solopaddler

Nice fish man, and congrat's on the boat .

That's exactly what I meant.

Perfect

How about you have to have at least 20 or 30 posts before you can reply to a topic? That would quickly end most of the Bull.

Thanks for the laugh .

Good answer Ben, I agree too. I use the slightly stiffer stick with 20lb power pro for anything over say 25'. The vast majority of my walleye jigging is in less than 25' though. For that I use mono. Danbo mentioned Magnathin. I absolutely LOVE 8lb Stren Magnathin for the bulk of my jigging..

It's pretty likely that you could easily find out what species of fish are in the lake, or at least a good guess, by calling the closest MNR office and talking to the district biologist. Local guides or outfitters would be my second option. I've fished countless back lakes over the years and can honestly say I knew what to expect in each and every case. Do your homework and find out what you'll be fishing for. It'll make your lure selection a lot easier.

Actually it's not talked about much, but there's plenty of instances where spinning gear is preferred for pike. One of my go to techniques is to use salmon flutter spoons. They come in a wicked array of hot colours, perfect for pike. Take off the stock hook and replace it with an oversized heavy duty siwash. These light spoons are perfectly suited to fishing shallow weeds. The spoon can be worked slowly on top and fluttered slowly down into pockets. You can't do that with a standard spoon. You also can't cast these lures with baitcasting gear (at least not easily). To answer your question, pretty much any 4000 series Shimano will work beautifully .

As far self-inflating Thermarest style mattresses go, the term "self-inflating" is a misnomer. Yeah sure they'll fill up with a bit of air, but never fully inflate. A couple puffs of air in the valve, close it and you're good to go. It's highly unlikely you've got a problem or defect with yours...

Unless you're going to strip off the old handle and replace it entirely with a new one, there's really only one option. First clean the cork. SOS pads were mentioned, that'll work. Any kind of general cleaner(I use Fantastic), and rubbing and scrubbing under a hot water tap will work. Once the cork is cleaned go to Home Depot and buy the lightest colour wood filler they have to match the cork. Fill in the holes, let it dry and sand it down. Once that's done brush on a coat of cork sealer. Not urethane or varathane..cork sealer. This stuff is made specifically for cork fishing rod handles. Won't change the look of the cork at all and will protect and toughen it. Beyond purchasing a bottle of cork sealer online from a rod building supply site, I've purchased it from Angling Specialties locally.

Nice setup bud, love it! (Looks like a mint little spot you were fishing too)

That's exactly what it was Mike. The old thing ran great, started first pull every time except no shear pin . Thanks to one and all for the great feedback and positive comments, much appreciated!

Hey Drew, you're welcome to join me anytime if you can ever swing it bud. And yeah, new camera. After my ice fishing trip when my old one froze up on me I snapped and bought a new Olympus. Supposed to be freezeproof shockproof and waterproof (perfect for me ).

Hey bud, just heard from Dave a little while ago sounds like you and Brian did just fine, some nice fish there! We were going to fish up there on Saturday, but as mentioned she blew out. Your timing was immpecable . Cheers

There's a couple of Georgian Bay trib's that should fish well this Sunday. Fill your car with gas, grab a map and go check 'em out.

Very sorry to hear Ron, I'll go check out your site right now.

Nope, married with a 4 year old daughter and 11/2 year old son . (I don't get out anywhere near as much as I used to though)

No problem, the trip was actually dirt cheap, hence the reason I went . Normally a guide on that river will charge $400 for a full day with 2 guys. Tim's just starting out and is waaay undergunned boat wise compared to the rest of the guides so in order to compete he's waaay underpriced . His rate is $100 a day for 2 guys (50 bucks a day each). Can't beat the price even considering his relative inexperience. As mentioned he's a super nice guy and you're still getting down the river and are able to fish it.. Shoot me a pm if you want his phone number.

