Beats

I clean pike the same way the guy in the video above does. Ive tried the 5 fillet method as well, and it works, but I prefer to have just 2 pieces of fish and then cut them up accordingly at the time of cooking. I never understand why some people insist that to clean fish of any type the first things to do is cut the head off and split the belly and take the guts out. When I clean fish, and I am by no means fantastic at it, I never take the heads off and I never take the guts out. In fact it is very rare that there is ever any blood whatsoever since I don't touch the insides at all. Mind you I really only clean perch and pike and the very odd trout.

Mine came from a No Frills as well. I'd say start your search there. If possible.

im pretty sure I had that same stuff a few months back. It was definitely the same brand name and I am pretty sure it was beer batter... so most likely the exact same thing. I remember it being fairly light as far as batter goes and I think I found it at an end of the aisle special for like 99 cents each or something like that. I'd try it again for sure.

I'd be interested in reading the results. Sounds like a good method to get some first hand material to be used for possible characters. Makes for a great summer so long as your aren't in the water scribbling down notes when you should be fishing. I think a post that long with no pictures is sure to confuse some readers

Well, I'm still alive. Thames river 0, me 1. The Thames has failed again to kill me with its "unedible fish". Technically they are from a tributary, but you get the point. I froze those fish the other day as I didn't know when I'd get a chance to cook them up. We put slate tile down a few weeks ago and lost the use of our stove. We haven't gotten around to grouting yet so the stove is in the dining room still, out of commission. I thawed out the fish today and used a box of Fish Crisp - Jamaican Jerk seasoned coating on them. I defied the directions and just shook them up in a bag like I was using batter. Cooked them on the bbq on an oven tray and while there was way more coating on the fish than necessary they turned out great. Very spicy and hot. Beer was required. Definitely one of the better Fish Crisp products in my opinion. Would be better and less spicy on a larger fillet with it just on the top side... used as a coating, not as a batter like I did Yum, pike.

This is an interesting thread. It's unlikely that people will be keeping more fish to feed their families because their food money has become gas money. What I can see though, is that someone who might make 4 trips a month to a lake to fish may now only make 1 or 2 trips a month. If that person usually keeps 2 fish each trip (2 fish x 4 trips a month= 8 fish a month) and now only gets to that lake 1 time a month due to the gas prices.. they may keep their limit each time they go (6 pike a visit instead of their usual 2). But when you take into consideration that they are hitting the water much less often now, the only real difference is that all their fish are taken on 1 or 2 days instead of a couple of fish multiple times a month. I don't think the lakes would be affected any different. That is unless everyone showed up and caught a limit on the same day Pretty unlikely. So I guess what I'm saying is that while people will/could be making less trips out they could be making up for their lack of fishing time by keeping more fish in less trips but because they aren't going out as much I don't think the waters would be too affected. More fish at one time instead of a few over multiple weekends.

I don't think anyone will hold your actions against you when you were 12 I've found from years of wading that I usually see them is when I almost step on them when walking a few feet from shore in the water. They just look like a great rock to step on..til you see the head. I see lots in the Thames, Bayfield, Maitland rivers. Like most animals that look intimidating, if left unprovoked they are quite docile and you could walk right by one without knowing. I've always had respect for unevolved animals in the rivers like snappers, gar and sturgeon that seem to have made it this far without dying off and seem prehistoric.

was the snapper hooked? A year or 2 ago I was fishing in the fall for pike. I threw out a frozen smelt on a weight and just left it there. After no action after a while I reeled it in and saw a huge amount of weeds on my line. Like 10lbs worth. Got it right up to the bank and a snapper head shot out really far and hissed at me. He took the smelt and was hooked. Felt bad as I had to cut the line. Don't know what happened to it after that. Maybe the hook rusted out lol.

If you like that video you should also see "Loose Change" and "Iraq For Sale"

As a kid I remember being told or many occasions that hooks left in fish would rust out. In later years I realized that in most instances this simply wasn't true and that people are told this so that they stop worrying about if they just killed a fish or not. Tell an upset kid that the fish they just caught with the hook lodged in its stomach will rust and fall out and watch how soon that kid forgets about the suffering of the fish and just buys into the story that the fish will lose the hook on its own in the near future and be just fine. A few years back I read a good article in a magazine, perhaps Esox Angler, on this subject. I believe the author was a taxidermist and had worked on multiple large pike/muskie with old hooks still in them. He showed pictures of the stomach contents of a few of these huge fish and some of them had multiple lengths of line with rusty hooks in their stomachs. In the end the fish weren't killed by the mono and rusty hooks but its kind of disturbing that fish are living on in this certainly unpleasant way. I recall that the line and hooks in these fish were definitely worn and the hooks were rusty but they were no where near dissolving.

Yeah, I wasn't going to mention it but I clearly saw today that after the fish went back in the water there would be a spurt of blood shoot out when the fishes heart beat. Not the nicest thing to think about. Basically every 2 seconds another cloud would forms in the water. It works. Also, putting the fish back in the water is key. If you dispatch them this way and then leave them on land it doesn't seem to work, just clots up. Enough with the details.

The heads aren't off them I put them on the stringer and "slit their throats" to bleed them out. Essentially their hearts pump the blood out of them and they are IMO dispatched more humanely than bonking them over the head on something and then watching them flap around with a concussion.. Lesser of evils if you ask me. I fish from shore and don't have a cooler or livewell at my disposal. I don't always do it but if I am putting fish on a stringer I usually do. That's why the pike's colour is drained out. No blood. It is a method mostly used by trout fishermen. Put the fish on a stringer and there is a thin piece of tissue where the two sides of gills meet at the bottom of the head which connects the gills to the fish's head. Sever it and gills just kind of pop out like pictured.

