solopaddler

Congrat's, that's big news!

Thanks for the input!

Am I getting old?, what the heck is a Wii? LOL!

If you read my post on the back lake trip you'll know my old portable died last weekend. After looking at prices it's just not worth putting money into a new transducer for this old relic when new units are so cheap. Not looking for anything fancy or expensive, all I ever use the portable for is usually marking the depth..... The most readily available portable units (at least to me) are the Eagle Cuda168, the Eagle Fisheasy245DS, and the Humminbird Piranhas. All are in and around 200 bucks give or take. It would be used strictly on fly in trips, canoe trips and back lake fishing. So.....can anyone out there reccomend one over the other? I'm headed north again on Sat. and need to grab one sometime this week.

Great report, it's always best to follow your insticts rather than follow the crowd, wtg on the walleye!

You're welcome anytime 'bunk (I'll see what I can do about the bridge ). And thanks to everyone for the kind remarks! (on a side note, Dan read my report. He's not a member here, but insisted I log on and tell everyone he's not really "lazy by nature". So okay, YOU'RE NOT LAZY. Happy now? )

Great report and nice smallmouth bud! (your photos are nice and crisp and clear as well, good job)

Wow, you get a length on that beast?

Hey Rene, I figured if you saw this report you'd recognize the spot , that's cool. Not surprised that boat's been there awhile...it looked ancient. As fas the herring thing goes, funny you mentioned that, but another local friend of mine who ice fishes that lake said the same thing. Maybe locals do know a thing or two . I know he landed a 47" pike through the ice there a couple winters back. Stay in touch, cheers, Mike

Great report Steve, some nice fish and it seems your younger bro is no slouch himself.... BUT, it appears as though you're a wimp .

Amazing Lew, I can't believe a musky would be that aggressive to chase a bait worked at boatside for over a minute 2 times in a row. No wonder you sound pumped, that is very cool! (especially catching it in the end ).

Sounds fantastic Roy, just about a perfect evening and decent fish as well. I think just about anyone myself included would jump at the chance to fish with Mr. Thorpe, you're very lucky!

