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Hey Guys, According to my calculations its been almost 6 months since my last report! Its really no surprise that i find the time to post these in those shoulder seasons between ice out and ice up. Hopefully a lil fishporn can get you guys through till the ice gets solid and we can all get fishing once again. I might even have to swing down to the river just to get my fix these next few weeks! But without further adieu once again its AKRISONER's (EH-KREE-ONE-ERS) semi-annual year in review! When we last left off, the bass season had just kicked off. This year my team lobster tournament partner and I were enlisted in a few more small tournaments. I love fishing small tournaments, theres just something about competitive fishing occasionally that is so fun, it makes you appreciate those smaller fish a lot more, and any catch can get the adrenaline pumping. July brought our second tournament of the year but the biggest one, a tournament hosted by theona trailer park that brought out twelve boats of varying skill. As we are all aware, this summer the furnace turned on and man did it mess up the fishing quickly. That faithful saturday will go down as one of my roughest days on the water of all time, but to be honest, all i could do was laugh because at the end of the day, theres worse things to have than a day where you dont catch much and your boat breaks. if you can recall, last year jake and I (team lobster) made a pretty good duo, with me studying the maps, finding the spots and as per normal Jake having the luck and skill to land some big fish. Well this tournament was looking promising at first with jake landing a couple of keepers, but things very quickly went downhill from there...I caught 1 single keeper bass in 8 hours of fishing and that keeper was culled, this photo summing up our day lol our 5 fish were all jake’s, so begrudgingly we made our half hour run back to weigh ins, running full throttle for 20 minutes we slow down in the gannon narrows and something isn’t right. I can sense it, I look back…no water coming out of the pee hole, immediately shut the motor down and pray to god that temperature sensor would have warned me if I was overheating. Cause otherwise 20 minutes at full throttle overheating and my motor is toast. Call for a tow, the boys come tow us in and we get to the docks and paddle to let Jake off of the boat Jake hops out to get the truck to pull the boat out and I lower the trolling motor to troll over to the ramp…yup you guessed it, the trolling motor is dead (wiring came loose on the plug an easy fix later thank god once I removed the front panel) So I hop into the lake to and literally swim my boat to the ramp lol. We pull the boat out of the water and I go to plug it in to charge the batteries back up after 8 hours of fishing with the livewells running, my bank charger is blown. B.O.A.T. Took a long weekend off of work to fix the boat up, install the new bank charger, swap the impeller and of course do some fishing! One trip down to the dock I thought id spotted a bear cub in the tree in the front yard More scary though this summer was the Parry Sound 33 fire that was burning wildly out of control just to our north. (not my picture) A look on the horizon showed the smoke and a trip out to the big lake you could see the shoreline burning only 30km to our north. Unreported by the media were the countless fires that actually sparked up right in pointe au baril that were quickly extinguished by quick acting locals. We took some precautions of our own, watered the yard non stop, and moved all of trailers containing the sleds, kayaks etc etc down to the water front and parked them as close to the water and as far away from the forest as possible. It also helped that Pointe Au Baril township was able to divert the air support constantly running to our north to quickly extinguish the fires that kept popping up in town. 3 separate times a water bomber or helicopter was called in from fighting Parry Sound 33 into pointe au baril to extinguish flare ups. This particular morning fishing in the haze and smoke some more fickle/difficult to catch Pointe Au Baril largies cooperated. fixed and cleaned up, my 20 year old new to me rig was looking slick The heat, this summer most definitely put a damper on fishing everywhere I went, specifically big bites were harder to come by than I can ever remember. The fish were deep and there was no topwater or shallow bite at all. I spent a heck of a lot of time dropshotting this summer, my technique is dialed, but its not as fun as slamming these guys on topwaters. My last report Ironmaker gave me