adolson

Nice fish!

But did I read that right? You caught a frog with a frog? heh

That's a beauty smallie. Congrats!

Thanks guys!

I was fishing off a dock at Gillies Lake tonight, and had 5 bites, had one on the hook but it swam at me and I couldn't reel fast enough and it got off somehow. Went home when the bugs got bad, but wasn't satisfied. I hadn't caught a fish in a while, and I needed to get one today. So, the wife went off to bed and I went off to fish at Sharp Lake at midnight. I did try Clear Lake first, but the only thing I ever caught there was smaller than the lure. Four casts into Sharp, I get one on the hook, reel it up almost to shore, and the damn thing gets off. I clearly need to sharpen or replace the hooks that came with this Hula-Popper, because I am trying to set that hook hard. It felt kinda small anyhow.

So, that one got away, and I cast in again, and I get another one on right away. That one I landed! It fought harder than the other one for sure.

He's not a monster, but he is my fifth bass this year (and ever), and my first landed fish at night, with a my new, yet trusty, Hula-Popper. That lure is worth every cent for me. I've not really fished at night before, only once last week and only had one strike.

Anyhow, I'm not getting huge fish off the shore up here, but usually good eatin' sizes. Some day I hope to catch something wall-worthy, but I'm just happy to get anything, really. Time to go clean it.

I was north of Temagami last week, and when I went into North Bay on the way home, every vehicle, building, pole etc, was covered in May Flies!(hexagenia limbata, for those that care)

The folks from that area call them shad flies.

The fish love them, and don't seem interested in anything else. So if you see a lot of empty casings on the water, and fish slurping them off the surface, the beer and the scotch would be the solution, I'm afraid.

Oh man, I hated those things when I lived there. I remember one summer a few years ago it was insanely bad. Every year it's bad, but that year was really bad. We rolled down the windows and drove slowly and it sounded like a bowl of rice crispies. I took some pics (one is actually on wikipedia), as they were covering walls, vehicles, everything. Bleh. I don't miss that part of North Bay, at all!

lmao

you guys are not helping much, but you're funny.

he doesn't believe in sasquatch, and doesn't think it was a moose because they wouldn't have had their antlers yet at that time of year. and there's only one door to the cottage.

I was reading a variety of old posts on this forum, and from the knowledge and experience on display here, I thought I'd ask this question here.

My friend owns a cottage on Mattagami Lake (near Timmins). Earlier this year, it was late at night, and he was in the back having a bonfire. His wife had gone to bed. It was dead silent. Then, he heard three knocks in the distance (straight back into the woods). Like someone took a baseball bat and hit a large tree trunk three times, about one second apart. Thwack.. thwack.. thwack... He thought it was weird, but didn't think much of it. About five minutes later, he hears the exact same thing: thwack.. thwack.. thwack... Only this time, it's closer. About half the distance of the first. He listened carefully, and heard nothing. No footsteps, no branches breaking, no animal sounds. Nothing. About five minutes go by. Thwack.. thwack.. thwack. This time, the sounds are right near him, but he can't see anything. He immediately stood up and went straight into the cottage. He turned out any light sources and sat in the rear-facing window and looked out for about an hour but didn't see anything.

He's been in the bush all his life, and owned that cottage for about 20 years I think. He is familiar with all kinds of bush sounds, but can't figure out what it would be. It's nothing like anything he'd heard before. He went out the next day to look for footprints, but nothing. The only thing he thought it could be would be a woodpecker, but to make the volume he heard, it'd have to be gigantic. And they don't usually peck only three times, a second apart anyhow. It's haunting him (well, not really, but I mean, he's puzzled) and would love to figure it out.

When I was visiting the cottage, he demonstrated for me. I sat at the fire, he walked back into the bush and smacked a tree three times with a bat. It was really loud, but I could hear every movement he made. It was still kinda freaky - no way I woulda sat at the fire through three sets of that!

It is very quiet there, I mean, I could hear chipmunks in the bush even during the day, and they were loud like people. Then they pop out onto the grass and they're just these little things, heh. I think if it was people playing a trick on him, they would have revealed themselves by now (why make someone squirm for a few months? or whatever - maybe, I guess) - and it would have to be three people who stood there for hours and waited, so that there would be no travel sounds. But again, no footprints or anything that he could see. This cottage is only accessible by boat, too, so I don't know why someone would boat across to play a joke on someone.

It is a mystery. Any ideas?

Welcome.

Maybe the internet should also be for fantasy fishing??

Goldberg catches a big bass. WHO'S NEXT!!?

Done. Sorry to hear.

Thanks everyone.. I still don't like my pics as much as others my friends do, or people here (Brandon for example).

Cool shot! Reminds me of one I took.