Found out this morning that I wouldn't be working the first 1/2 of the day so I headed to Wildwood Conservation Area near St.Mary's. I fished a bit on the top of the dam and didn't see any fish but I was throwing x-raps and pop-r's near some bushes for pike and twice had something swing and miss at the pop-r. I went down to the lower dam where I saw hundreds of bullheads doing whatever it is that they do on the surface. They didn't seem to mind me at all as they never moved and there was even a heron down there that I can assume was picking them off as it pleased. I ended up catching 1 oos tiny sm bass and 2 1lb pike that each took my Mepps Comet (my favourite lure) in the gills and they found their way onto the stringer. I left the lower dam and fished for a bit at the dam on the lake side. I had never caught pike up there until today. I caught 2 pike. The first was about 1.5-2 lbs and as I grabbed it at shore it spit the hook, fell at me feet, I grabbed for it, and it was gone... always happens to me 5-10 minutes later I landed the bigger pike and decided to keep it as well. I left soon after. I was there for a total of about 2 hrs. I'm not big on keeping fish from anywhere in the Thames but 2 of them were goners. The little guys were from trout creek and I am hoping this tiny amount of fish won't kill me I normally wouldn't keep anything from down there. The lake itself was surprisingly clean looking. I could see quite far and clearly into the water and there was tonnes of algae in the water. Better looking water than most years IMO. The fish really are as small as they look. Couldn't bring myself to throw back dying fish. All 3 together weighed 4 lbs.

perhaps you caught a bullhead. Those things don't get big at all and if you find one there tends to be tonnes of them nearby.

http://www.viarail.ca/ http://www.greyhound.ca/ I don't know what else you could be thinking of.

I was at the dam last weekend looking around. I thought it was kind of odd... I catch fish everywhere I fish the river but when I fished below the dam in the deep pool area I didn't see any sign of fish. A few carp but they don't count

I've had many ticks get on me and I guess I'm lucky to have gotten no ill effects. I had a dog tick on me when I was at a camp when I was around 10 years old. The tick burrowed right into me and i had no idea what it was. People tried to burn it off, use pliers, rubbing alcohol... all to no avail. It eventually was ripped apart and removed in chunks. This is not the recommended way to remove them. You don't want to break the head off. Then like 6 weeks ago I found 3-4 ticks on me when I was getting into the shower after fishing near Delaware (this is close to where the first one was from years before). I caught one and kept it and the health unit told me they were dog ticks and not effective transmitters of lyme disease. Basically the thing to know is that there are different types of ticks and that the main thing doctors are concerned with is WHERE you got the ticks. Certain areas are known to have ticks with lyme disease. Almost every person I talked to mentioned Long Point as been bad for it. On a side note: These things just wont die. Upon finding 3 or 4 stuck to me a few weeks back I pulled them off and threw them down my bathroom sink drain and then ran the tap for a minute to flush them down. I then had a shower and when I got out and looked in the sink all the ticks had somehow survived and crawled all the way back out of the drain and were in the sink again. I tried to squish them with toilet paper and they just wouldn't squish, so i flushed them... I then called the hospital to see if they wanted me to get a shot or something and was put on hold for an insanely long time during which another tick fell out of my pant leg and landed at my feet. This after putting on new pants after just having an overly long shower to make sure no more were on me. I put this tick in a pill container and took it to the health unit. As far as avoiding them: I am certain that I picked them up in long grass that I walked through to get to a fishing spot. The bug expert at the Health unit was telling me that they aren't really an insect but more like a spider. HE was describing that they can't jump and they can't fly. They more or less climb up high on grass and wait for a "blood meal" to walk by. They can sense the CO2 and heat coming off your body and they latch on and crawl around and usually nestle into an area such as the back on the neck, back of the knee, armpit etc.

There are definitely a bunch of posts about gar in the last month or so. While I have never tried to target them I have had a few follows from gar here at the Thames. Before this spring I had never seen a gar anywhere in my life and so far this spring almost anytime I stand and look at the Thames I see at least one gar swimming around. In my sightings they seem to always be in 1-2 feet of water and I find them extremely easy to see. Not because of their shape so much as they have a very flowing tail fin that really flows in the current. Sort of like there is 2x as much fin material as it needs. Kinda resembles what it looks like to see a flag or curtain flowing in a wind. The method of the rope as a lure seems to be popular since gar are hard to hook with bony mouths but if I was to try and target them I think I would use a treble hook with a lively minnow on it and throw it out 6 inches below a bobber not too far from shore.

In my opinion "lurkers" excel at using the search function on the forums more than members (as a whole). I think what most non-members do is come to the site and check it out over a course of days/weeks/months and if they need info on something then they just use the search function of the forums. No need to sign up and get told that the same question was asked a week ago and feel like they are being gunned for right off the bat. What gets them to sign up in my opinion is when they need specific info on something like a certain lake that the search has failed to provide or if they need an opinion or info quickly and want to throw a question out there. But definitely I do agree that a lot of people probably see negative demeanors that some people throw out there and are hesitant to post.

If it was that big then I'd say it was a mudpuppy. Did it have gills on the outside of its body? Go to google.ca and select images and type in mudpuppy and see if that looks like it. I saw one float by me on the Bayfield river a month ago. I thought it was a bullhead until I saw legs.

I live right at the forks of the Thames. I can walk about 2-3 mins and fish all 3 branches

i use a minnow trap with a small scoop of cat food in it to catch minnows in creeks. IF there are lots of minnows it only take a minute or two to get a good number.

dear lord..

Yeah this pic and the one with the (Dutch?) guy sitting in a boat holding a massive pike are fascinating to people for some reason and get posted many times each year for the first time

Don't underestimate the size that suckers can reach. Here in London, the Thames has quite a few varieties of suckers and many of them are massive. Lots of people mistake the big suckers for carp.