hell for fishing in bare feet all of the time…he said a hook was going to go through my foot, does a compartment handle count? Lol (don’t leave your handles up) The summer rolled on, the fishing was very meh, fished another tourney, caught lots of small fish, I think we weighed like 8lbs? was disappointing to say the least, September had arrived and this friendly stonefly gave me a reminder of all of the time I spent last year fly fishing the credit in September. A buddy of mine from work enlisted me to come up to his cottage on the lake of bays and guide him for the weekend. His fishing experience was of the bobber and worm type, so I hoped to teach him some stuff that he can use on his own and maybe figure out a few spots as well where he can consistently catch some smallies. Rain and cooler weather were a welcome treat after the scorcher of a summer that we had. A few good tips from Bill about how to pattern smallies that are on a shiner bite and we had a pretty damn good day of fishing. No monsters but this 19 inch smallie was a new PB for my buddy Seabass. If I remember correctly numbers on the day were in the 30s, Not bad for a lake that I had never fished on in my entire life! Most interestingly I had a top water bite from these bait busting smallies in 55 fow! Madness! Lake of bays is gorgeous as well. I can see myself fishing there again, Its underpressured, beautiful and I think secretly its a smallmouth factory (ill have to try it closer to opener) September also brought a new career oppurtinity for me so I switched jobs into a roll as a field services coordinator that has me both working in the field as well as from home. I no longer have a desk at head office so when I am not on the road I can be wherever I want to be in the entire world…I think its pretty obvious where I end up a lot of days lol. My dog enjoying this particular Monday morning. And me enjoying this particular Monday evening The pattern of smallies eating bait was holding, watch the down image, find the bait off structure and see the accompanying fish eating the bait Easy shooting. This particular session, I set a PB, I caught 7 smallies on 7 casts in a row. I have two good friends that moved from Australia 5 years ago to Canada, I enjoy taking them up north and showing them something aside from the city, Ive taken them ice fishing, snowmobiling, skiing/snowboarding and this time it was time to show them how to catch smallies! And did we catch! This particular weekend the numbers count was over 50 fish! even the aussie boys were hammering em and loving it. Capped off by a couple of donkeys. September was shaping up after that slow summer! Another family tournament came along this time on stoney lake, we split it into 3 segments, morning, evening, and morning. The weather day one was hot the weather day two was cool. The guys we were fishing against are shoreline shallow bass guys, so the temperature swing really screwed them up on day two…jake and I hung around on day 1, but were sitting in last place by less than half a pound, Jamie the local who was running the tournament of course came to first weigh in with a 4lb lead…it was going to be tough to catch him, but what do you know that temperature swing did wonders for jake and I…we got on some solid fish and even lost a couple of monsters. We ended up weighing 14lbs for the 4 hour Sunday morning session, pretty darn good if you ask me, topped with the big fish winning kicker! Not the biggest smallie ive caught, not even close…but it feels like it when it pays! September rolled on and the heat vanished, fall had arrived and even more excitingly, a trip that I had booked long before to celebrate my dads 65th birthday the bros and pops all got together to go fishing…I got to select with who so naturally I selected my favourite youtube angler and pro fisherman Taro Murata! Simcoe was a mess, Taro even warned me that it was going to be a grind out there with the temperatures all over the place, the shallow weeds dying off…and the day according to Taro was about as good as it could have gone with the conditions…we caught plenty, but Taro assured us that we could have caught a lot lot more. I don’t think we can complain. Perhaps the best part about this though is that Taro is as genuine as they come, he is the exact same dude you see on youtube as he is in real life. He is hilarious, quirky, and a damn good fisherman. Specifically worth noting was the set of jumbos he got us on so that we could get some "ukranian steak" I was still trying to catch bass, but swapped to some live bait to nail a PB perch just for the hell of it...we kept 25 fish with a few 13+ inchers in the mix and