Garry2Rs

The Senko was actually designed to be heavy enough to cast with a bait-casting outfit, but as others have suggested, spinning gear is the way to go with light baits. I have a G. Loomis one piece rod casting rod that I bought to throw tiny baits, but I seldom use it. Spinning gear is much better suited to the job.

The bottoms of many aluminum boats are made from a single sheet of metal cut sort of like an "M." The points of the "M" are drawn up and together to form the bow. A wear strip is riveted on the outside and the keel is riveted onto the bottom. Where this "M" closes at the bottom of the "V" shape, is where the keel starts. A wad of putty is used to seal this joint. On older boats it often starts leaking. I have repaired this leak by using expanding foam insulation from the hardware store. You might find a drain hole at the back of the keel, or you might need to drill a small hole to get the nozzle in. Have a pop rivet or sheet metal screw that fits the hole handy because the foam will expand out of any openings. There is a Low Expanding type foam that is used for door installations that might work better than the regular stuff I used. If this isn't your problem, Cabela's and BPS sell a sort of resin/plastic stick that you melt with a hand torch and puddle onto any suspicious rivets. Hope this helps...

There is a carp barrier between the Bay and Cootes Paradise. That's where I would start. The barrier is under the High-Level Bridge, there's a path leading down...Follow Dundurn Street passed the cemetery, toward Burlington to find the bridge.

I have two on board, but never though about expiry dates... I'll check on that ASAP. Thanks Guys!

This early in the season, on new water, I might start with live minnows as bait. Crappie's eyes are near the top of their heads so they feed upward...you fish shallow because you want your bait above them. The water is still cold, so they might not want to move very far for a bait...In that case, you might need to fish a little deeper than the 1 -2 feet that will catch them next month...Adjust the length of your line below a small bobber until you find a depth that works. As Cliff suggested, the North and West shores get more sun so the water is warmer. That makes it a good place to prospect in the Spring. Traditionally Crappie are found around brush in the Spring, but where I live there isn't much brush in the water and I often find them on rocks and rock ledges at the start of the season. Their Spring schedule is something like this: During the Winter they were deep, as the water warms they move shallow to spawn...but they stage a little deeper before moving into the shallows to do the deed. Keep changing depths and locations until you do hook-up In the Spring, I've often found that I was getting bites in a very small area. The whole school of fish must be keying on a single object because this could be a spot as small as about six or eight square feet! When I am prospecting, I like to move slowly along the shore and cast my bait every few feet. I imagine a grid of four foot squares and want to put my bait in each square. I cast my tiny jig, wait for the bait to sink, then twitch and drag the bobber and bait forward into the next area...to limit the number of splashes in a given area. At these times I generally use a little longer line, so the bait will rise and fall as I move it. That way I cover more of the water column in each area. Crappie aren't nibblers, if they are there they will grab a bait that is within their strike zone. These are school fish, so once you find one you can generally catch a few more.

How about pond Trout, Perch and Crappie?

A twelve footer may not be an open water boat, but much of the fishing anywhere is around the edges. You can launch behind Hutch's on Bay Street North and fish for Perch, Bass, Pike, Sheepshead, Carp and Catfish all in your own back yard. In two hours you can drive to Peterborough and fish the Otonabee River and the Kawartha Lakes. In two hours and forty-five minutes you can be as far north as Bancroft, if you follow #28 north from #7 just East of Peterborough. On that drive you will have passed dozens of cottage lakes with good fishing. Get the Cottage Country version of the Back Roads map book. If you decide to head for Peterborough PM me. I live on #28 between Lakefield and Bancroft and will help you find some good small lakes.

I prefer Shimano/G.Loomis rods and reels, because of the warranty and the fact they are in Peterborough close to where I live. However, on Saturday the 21st BPS in Vaughn will have the now discontinued Quantum Accurist PT on sale for $59.99. The Accurist is a very nice reel with a flipping switch and is available with 6.3 or 7.1 gears. I would choose the 6.3 as an all around reel. A 6'6" MH rod for about 1/4 to 1 ounce baits is a good all around model to start with. Brand isn't very important at this stage of the game. BPS has some decent rods, especially if you can get them on sale...grin.