 

 

 

Haha, I didn't even notice what it was at first. I'm stupid sometimes.

No problem!

Yep, should be. That's what I use on one of my domains, and it works. For example, if you try to go to http://www.tawkn.net/?user_id=1, it'll change it to the proper domain, tawkn.com, but still retain the rest of the URL/parameters at the end.

rewriteengine on

rewritecond %{http_host} domain.old [nc]

rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://domain.new/$1 [r=301,nc]

hope that helps!

Oh, and as others have said, don't cheap out on a baitcasters, it may come back to haunt you. Around $100 is a good starting point.

$100 for the reel? Or for the rod + reel? This combo on the shelf is regular $130 for the pair... I went to look at it again tonight but they're sold out. I looked at a couple others that were on the rack, but the only ones that felt as good or as solid (hard to say how they'd feel with line on the reel and casting and whatnot) were the same brand, and maybe $10 more for the combo. There was only one standalone baitcaster reel in the store, and I don't know the price exactly. I think $80, but can't recall for sure.

WalMart had zero baitcaster reels or combos when I looked yesterday.

My spinning setup is a 7' Ugly Stik and Shimano (forget the model) reel that I got for I think $50 each many (17-18 I think) years ago. The reel has the large Fightin' Drag feature that I don't see on the reels in the stores around here anymore. One thing I noticed about all the baitcaster rods I looked at was they're all pretty stiff in comparison to my rod. I suppose that's fairly normal?

That is not a "$50.00 " canoe..... if u ever see mine... u will se a REAL $50.00 canoe !

post a pic.. lol

This thing is from 1968 or so (sometime in the 60s for sure). I didn't think it was that old, heh.

So anyhow, I put it up onto some sawhorses and filled it with water. I found there are about 16 holes in the sides of the boat... Where the bolts that hold the side foams in place go. I should have thought of that - with my fat ass and the trolling motor and the battery all near the back and then my featherweight wife at the bow, no wonder it sits low at the back - low enough to get water in through the bolts, I guess. I didn't see any other places where water was leaking, so I'm gonna replace all the rusty bolts and use Marine Goop to seal around as good as I can. And keep doing my workouts to get my weight down. lol

by the way, do you have seats for that thing? Can you post a photo if you do.

I do have seats. I can get a pic of my own later if you want, but they look exactly like this (but older):

Here's a pic of the canoe on top of my car (it looks really short from above! Seems much bigger when you're right up to it):

I'm gonna look into sealing it very soon. I'd like to get it done during this week so I can go out on Saturday.

So, after a long day, I got my temporary boater's card printed out and then got a marine battery and then mounted the canoe onto my car. Finally got it in the water and launched at about 9:30pm. It was so much easier to paddle it than that stupid rubber dinghy... But I mounted my trolling motor on there and it goes pretty good! We had to quit at 10:30 because of light and the horrendous bugs (and then some drunk-sounding guy yelled at us from his house not too far from the public boat launch, I guess our talking was too loud for his drinking).

Unfortunately, water is coming in at least one spot, I'm guessing through one of the seams. I didn't think it was much water until we flipped it to put onto the car, and a bunch gushed out. I did some reading elsewhere on the web and it seems like people use a variety of things to fix leaks. So, that was helpful in a way, because I rather liked the experience and was sad when my leg started getting wet, but now I know it can probably be fixed pretty easily. Only thing is, I don't know what to use! I've heard everything from slow-cure epoxy to marine goop to liquid aluminum - even duct tape... Any advice on that?

I don't know if the foam lining the inside of the canoe can come out or if it's glued down, or if I can access the seams, or what... I didn't get a good look at it yet, but if the foam can't come out, or if the rivets need to be redone (another thing I saw mentioned online), is this a job I should tackle myself, or ask a shop to work on it? And at that point, is it even worth it anymore?

I guess he was Killed By Death?

RIP

No fancy camera required Dana. Those are some great shots.

Thanks. My friends have spent thousands on their camera gear, and they get awesome pics. Mine is just a Canon P&S, but I just have too many hobbies to drop more than $150-ish on a camera right now.

I should have labeled those pics.. I'll edit my post and do that now, in case anyone is curious about location.

I feel kinda lame posting my pics here. I don't have a fancy camera, and they don't look as good as most of the stuff I see you guys posting, but nevertheless, here's a few shots I took this year that are my favorites so far.

Pete's Dam

Duck that hung out for 1-2 hours as we caught walleye. Mattagami Lake

Mosquito bite. Mattagami Lake

Pete's Dam

Canada Day fireworks. New Liskeard

After we were done fishing for the day. Mattagami Lake

(I hope those scale down automatically like I saw on the other posts. I'm sorry if there are too many pics or if they're too big.)