easily could have caught 100 if we decided to keep fishing perch instead of chasing bass. The offshore largie techniques he taught me will be put to work next softwater season. I will also hold on to the nicknames that he gave my entire family, My brother shaun “hockey the minnow master” (shaun doesn’t play hockey) lmao…my dad “dad”, my oldest brother Steve, who is shorter than me and my middle brother “Little Brother” and my new nickname: Taro – Hey scott…you look like a real pro, like the kinda guy that wants to sell me something…look at the smile, the shades, I feel like you want me to buy something…You know that guy chris zaldain? Me – ahhaha yes…hes actually my favourite elite series angler Taro – “your name is now scott zaldain” Upon posting this story on Instagram, the real Chris Zaldain took notice ahaha. I need to meet him as well some day. October arrived, a weird weekend that kept me closer to Toronto called for a trip to the river for salmon closing, I got bit once on the fly, jake hooked 4 and broke all of the egg wagons off, but sometimes even a skunk can provide “the goods” October kept rolling, and man Nature got mean…highs below zero during the day in October? Where the heck was fall? The smallies started moving into fall patterns quick, having not had much success in past years in the fall, I was hellbent on trying to learn how to really pattern fall fish. I was even more hellbent on getting my first nickel smallie, Northeastern G bay is a bit cold and the smallmouth are very pallaegic due to the structure that they live in, its pretty normal for a 20 inch fish to go 3 lbs…a far cry from their southern cousins. A 5lb fish is somewhat of a treat for us, Out of the thousands of smallmouth we have caught only 3 have ever broken 5lbs…Myself I had yet to get one even after catching more than 100 4lbers. This particular cold day, my brother Personal bested in the morning We all popped a few 3 and 4lbers he then took off the chase walleye and jake and I stayed throwing swimbaits for bass…I make a long cast, I begin to retrieve slowly, 2 seconds into my retrieve I feel a small tick, set the hook hard…im on and it feels damn good. Im fighting this fish 25 yards off of the boat and it leaps into the air, my mind is disbelief, Jake immediately says “Oh F” I battle this thing to the boat, jake nets it, and I ask in disbelief, “do you think that thing breaks 5lbs” jake laughs “dude that’s 6” I don’t believe him…we weigh it and hes not far off, just shy of 6lbs a new PB and my goal for the last three years of bass fishing finally achieved, I almost have a breakdown in the boat lol. Look at the damn girth on this thing! 21 inches of football The next weekend the temperatures dropped even more and the bite disappeared, the water had plummeted to 40 degrees and it was still October, what the heck! With the bass shut down, it was time to chase eyes as is tradition. One thing I learned, those texans that invented bass boats, they dont fish in the cold...bass boats are cold, theres no other way to say it lol. 50mph at -5 does not feel good. And then of course, as we are all painfully aware winter arrived at the beginning of November…perfect! Just to have me scrambling to get my boat put away…what a gong show! November 16, we figured, we could sneak one last trip in for the season to chase some pre-ice up eyes. We head out Saturday morning and have the best day of walleye fishing I have ever had in my entire life, we had multiple 50+ fish days this fall, between the two boats one weekend we boated 120 walleye, but this particular day the average size was 19 inches capped by Dave hauling in the years best 8.71lber, that was only 27 inches long Assuring me that my cottage record 9lber from 2 years ago is in total jeapordy because the day we smack a 30 inch fish it’s going to weigh 15 lbs. and by the healthy look of this fish and my 9lber, these ladies aren’t even that old. We all caught and were happy, I went back to the cottage and continued the job of emergency winterizing my boat, and the boys woke up Sunday morning in the dark to head to the walleye hole…they walked out to the dock to realize…the entire lake was frozen over…perfect. Ill finish this report with a photo that officially tells you, softwater season is over, my next door neighbors having their morning breakfast with a show. They were sure to post it on facebook, tag me in the photo and put "good luck Scott!" What a mess getting the boat out was, we backed the trailer out thinking it may break through the ice, nope. Lots of swinging anchors and smashing with spudbars later, its time to start getting the flashers ready and the short rods rigged.