Garry2Rs

This is what I do... I loosen the friction knob under the crank handle all the way off. I will stop the spool with my thumb. I turn the magnetic or centrifugal brakes all the way on...I don't want the spool to out accelerate the bait. Drop the rod tip and raise it sharply to cast...Drop the bait as you begin to raise the rod. the bait should should pendulum out. Remember this is a short range technique, meant to cast about 30 feet...Yes you can cast farther, but it was designed for very close, precision work in heavy cover. Being able to make an underhand cast 50 or 60 feet is all-well-and-good, BUT the key to success is having the bait make a silent, splash free entry that is right on target. In my opinion, on longer casts you're better off skipping a Senko or tube into the target than pitching a jig that is out of control and lands like a kid doing cannonballs. Garry

If a given lake can carry 2 tons of fish, I know that it can't all be 50" musky and 7 pound bass, but I'm saying that I would prefer that most of that weight not be panfish, especial big ones that are 99% safe from predators...So bring on the bucket brigade.

Good to hear the fish were chasing the Sebile Magic swimmer, thinking of buying a Storm Kickin' minnow which is sort of similar swimbait. Gives me a bit of confidence in rubber swimbaits for musky before even using or buying. The Magic Swimmer's that I'm talking about are hard baits. There is a soft version, but I found soft swimbaits didn't last very long around toothy critters. Garry2R's

Why is it that those who have a licence to do something always want to make it harder for everyone else to get one too? We weren't born smart, we learned by trail and error. Lighten-up on the newbies, most of them are voters and we need them on our side if we want the government to listen to us. I read that for the last 20 years or more, in North America, there have been less fishing licences sold each year. The fact is the Game-Boy and Play Station crowd don't know anything about fishing and have little or no interest. I think a large part of the problem is the cost. If a guy recalls the fun he had as a kid fishing, and wants to take the kids out on Saturday morning, he has to buy $20-$30 worth of paper before he can go to the conservation area...Want to bet he opts for a Disney movie instead? If we want the government to spend money on fish related issues, we need more voters involved. Therefore, we need to make it easier for folks to go fishing, not make it harder. As for the bucket brigade, we all started somewhere! Personally, I think these folks do more to improve the fishing than to hurt it. Who really cares about a couple of OOS bass when they are taking hundreds of hungry pan-fish out of the lake every weekend? What about doing a way with the fishing licence all together? Some of you must be old enough to remember that back in about 1973 Premier Bill Davis scrapped the Ontario Resident fishing licence, calling it a nuisance tax. As I recall the cost of printing and selling licences ate all the revenue. Today, in my area, it's hard to buy a fishing licence. Many small places say there are too many headaches involved and it isn't worth their time.

I have 30 pound on one reel and 10 on all my spinning reels. I haven't notice any colour on my hands, but with small diameters like mine there wouldn't be that much anyway. By now we know that no superline will hold dye. PP uses wax as it's colouring, Fireline uses dye and paint...At least this stuff is soft right out of the box and doesn't have to be "broken-in." With the follower-late striker thing...There is an old Rapala thing that if the fish is accepting the bait it will hit it in the middle...If it's on the tail hook either the baits too big, or the wrong colour. this isn't pure science, but it's worth considering. In my lake, I caught a pike on a five inch Magic Swimmer first time out and several more hit four to five inch Husky Jerks, Live Target Smelt's and Long "A's" etc. The fish we ate had a belly full of 4-5 inch Minnows.

In the USA I get mail 6 days a week. Delivery coast to coast takes two or three days. The post boxes in my area are in groups of three so they're no more than one house away. Postal rates are low. When I leave, to come home to Canada, my mail is forward for free. In Canada, I get mail 5 days a week. Delivery is in the nature of "Make a wish." My post box was moved a quarter mile down the road. Why? Because after all these years it wasn't safe for the mail person to stop in front of my house. Moving my box across the road into the old third lane put in for the school bus wasn't viable...??? I guess that would have added an extra stop to the route. Postal rates are 33% to 50% higher. When I leave for the winter I have to pay $50.00 to send my mail to my daughter...To forward it to the States is so expensive, I wouldn't be able to afford to go south! There is nothing in my mailbox these days that I couldn't get electronically, other than junk-mail or parcels. But anything bigger than a pack of cigarettes I have to pick up at the Post Office anyway. I think that one of the courier services will be quick to pick up the slack in the parcel delivery business and I will have a net-gain in service. Go C.U.P.E. Go...I won't miss you.