Don't know if it's the lighting in the photo, but that fish looks as if it was raised in toxic waste, painted khaki, hung to dry for a month, rolled in dust, and then run over by a truck. Hope you didn't try eating it!

it's sand. it tasted great.

Thanks for all the replies! I am planning to get the Sports Pal tomorrow and some kind of foam mount setup for my car. Also, the more videos of the Porta-Bote I watch, the more I want one of those in the future (mostly the storage and portability of it, vs an aluminum boat). It seems ideal for us, but until then, I think the canoe with my Minn Kota Maxxum 40T will suffice.

I am crazy excited about all of this now. I'm like a little kid again. All those years I wasted sitting on my couch, playing video games! haha (hey, that latest Rapala game with the rod controller is actually pretty fun).

If I get it (ie: nothing throws my plans awry), I'll get a pic and post it up here, of course. It is old, been in the family for a looong time.

I was wondering this same thing, actually, because I was in Canadian Tire yesterday and saw a combo on for 50% off, regular $130. It's Quantum, Zebco, I dunno, something like that, and I did some reading afterwards and seems like people have bad things to say about the brand and combos in general. But I loved how it felt in my hands (the reel, more than the rod). I compared it with a Shakespeare baitcast combo on the shelf and didn't like that one nearly as much. I didn't buy it, but I'm definitely interested in a baitcaster now, to complement my Ugly Stick and Shimano spinner setup that I've been monogamous with for close to two decades (though it hadn't seen much use for a while, there).

Darn right, there's NOTHING as cool as a topwater strike!

I agree! I ignored topwater lures as a kid/teen, but now that I'm older and fishing again, three of my six most-recent keepers (including my first-ever smallmouth, see avatar) were caught on either of my two Hula-Poppers. It's become my favorite lure, though I've only had luck with it in the Montreal River (tried at Sharp Lake tonight, had one strike but didn't hook it - first time trying night-time fishing, too).

I got a frog yesterday, gonna give that some tries soon.

Hello everyone, I'm new here. I live in Northern Ontario and I am finally getting back into fishing. I loved it as a kid, but when I left for college I couldn't find time for it. And when I lived in North Bay, I didn't go out much at all. Now I'm back home and I've been bit by the bug... And I got my very first smallmouth on June 30th in the Montreal River (as seen in my avatar). Since then, I've caught three others. Love them. Just fishing off shore, though. And now I want a boat.

I inherited a nice Minn Kota trolling motor from my father-in-law. I assume it works, as he kept everything in great shape. So I have this sitting in my basement waiting to be used (I can hear it crying out to me at night. It's kinda freaky).

I was planning to buy a 12-14' aluminum with trailer and motor (3-9.9HP) next year (seen a lot of good deals on Kijiji), when I can (hopefully) afford it. My car doesn't have a hitch so that's another added expense. I have a lot across the street to store the boat and trailer, but this is a one-way street and it's not really ideal. But this was in my heart until recently...

The wife and I bought a Sevylor "4-person" inflatable just to putt around on, and two of the included oars busted on the first and only trip. I'm thinking of returning it, considering it's like $85 and it's not that great. I don't know about fishing out of it - seems that one good fighter and it'd have a hole or tear in it from the lure. And there's not a whole lot of room. But it is very, very portable...

Last night I found out that my grandfather has an old Sports Pal canoe, he was planning to sell it for more, but if I want it I can take it for like $50. I hadn't been considering a canoe of any kind for fishing due to the tippiness, and I'm a big guy (I'm working on that, but that's another story), and the one my wife has won't take a motor (plus it has sentimental value, having been her father's). I'd rather not worry about that stuff. But this one has a mount that my grandpa used to use a 3HP on, and it looks like it (and he says) is very stable. My one worry is mounting it onto my old-school Achieva. I don't have cash for a roof rack, unless those cheap foam block kits will do the trick - I really have no idea, though.

Reading around on other threads here, it sure seems like there's mixed opinions (everyone has their preference) so I don't really expect you all to have a uniform answer. But any advice is appreciated. I discovered the Porta-Bote stuff here last night, and now that's got my head spinning, too. I don't have a roof rack, but I assume I could figure something out. I'm kinda thinking the Sports Pal would be sufficient for at least the rest of this year, and possibly all of next year, and I could then decide what to do as far as an aluminum or Porta-Bote.

It's a big decision for me. Sorry this post is kinda rambly. I am consumed with fishing and boats and stuff lately and I can't even keep my thoughts straight - I fall asleep thinking of boats and I wake up thinking of lures. It's like falling in love... I'm sure you understand, heh. Alright, I'm gonna go eat and then find a shore to cast from.