As many of you guys know I headed to Michigan last week for a much anticipated trip to fish the Muskegon river for steelhead. No problem in naming this river, first off it's a pretty far drive for most of the guys that read this board, and more importantly it's a huge river that's virtually unfishable except from a driftboat. Before leaving I called our guide to see what the water clarity was like. According to the USGS graph the river spiked up and was running at almost 5000 cubic feet per second. That's some serious water flow and it had me a bit concerned. He says to me, "The river is high and off coloured. Whatever you're fishing with make sure it's big and bright!". Okay, no problem. So my buddy and I tied up a huge amount of giant chartreuse and pink choker bags for the excursion thinking we were well prepared. We arrived in the small town of Newaygo Wed afternoon, checked into our motel and slipped over for a look at Croton dam and the water clarity. Croton is about 35 miles from lake Michigan and stops the fish migration in the river.. Here's the first sight we saw as we crossed the bridge just downstream: Slipped down to the boat ramp for a closer look at the water. Definitely NOT off coloured! All that tying for nothing! sigh... On the plus side the river was obviously full of fish. While we watched this fellow here managed to hook one right in front of us. One of the very few spots fishable from shore on the whole river: In any case the clear water wasn't a huge deal. We had some smaller more subtle stuff tied for Saturday when we had planned to meet up with my Michigan buddy Karl and his dad Leon and fish some smaller trib's with him about an hour north. We looked around town for a decent place to eat and found this joint. You know you're in steelhead country when you see a sign like this: Amazingly we got to bed early Wed. night and were on the road early Thursday morning to meet our driftboat guide Tim at the takeout point. On the way over we saw dozens of turkeys. Managed to snap a quick shot of this one as he crossed the road right in front of us: Tim had it in mind to drift an 8 mile stretch of the lower river. Sounded good to me as he said he had hit fish here the day before. The problem was that Tim's a plug fisherman. The lower, wider stretch of river he took us to was perfectly suited to pulling plugs, but not so great for float fishing with centrepins. It's also only his 2nd year on the river and is still learning the ins and outs.. Timmy is pretty much the only guide on the river running a true drift boat. Everyone else has these huge jet boats and are easily able to navigate pretty much anywhere they want.. Here we are at the launch getting ready to drop Tims little Clackacraft into the river: Quick shot of Tim at the oars just after we launched and what the river looked like: I'll say right up front it was a bit of a challenge fishing with Tim. He's a heckuva nice guy and tries hard to please, but he simply doesn't have the river fishing experience to be truly helpful. It wasn't long into our drift before I started to drop some subtle hints about where we maybe should be fishing . Tim himself was openly skeptical about the centrepins. We told him don't worry we'll get fish, but I could tell he REALLY wanted to break out the levelwind rods and the Hot 'n Tots, LOL! Thursday turned out to be a bit of a challenge as the river was very much featureless and hard to read. Nevertheless we did manage a bunch of nice fish and a whole whack of resident river trout: In one particular spot the river split around an island. The left channel was narrower but much deeper and my buddy and I both blew a fish each. At the end of the island there was a gorgeous seam on the right side with water shallow enough to wade. I quickly hopped out and started working the water: Not too long after I managed to hit another beautiful chrome fish! One of the biggest hindrances to our fishing was that Tims kicker motor was non functioning as he didn't have a shear pin in it. It made it impossible to zip back upstream to re-fish some of the better water. Many times we'd hook a fish and have to follow it in the boat in order to land it..ahh well we dealt with it... Tim did barbeque us up a nice lunch though, right in the boat: Here's a bit more fish porn from the day: Late in the day it started absolutely TEAMING down rain. From that point on it basically didn't stop 'till Friday morning . Talking with Tim about the next day he wanted to fish the same stretch of water on Friday. I suggested we launch at the dam and drift the 8 miles down to Thornapple where we put in in Thursday. The river would be slightly narrower, a bit more intimate and easier to read, plus being closer to dam the fish would be more concentrated. The kicker was all the