First some background. There's a small, hard to access lake in N/E Ont. just west of my cabin in Quebec that I've been interested in fishing for a couple of years now. Deep, clear and spring fed, it supposedly has a good population of lake trout and pike with some of the pike being trophy sized. 2 summers ago with vague directions and armed with a crude map I spent a couple of fruitless hours driving the backroads trying to find it in vain. Last summer I tried again, this time with a buddy, and armed with a topo map and (I thought) better directions, we spent half a day driving down a bunch of rough atv trails with my vehicle again not finding it. So, last Wednesday night at 11pm I picked up my buddy Dan for a 3rd attempt. He's an old canoeing partner of mine and is as hardcore as I am when it comes to this kind of stuff. This time we were prepared with a gps unit and an iron clad determination to succeed so I was confident we'd make it in. We drove through the night arriving at my lake around 6:30am. First order of business was a quick trip to the cabin to drop some stuff off and pick up my canoe and motor for our back lake trip. Dan looks a little tired on the drive over. Hey, sleep is overrated anyway Quick pit stop at the cabin to unload, relax for a bit, then off we went. Using the topo map and gps we made good progress on the trip in. Some of the vistas on the logging road were amazing. At one point we came to a small river with a washed out bridge. For just a second I thought we were done for, but a quick look and we decided I could drive through it. Dan got out and took a few shots of the action. A few km's further down the main gravel road the gps was telling us "turn right!", LOL, so we started to look for a side road. Without too much trouble we found the road and it was considerably narrower and rougher! Dan had to get out countless times to push trees out of the way as well. At one point I crossed a ditch with this very cool looking ancient wooden drainage pipe. Wonder how old that thing would be? Anyhoo, the gps was telling us we were a little more than 2km from the lake when we came upon this lovely bridge. Dan still swears we could have crossed it in the CRV,( but then it wasn't his vehicle and he's basically a lazy person by nature ). This is where we stopped. By this time it was around 1pm and incredibly hot and humid. Swarms of deerflies attacked us as we prepared for the portage and downed a cold beverage. We both decided to leave the canoe on the vehicle for the time being. If at the end of the trail there was no boat stashed there, then we'd flip to see who went back to get the canoe.... We look pretty happy in these pic's, but the reality was the deerflies were killing us, LOL! Along the trail, basically in the middle of nowhere we came upon this old dilapitated outhouse. Must have been a logging camp there a long time ago... So anyway, we finally make it to the lake and lo and behold there's a gorgeous little clearing with a campsite and most importantly to us, A BOAT, yee-haw! It was a garbage scow though . The thing was home made and welded together out of thick, heavy steel. It took the 2 of us just to flip the thing over, and was next to impossible to drag down into the lake, but eventually we managed. Here's Dan surveying our craft and the lake. One very cool thing was our "kitchen table". We used an old rotting overturned rowboat that was also there. Probably the neatest camping table I've ever used . After a quick bite to eat we threw the 2hp Honda on the garbage scow and went out for a quick fish. Right off the bat we started catching pike, nothing super huge, but tons of fun! I did very briefly have a VERY large pike on. Never saw it, but there was some serious weight to it. Beyond that we caught an unreal number of smaller fish.....wouldn't even want to guess what the count was. That night we had a huge meal, downed a few pops and enjoyed a nice campfire. Pretty much a perfect evening! The next morning we decided to try jigging for lakers. I had brought a portable finder with me and we proceeded to scour the lake trying to find a deep basin. My finder was acting up and after a quick inspection realized the wires connecting the transducer were pulled out . It worked, but only sporadically, and not very well. We did manage to locate a 95' basin though and before the unit crapped out we marked a slew of fish suspended at around 50-60'. So, armed with stiff baitcasters loaded with braid we tied on some heavy jigs and proceeded to drift and jig. I connected first, in roughly 70' feet of water I had a solid hit and carefully reeled it in. We were both shocked when it turned out to be a 6lb pike! Who knew? I've long ago stopped trying to figure out fish. We might read the books, but that doesn't mean the fish follow the script . Shortly after that the fishfinder died for good, and try as we might fishing for lakers was next to impossible without it. For that kind of fishing you need to graph the fish and jig very precisely for them. We both decided it was a waste of time, so back to the pike it was. After a while Dan was getting a little giddy catching so many fish Again, we caught a huge amount, but nothing trophy sized. No dissapointment though, the lake definitely has potential and now I know how to get in there. We fished hard 'till about 3pm then after talking it over, we both decided to beat it back to the cabin and the comforts of fishing from the big boat. We made it back around 7pm, threw some burgers on the bbq, cracked open a beer and just relaxed for the evening. It was nice . The next day was our last full day to fish and I really wanted to try something different. I've been on the lake for 5 years now, but it's so big there's still a lot of water I havn't seen or fished. After looking at the topo map it showed a small river feeding into the lake about 6km away. I had fished in front of it before, but had never navigated it upstream. About 11/2 km's up it appeared to open up into a small lake about 1km in diameter. We decided to check it out. The river was shallow but navigable and sure enough after travelling upstream for 10 minutes we came to a beautiful little lake. No cottages or any other signs of use, it looked great! I turned on the graph and did a quick tour of the lake. It was like a shallow dishpan: 6-8' deep all over with sporadic heavy weed growth. I figured we'd get a bunch of little snot rockets, but it wasn't looking to good for walleye. Man was I wrong, LOL! We started trolling worm harnesses with a very light 1/8oz bullet sinker (better for shallow water and slipping through weeds) and began to slam the walleye! Even caught a few pike It was crazy numbers once again, nothing huge, but for mid summer on my lake it was unreal. I think I've found another little spot to file away when the going gets tough elsewhere! Dan was catching so many walleyes he was getting giddy again. We capped off the trip with a wicked fish fry Sat. night, then proceeded to fish one more time after dinner right in front of the cabin. Fishing was slow, only managed one pike and a handful of dink walleye, but it was a gorgeous calm evening and the sunset was amazing. All in all it was a great trip with a good friend who I just don't get to see too much of anymore. We've been friends for 15 years, but with both of us having busy schedules and young families it's next to impossible to do stuff like this anymore. The last trip we did was over 3 years ago, so this one was extra special. Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the report! cheers, Mike

Nice job of improvising Cliff!

Wow, you weren't kidding those are definitely hogs, WTG guys!

Hey congrat's, nice fish!

Great report Dan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7zkTnQVaM

This doesn't surprise me. I lived and worked in Manila for 3 years in my (slightly) younger years. Never have I seen a people so obsessed with cheesy variety shows and musicals! Almost every flippin' tv channel 24/7! The topper though was the traffic jams. They were so unbelievably bad it regularly took me 2 hours to drive 12km to my office. To ease tensions they installed "entertainers" at each intersection to amuse the frustrated drivers. Usually a guy in white Steve Martin suit with a big foam finger on his hand jumping around like a clown . Ah the Philippines....what memories .

check now

pm sent

What, it's Bull Dawg, not Bulldog? NEVERMIND!

Yeah I know what you mean...just too big and heavy for casting plus they're so freakin' ugly, I mean what fish in their right mind would actually want to eat one of these things? Now maybe one of these dyed chartreuse...something a little sexier would be better!

Check out Toporama. Click on "view our topographic maps". You should be able to figure out the controls....http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/index.html

Not sure about now, but there used to be rainbows in there as well. In fact the main feeder creek was a sanctuary in the spring to protect the population. As far as your best bet for easily catchable fish, there is smallmouth in Bernard.