I owe a 9 or ten year old Stradic 1000. Since I use baitcasters for anything over about a 1/4 ounce, it's my favourite spinning reel, Last year I landed a large mouth of over 5 pounds and several Smallies of over three pounds with it. I was using 10 pound Power Pro on it. The 2500 might be a better all around size, but for plastic worms and drop shot-ting I love the smaller reel. When I bought this reel I felt the Stradic sat at the point of diminishing returns. Up to that price you got quite a bit more each time you moved up a price bracket. After the Stradic the steps were bigger and the additional gain was smaller.

I bought 300 yards of 30 pound test before Xmas in 2007. The braid is very loose and I had trouble with hook points snagging in the line when two rods were side-by-side on the deck etc. Because of the loose weave the line is quite large in diameter for it's weight,..Perhaps twice that of thirty pound Power Pro. From the beginning I had trouble with the line breaking for no reason.... These failures weren't at the knot, but between the lure and the rod tip. This could occur on a cast that I over-cooked, or when I tried to pull the crankbait off of a snag. I wrote to Pure Fishing and they replaced my remaining line with a brand new 300 yard spool. Unfortunately it was no better than the first. To use it up I have used it as backing and as an under-winding on my Bucktail's, but I won't be using this line for fishing ever again.

A lot of great places on or near Highway #17 have already been mentioned, but they're too far from the "Big Smoke" for me. I like the North Kawarthas because you have the lower property cost, low taxes, clean water and plenty of great fishing without the five to eight hour drive to actually reach "Northern Ontario."

You should get his book "Fishing on the Edge" I bought the audio version that he actually reads. It's a biography, not a how to book. Of coarse he talks a lot about tournament fishing and how he prepares for tournaments etc.

On the Knot Wars show they use a machine to apply increasing tension until the knot or the line breaks. With the top knots the line often fails first...also the top knots are reaching tension well above the rated strength of the line. IE 20 pounds on 15 pound line. But in the end, these tests are entertainment, not the real world...for one thing, the lines are tested dry. I thought the twice through the eye thing was interesting, and will be adding it to every knot I tie.

I need a conversion chart. How many beers would that be?

If you fish for Bass, the undisputed #1 bait is a plastic worm. I chose colours that match the bottom of the lakes I fish...Tan like North Kawartha granite and gravel and Green like healthy weeds. The forage will camouflage themselves to match the background... I have read that something like 80% of a Sm.Bass' diet is Crayfish. I also buy worms, tubes and jig trailers in colours that resemble the Crayfish in my area. Spinnerbaits might represent a school of minnows. Minnows are often very transparent, possiblly that's why white, and chartreuse & white are two of the most popular colours. Crankbaits come in two basic shapes. Long and thin or short and fat. The short and fat models more or less resemble Shad, in shape and often in the painted pattern too. That's because Shad are the most important forage fish in the USA... That doesn't help me much...so I buy patterns with colours that resemble baby Bass, Rock Bass, Pumpkin Seed and Crayfish. I also buy long thin baits that resemble Perch, Walleye, Cisco and the other forage in my area.

I have also been watching Knot Wars. Last year they had a knot called the Eye Crosser. It was basically a Uni knot that went through the eye twice, and around the standing lines only twice. It came second or third to the Palomar knot. It seemed to me that the Uni should have been less likely to slip, with it's 5 turns around the standing lines...If that was so, then the key to the extra breaking strength had to be passing the line through the eye twice! I started tying a "twice through the eye" Uni. I also thought it was called a "Double Uni." but it is what they are calling a Fishing Fool. Please Note that their diagram is upside down. If you put the loop on the bottom, you will see that it's a Double Uni!. It's also much easier to tie with the loop hanging down rather than above the knot as it is illustrated. I use this knot on multi-hook baits where passing the lure through a loop was a challenge. Recently, I have acquired a Tie-Fast nail knot tool and have been experimenting with it. I have decided to use Fluoro leaders this Summer. I wanted a splice that would go through the guides easily and settled on the nail knot splice... On Knot-Wars the Gryp knot, which is the nail knot used to tie on a hook-eye etc. was defeated in the second round. I now tie the Gryp with two turns through the eye and think it might be the best knot of all. Since I might have invented it, I will call it a Grryp knot, that's gryp with 2rs...HAHAHA. The big advantage over the Double Uni or Fishing Fool is the tag end is inside the knot where it can't be cut or damaged. This knot is very quick and easy to tie using the tool. It can be done without a tool, but I would just use the double uni.