rain. I explained to him that it would push a bunch of fish upstream.. He reluctantly agreed and promised he'd have a shear pin for the motor on Friday as we parted ways for the day. As mentioned it RAINED Thursday night. Absolutely incredible amounts of water coming down so heavy it was like sheets....just unreal! As we met at the boat launch at the dam it was obvious the river was MUCH higher. Almost torrential in fact, BUT the visibility was still good. Fish were rolling around in the seam near the launch, we were pumped! We quickly loaded the drift boat and pushed off. As we eased downstream I asked Tim "hey bud, how about we put the motor down and zip up to the bridge abutment for a few minutes?" There was a HUGE back eddy behind the abutment that just had to be loaded with fish. No problem says Tim. He drops the motor, starts it up then he instantly starts cursing. Apparantly the shear pin he carved out of a chunk of pencil lead wasn't strong enough! Who knew? HAHAHA! (oh brother ) Anywaaay we began our drift downstream with our hopes still very high. The guys in Michigan for some unknown and bizzare reason enjoy anchoring right next to each other on the shallow spawning gravel flats and sight "fishing" for steelhead. They like to employ a method of angling called "chuck 'n duck", (Thankfully unique to Michigan). They'll use a fly rod and fly reel loaded with fly line. A large amount of split shot or more typically pencil lead on their tippet and an egg pattern of some kind. They don't actually "cast" these monstrous rigs, more like heaving it out there... Needless to say most of their fish are lined...Ah well, each to their own. Here's a group of avid chuck 'n duckers feverishly working the gravel flats as we drifted by: We slipped past them and I says to Tim, "pull in along the shoreline to the left there". There was a sweet little current break and a beautiful well defined seam about 100yds long. I hopped out to work it on foot, Andrew stayed in the boat. We both caught fish. Between the 2 of us easily 30 fish were hooked. Each and every one a loong epic battle with lots of scorching runs out into the main current. They were HARD to hold and a lot of fish were lost. We were pretty happy, Tim, well he was ECSTATIC! Had to get at least one net shot We lay an absolute beating on them! Cool thing was Tim was amazed at our success and began to pepper me with questions. He was pretty much sold. I promised him if he wanted we'd fish from shore at the dam for a bit and give him a quick casting lesson where there was lots of room to flail around. Once again not having a motor hugely hampered us and we were forced to drift the stretch of river much faster than I would have liked. Lower down it broadened out and looked a lot like our Nottawasaga in Ontario: Andrew managed to connect with one more ferocious chrome bright hen that had Tim paddling madly downstream to keep up. Finally pulled the hook after a long drawn out battle.. Shortly after that we pulled the boat out and motored over to the dam. Here's Timmy fishing with a centrepin reel for the first time: Amazingly he DID catch on pretty quick and actually managed to hook and almost land a pretty decent sized walleye. Pretty much made his day complete, he was a very happy man. I managed to poke one more small hen steelhead. Not a giant fish, but it took off like a rocket and had me stumbling downstream in deep dangerous water following it. Finally managed to subdue the fish in the boat lanch, (perfect spot to beach fish): Before the end of our little session there I managed one gorgeous walleye and even figured out the underwater mode on the camera and managed a decent pic: That was it! Just an outstanding day. What topped it was Timmy being completely sold on the long float rod and centrepin reel. Told me he's heading over to Cabela's on Sunday to buy his own . As mentioned we were "supposed" to fish a couple of smaller systems on Saturday with my friends Karl and Leon. I thought I'd better give Karl a quick shout before we hit the hwy north to Cadillac. Good thing I did! Everything up there is blown beyond belief from the heavy rains of the night before. Our trip was over . No matter though, it was plenty good enough! We had a choice of either leaving for home immediately (around 5pm), or grab a motel and leave in the morning. We were both still feeling pretty good so decided to get out of Dodge. In retrospect we should have stayed. Shortly after hitting the hwy the monsoon rains started again and didn't stop for the entire drive home: What a brutal drive! We made it, but I doubt I'll ever pull a marathon like that again I'm getting way too old. All around great trip though, it waay exceeded my expectations which doesn't happen all that often. Can't wait to get back! Cheers, Mike