I wouldn't give up on a bow mounted unit. At low speed, pulling the bow around is far more efficient than pushing the transom. There are self deploying bow mounts that can be located in awkward to reach locations. There must be something available out there. I'm sure your not the first guy with this problem. With a unit mounted to the top of the cavitation plate two disadvantages come to mind. 1. Trolling motors are very useful in shallow water where you might want to have your lower unit raised, with the trolling motor above the main prop it will be out of the water. 2. In tight quarters, trolling motors mounted on the bow steer more quickly than transom mounted units. Units mounted to the main motor steer even slower than transom mounted units.

The lake was closed until Walleye opened up here. I will be out on the lake looking for musky on the weekend.

I bought one last year. I worked for pike and bass. In the spring I picked up two more on sale.

Surprise, surprise there's nice weather predicted for next weekend too.

I have had Sunfish smack surface baits, when they are spawning, at this time of year. With Pike, they tend to bite a piece off...HAHAHA

Yesterday I went out again for pike. The lake was very calm. With no wave action and with the brighter sky the fishing wasn't as good in the rain and wind last Monday. My 5" White on clear, Glass Minnow pattern Husky Jerk only got one follow, but when I switched to a Live Target Smelt, which was gold and runs a little deeper I got two in a row. I think that the Husky Jerk wasn't working because a white bait would seem very bright on a sunny day in calm clear water. It also doesn't want to go as deep as the smelt does. On the weekend, when there were overcast skies and lots of wave action, the fish were much braver and I believe the larger brighter coloured bait was easier for them to see and zero in on. Today a more realistic paint job, and a little more depth, was better. Of coarse, more depth has it's drawbacks too... Garry

Great in-put, thanks.

What is dirty water and what is clear? In Arizona I fish on bright days under cloudless skies, in water that I feel is muddy. However local people complain that after a couple of windless days the water is too clear??? For bait colour, generally they seem to like lures of dark colours, because they feel the fish can see the dark shape better in the double-cream-in-my-coffee water. However in one lake everyone like chartreuse lures because the forage there is Sunfish... In Ontario I fish in clear water. Some lakes are clearer in the Spring but turn sort of green with algae as the Summer progresses. Others have a brown, tannin stain to them, but they are still clear. When talking about water clarity I try to remember that KVD once said the water is clear if you can see more than two feet. What about lure colour? Sunny days make everything seem brighter and lures can be seen at a greater distance. Sometimes I've read that chrome or gold lures work very well on days like this because the flash of the metallic blades or baits can draw fish to investigate. However I have also seen fish shy away from the flash in very clear water. Smaller lures can work well because they can be seen easily in the clear water. Natural looking patterns should work best, again because they can be seen clearly under bright skies and in clear water. On cloudy days there is no sun to make metallic lures flash, so the general rule is to use painted lures and painted blades. The same rule also seems to hold that the dirtier the water the brighter the colour and the darker the day, the brighter and lighter the colour. Now it is a fact that if you look up from underwater on a bright day everything on the surface looks black. Black has always been the number one colour for musky baits. Even at night, some people say that black is more visible because it silhouettes well against the sky. Having said all that, We know that not all baits are only seen silhouetted against the sky. Baits that dive might be seen on an angle or on the same level by the fish. Even shallow or surface baits are seen at an angle by fish that are off to the side and they might be able to see the colours in daylight. In the past most baits were not very realistic looking. However this didn't seem to matter because in theory, if the bait is moving it only needs to give the general impression of a bait fish to work. Many square lip baits have short fat "minnow" shapes, but are painted in Crawfish patterns... Recently there have been some very realist baits made, like the Live Target series. Grant Koopers who is behind these baits was a guide on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in the Niagara area. He once said that he started designing his super realistic baits because Zebra Mussels have made the water he fishes so clear that the old baits weren't working so well. Last Fall I started seeing what looks like the same art work on other brands. Some Japanese lures even have real fish skin covering them! I don't know if fish skin or photo-realistic paint jobs work any better than the old baits. I really like the theory, but some days it seems that anything that appears to be alive and struggling will catch fish, regardless of shape or colour. Garry2R's

What I read was that the rod that won best in show at I-Cast in 2007 never made it into production. The carrot based nano bio-fibre technology was too hard to mass produce. Instead of the feather-light $350.00 rod that was rumoured, we got a heavy $150.00 rod that didn't compare very well with the competition. The second generation rods were nicer, but they seem to be fragile and unfortunately the rod replacement program on warranty claims slowed to a crawl. This caused a back-lash among tournament guys, which translated into bad press that gave the rods a bad name. I suspect that these problems were at the top. They lost Ken Whiting who designed the prize winning rod and Boyd Duckett their Bass Master's Classic winning Pro. These two were so upset with the E21 company that they went out on their own and started a brand new rod company...