It was on ESPN2 last night during the Oscars. It was pretty good, with lots of on the water stuff. I enjoyed even though I already knew how it would turn out. Check ESPN2 listings to see if they are going to rerun it... perhaps next Saturday morning???

Second place today only paid $45,000...It's good to be first!

Five pounds is a nice fish all right. The Big Fish so far was just under 8 pounds. This morning the first 5 fish limits were around 10 pounds, and that's what I was referring to.

Try this... http://www.uglyducklinglures.com/

Every few minutes there's another little show, with up-dates, interviews etc. There are three cameras, and the weigh-in is supposed to be on the Behind-The-Scenes camera at 6:15 eastern time. At this minute, Mike Iaconelli is in the lead by about 2 pounds, but the top 5 are very close together, there has been no really big fish caught. The day is warming up and the last hour could change everything.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/live/index

Maybe Jack's is fished out...

In theory Crankbaits are shorter and thicker, like Shad Raps, while Minnow baits are long and thin, like the original Rapala minnow. On the other hand... Minnows like the original Rapala, can be Twitched, Jerked, Cranked, Swept, Trolled, bottom-bounced on a Carolina rig and used as a Top Water. While Crankbaits, like a Shad Rap, can also be twitch, jerked, Cranked, Trolled, used as a wake bait or as a Top Water... If you think the principle difference is in the retrieve, you don't understand business...GRIN. Here's something to think about... If I recall correctly it was 1960's when I first saw a Rapala minnow. As far as I can remember they only had one bait, but might have had two colours. Today a tackle shop, who might not sell any more lures in a season than they did back in 1960, would need an entire wall to stock Rapala's line-up. No wonder tackle stores go broke!

Before you buy any new line, check for a new Canadian Bass Pro Shop flyer next week. In the USA there is a big Spring sale starting on the 27th. Many brands of line are on sale or have discounts when you buy two. The Canadian flier is usually the same, with the prices adjusted. Bernie66: I don't know why companies spend millions to obsolete products...Ask Ford and GM. As far as people still using mono, hell CTC still sells spools of the black nylon fishing line that I used in the 50's... Some of the top Musky guys still use Dacron line...I guess there's always a stick-in-the-mud out there somewhere. There's an old saying , "There is no free lunch." Which means that for every advantage gained, you have to give up something else. Let's apply that to fishing line. In the past 50 years I have used Mono, Fluoro, Co-polymer, and at least 10 types or brands of braid looking for the "Holy Grail." Mono was better than the nylon, Dacron and cotton string it replaced...but we had never seen tangles like that before! Fluorocarbon was going to be invisible underwater and more sensitive...But it jumped off the front of our spinning reels, was a stiff as wire and wouldn't hold a knot! Braid was going to solve all the problems of single strand plastic line...But it slipped on the arbor, dug into itself, clinch type knots slipped out and the first stuff was so coarse a weave that it sounded like it was sawing the guides off the rod! On top of that the 10 pound test was so fine it cut off on rocks and mussels as easily as the two pound mono it resembled. It's not a good float reel line. Plastic is better at rejecting Water Fleas and you need special clips for down-riggers and planer boards etc. But that's not what we were talking about here... Big Guy's last post asked about Fluoro versus Mono for Walleye in Rice in the Spring...His new question is what about a co-polymer line. I think he's been reading the advertising and wonders if he can get the best of both worlds by going that route...See "No Free Lunch"...Grin. Let's look at my suggestion. Braid is user friendly, it doesn't twist and snarl which is the first problem that beginners have with plastic line. As a bonus, he will feel the light bites. Which is again, a problem for beginners using light plastic line. Braid generally comes with a folder showing the Uni to Uni and Palomar knots, and he has friends at OFC...wink. For Wally, in the Spring, in Rice, he probably doesn't need a leader with 15 or 20 pound Power Pro or Fireline braid. As a security blanket, he can add a leader if he sees fit. Plus, I am willing to stand behind my advice...I will buy the line back if he doesn't like it. I think that's a pretty good offer... If you want to buy all the mono that I don't like, PM me with the address you want it delivered...HAHAHA!