Sorry Cliff and fishindevil, but never, and I mean NEVER put water anywhere near skeined eggs LOL! (you'll ruin them!). Mature loose eggs, yes, skein absolutely not! Dan pretty much had it bang on.. What I do with skein is either cut it up in small chunks with scissors as Dan mentiond, or if it's mature enough use a teaspoon and simply scrape it out of the membrane. The next step is key, you MUST air dry it. If it's too warm outside I'll leave it in a collander in the fridge with a bowl underneath for a couple hours turning it every once in a while. Most of the time I'll use an old window screen though. Simply spread the eggs out on the screen and put it outside for up to an hour. The eggs will develop a nice tacky shell and are much easier to tie up. After air drying I separate the eggs into daily amounts, triple bag them in ziplocks with all the air sucked out and freeze them. Yes they're messier to tie, but they leach out waay more scent than mature eggs and are generally much more effective.

Pretty much agree with what's been said. Would like to add though that many, many steelheaders, even seasoned veterans take way too long to land fish because they baby them too much. The beauty of the pin vs. the spinning reel is you can lock your spool down with your fingers or palm and exert huge pressure on the fish. You'll get a sense for when the fish is going to run, when it does you can ease off a bit. Admitedly you can achieve the same thing with a spinning reel by clamping down on the reel spool, but it's not as easy. Way too many guys set the hook and basically let the fish run around willy nilly 'till their exhausted. Don't be afraid to exert more pressure! Also, keeping the rod tip high and allowing the long soft rod to do its job is generally a good thing. If you want to put fish on the bank quicker though you must utilize side pressure. Hold the rod parralel to the ground, clamp down on the spool and either pull back or take a couple steps backward. By doing this you will be able to easily turn the fishes head and lead him where you want him to go. Much harder to do with your rod high overhead...

Glad to see you're getting out and having fun bud, and congrat's on the pb .

Nice going Steve! Congrat's to the gf as well .

To be honest shot patterns are so varied and different you'd have to write a book on the subject to explain things properly. I remember a few years back I had a buddy who worked at inland waters in Burlington. He brought me in one evening with my steelhead rod to test some theories. In one part of the building they had a 40' long manmade river about 4' wide and 6' deep built with clear plexiglass, and the rate of flow was controllable. It was built to study the dynamics of flowing water... We used it to study various shotting patterns . I just can't get into too many technical details (no time at the moment). But trust me on this, with the exception of super slow frog water most guys aren't running a long enough lead IMO and could stand to use more shot closer to their hook. Unlike a lot of guys, I commonly add micro shot onto my tippet. Never the rock hard "steelhead" shot though (raven, drennan and the like..). I only use the round water gremlin shot. It's so soft you can almost pinch it on with your fingers. Only problem it's too bright out of the package. What you have to do is soak it overnight in draino, that'll turn it black. (And make sure it's rinsed well before you use it ). No problem whatsoever sliding this shot around on your leader. I use this stuff in varying sizes for all my shotting simply because it enables you to adjust your float and shot up and down your line as you fish different spots. Every pool is different, correct? That's one of the biggest mistakes I see rookies making: setting up there float/shot and fishing it exactly the same way all day long. One more little tip. For super slow frog water I prefer as little shot as possible beneath my float. To achieve this a self-cocking float is a huge advantage. I'll take lead core trolling line, strip the outer sheath, wrap a few turns of it around the base of a suitable float (long pencil style) and epoxy it. In most cases with a self cocking float you don't have to add anything extra to your line. The weight of your bait is good enough.. Cheers

Well done, and happy birthday Carole!