Back-in-the-day a Silver Minnow was always fished with a pork-rind trailer. I liked the long thin Uncle Josh Porker or the old Lucky Strike Porko.

Rockbass are a curse that compete heavily with SMBass and eat all the small crayfish in the shallow water. Perch IMO are a shallow water, weed oriented species that compete with LMBass. Pike spend most of the year in deep water. Pike compete with Lake Trout, but probably don't compete much with Bass.

Cumulus carries Shimano's "over the counter" warranty. You should be able to get it replaced by any Shimano dealer.

Husky jerk is my go-to pike bait...the larger the better. In the clear water up here I use white, silver and gold, but Firetiger would be okay in Binbrook.

Today I put my Ranger in the water for the first time since last fall. I had pre-tested everything at the house, so I knew the big motor would start right up, and there was power getting to the trolling motor etc. The forecast was for thunder storms, but when the boat was ready, they hadn't shown up yet. At the lake the wind was howling, and the water was rough. First I tried a few casts in the open, but soon moved into a small cove on the lee side. This cove has a shallow rock flat on one side and deeper water on the other. The water shallows out quickly and there are weeds in the back end and down the middle. I have caught pike there in the past. The attraction to day was it was sheltered from the wind. I soon saw a nice 36-40 inch fish cruising. Unfortunately there were two smart-ash teens and there dim-wit Mother who didn't know that Pike were open, as of last Saturday, and they were "sure" I was fishing for Bass. They brought a paddle boat out and circled me with it...I told them to go hoop there foreheads, that I was legally fishing and that if they continued to harass me I would report them! This backed them off a little, and when it started to rain they retreated to there cottage. Without this distraction I was able to catch three pike on a 5 1/2" Rapala HJ13 in Glass Minnow pattern. I was basically casting close to shore between the docks on the deep side of the cove. The first fish came from beside a blown down tree. The fish were in the deeper water and I had let the wind push me in too close. The fish started after the bait but seemed to see the boat and turn away. I left him and moved to the next dock where again I saw a fish. The light came on and I turned a big circle. This brought me back to the blown down tree. One cast right down the length of the tree and it was fish on! Buck(the wonder dog)tried to help me out by unhooking the flopping fish, but then I had to unhook him...grin. I went out into the cove to release this fish, then came back to the second fish. Again I stood 60 odd feet off the end of the dock and cast to shore...Jerk-jerk-jerk, and I had him too. I was now moving out of the cove and the wind was a lot stronger. We had another couple of minutes of rain and another round of distant thunder. In front of me was a shoal that extended from a point out about one hundred feet or more. On my side of the shoal there was a stretch of hard bottom with big rock slabs. There are three docks here and I often see Pike along this stretch. The pike are between the docks, not on or under them like a bass or musky might be. I got one more before the third round of rain and thunder. At this point I had released the third fish and cast the shoal without finding anything and needed to head down the lake and into the weather, or head home. I decided to call it quits before the real storm reached me.

Now I know why my client didn't pay me until after 9PM...

It might have come with excess factory lube. If you can remove the spool and wipe the crank handle side of the axle off, then reassemble it, the problem might be gone. While you're at it use a Q-Tip and some lighter fluid to wipe out the centrifugal brake drum...Factory lube often gravitates there between the manufacturing date and the time it's sold.

Fluorocarbon seems to damage easily if you don't wet the knot very well. If I rush a Palomar, and don't lube the whole loop etc. I have had the line snap in the knot when I go to final tighten it. I'm talking about it breaking at a fraction of the pound-test-rating. I assume the line is getting damaged by the heat generated when the almost dry knot tightens.

Did you oil the reel recently? The tolerances between the spool axle and the clutch gear that retracts for free spool are very tight. If someone puts oil into the hole, it can cause the gear to hang-up...This would "cure" itself over time, but reappear when the oil was cold etc.

I have hauled a boat both ways for the last five years. Occasionally they want to look inside, going down, not coming back, so far. Frankly it's harder to get out of Yuma Az. There is a check point on the highway about 50 miles into the desert. They have dogs, at the check point, looking for illegal's. On the morning I'm heading home I pack yesterdays laundry and my sleeping bag inside the boat...This always causes the dogs to act-up.