint called Texas Burger. Another annual thing. Dang they make a great burger! Some areas must have got pounded with rain today. One town we hit was pretty flooded. We hit a bit of rain on the way home, at times heavy, but nothing that bad. Thanks Sleded for the great trip that lived beyond expectations, can't wait to get back up there for more muskies this season!

Emerald Shiner for sure

Kawarthas, the whole weekend - firing bucktails and shooting video!

Carpin' was very slow today. Only landed 3 carp in 5 hours and one barely counts lol. I used the patented BBR pro carp pod system: With this system you can land carp like THIS! lol there you go Wolfville now I've showed you the trophy carp we have to offer down here. Geeze. I keep proving myself to be a liar the more times I fish for these things. The big girls are there. They were rolling all over the place, often times only a few feet from us. Not spawning, just jumping all up and down the river. If they were spawning, they'd be in pairs at least occasionally. I know what spawning carp are like. Anyway, did manage a couple half decent ones before the day ended. Next stop - musky town!!

Try from the mouth of the Indian River all the way up to the bridge in Keene.

Happy birthday.... Mulva?

All great fun but I really wish the big ones would hit. I gotta show Wolfville what we have to offer here. So far I'm turning up a bunch of dinky carp. There were bigger ones rolling, perhaps next time if I leave my shirt on they won't be so shy.

Nice fish! And one of my favourite spots I might add. Gongrats to her, the smile on her face says it all.

Ahh, fast water. I find in faster waters these fish are "drift feeders" and are more likely to take the corn if it's weightless, drifting towards them. Try drifting a half a french fry, bread ball or doughball weightless as well. The french fries can be cool - topwater carp! haha. You may even want to experiment with worms or minnows below a float. Fast water carp are awesome, and act more like a predatory fish than a scavenger. I've caught them on spoons, grubs and spinners in areas like you describe.

Okay I lied, we actually dipped the jigs in onion shavings.

Always dealt well with Cabelas and BPS online. Only problem I had with Cabelas is that they simply left the package on the front porch if we weren't home - which lead to one of the reels we ordered getting stolen (Cabelas was great about this, and sent out another one free of charge). If the order was from BPS they would leave a note saying there was a package at the post office for us. Either way, shipping was never much.

The worms cook out and are supposedly safe to eat. Personally, I don't trust it. But according to other sources, it is safe.

What kind of corn were you using? They like the sweet flavour of canned corn. Any other corn has to have added sweetener (usually sugar) by some source. Frozen corn, in my experience, simply does not work without being boiled and sweetened first.

Typical Hamilton Harbour.. lol

Congrats on your first. Prepare to be addicted.

Awesome report! Interesting fillet job too.

I'll only use it if the mosquitoes are REALLY bad, and I use Muskol. I find it to be the best of the commercial sprays.

The upper reaches of the Don really do look good and I wondered the same thing driving past a few times. Then I took a look at the lower reaches and slapped myself in the head for wondering such things.

So after work today we were offered the use of the FORD (tried to think of a clever "filth" related name, but figured Ford was good enough to get the point across). So we strapped the Filth Hound in and headed to where the grass is always greener (due to algae blooms) - Dunnville. Most people will gasp and say "oh my gawd, you crazy! CRAAZZZZZZZYYYYY!" when I say this, but our target species was not the ever so famous Dunnville walleye. Nor was it the infamous and heavily fished silver bass that were brought to recent fame. Not even the ugly catfish was the light of our eyes as we launched on this windy day. Our target today - sheephead. I know, like, what are you thinking Rich & Sugarpacket? Well, if you're after some quick jigging action and an excellent (yes excellent despite what others may say) fight then sheephead are the ticket. We got the boat out and played around for an hour, I refused to put live bait on my yellow grub and Sugarpacket just used plain worms on a hook. She was the first to hook into a fish, which turned out to be the tiniest channel cat ever. I of course reached for the camera to capture this beast and that's when we realized we had forgotten it. Well, with that, we knew we were in for big fish. Truth be told, we tricked them into biting today. Little did the fish know my cell phone takes pretty good pics.. y'know, for a cell phone. Then the storm started. At first it was just a light rumble now and then.. suddenly the lightning was straight overhead, and the thunder literally rattled the sides of our aluminum filth hound. Sugarpacket was bugging me to go in, to which I replied "one more drift" but that excuse could only work for so long. We escaped the rain, docked the boat at the town docks and headed for shelter at a gazebo where we met the spokesman for Dunnville's citizens! There he was, sitting alone in the rain, drinking beer (heavily) from his gulp cup and offering fishing tips from years past. Nice guy, but man, we could smell the hops & barley from the river! In the time it took to hit the (surprisingly clean) porta-potty and scratch a couple Instant Bingo tickets the storm had passed. And with a few quick swipes of the bail bucket we were back on the river. I couldn't visit Dunnville for very long without at least TRYING to catch a walleye, so we tossed our lines and attempted trolling for a short time. One lost bottom bouncer later I said screw this and we headed back to sheephead town. This time I meant business. I tipped the Grub of Destiny with half a worm and plunked it out in about 4 feet of water. I informed Sugarpacket "everytime we hit the drop off in this spot, we will hook at least one". I was barely finished the sentence when I laid hook into my new PB. I have no idea how much it weighed since the scale was laying at home with the camera, but it was certainly bigger than any I have landed and most I have ever seen. For once, I was right. Everytime we hit the drop on this spot we were into one. Never got any double headers, it was like we were taking turns landing fish. Many small ones, and some above average like this one: Grubs & worms is all it took. But after fishing the spot so many times we felt so unaccomplished and ventured to different spots, looking just to figure them out a little better and put some more legwork in. In the other spots, we landed quite a few small cats as well which never made the pictures, mostly in the 1 - 3lbs range. Surprisingly, no bullheads or silver bass caught today. Finally we joined the crowd and parked up close to the dam. This was a much deeper spot but there was a current break and plenty of warm water coming over so we knew there had to be some fish about. It took a little longer, but eventually Sugarpacket laid hook into HER new PB sheephead (once again no idea of the weight) on a little mix-up in technique - grub tipped with a chunk of sucker meat. And I tell ya, I'd like someone who argues about the fight of sheephead to be sitting in my spot today watching her try to land this thing. What a brute. I thought for sure she had a 10 pound channel cat on the whole time. The night wore on, and we landed a few more smaller sheephead before finally calling it quits. Couldn't have been a better afternoon. Even the presence of the storm didn't seem to hinder things. If anything, it made the fishing even better. For anyone who hates sheephead - shame on you! They're a ton of fun, especially on 6 pound test. It's like jigging for walleye on steroids. Now, if only they were good to eat, and they'd be tops on my list of fish to catch. Just another day on the water for the Filth Family.

Right, because making them illegal will suddenly make them all disappear. Since everyone knows robbers obey the law to the fullest.

You callin' me a weekender? Why I oughta! Good stuff.. I fish a lot during weekdays too. Gotta love beating the crowds. Best fishing is always on a Thursday I find.