Search the Community

Hey Guys, When I last left off, the boat had been put away in her early winter slumber. Its almost impossible to believe that its been 8 months since I put the boat to bed, now it makes me even more sad because that means we are only about 4 months away from putting the boat away again. Holy geeze. The 8 months have provided some pretty decent fishing as the guys and I have grown as anglers, we have really started to dial in on the fish, our standard has definitely risen. We have high expectations every time we hit the water. I have spent countless hours working to get the boat where I want it, learned some things and had some scary experiences. So without further adieu I present to you once again AKRISONER's (AE-KREE-ONE-ERS) semi annual review My last thread ended with the boys and i busting ice to get the boats out of the lake. Winter came fast and furious, we had the earliest ice I have ever seen and not only was the ice early it was quality from start of season to end. That meant the huts and short rods came out early and the fishing was pretty darn good. with such good solid smooth black ice, i found myself itching to take advantage of it and build a lot of rinks. Fishing took a bit of a back seat while i skated on my own rink every weekend. the snow was relentless too, just a classic old fashioned winter, I was loving it. The fishing continued to produce I personally didnt have the greatest winter size wize, but I caught a lot of fish through the ice so I couldnt complain. It just seemed that when we did get a big one, it never visited my hole lol. Oh well I figured maybe that PB bass i had caught for the fall was making me pay the fish gods back for my incredible luck then. As long as the fish are biting, im happy. Sometimes you just gotta be the camera man, rather than the subject. Maybe I was also cheating the fish gods a little, because my mind kept thinking hockey. not only was hockey taking up a lot of my time, moving snow seemed to take over my life, it just kept dumping this year and for once it didnt melt, it just stayed and kept piling up. and then the temperature really dipped, we toughed it out, but as much as I like ice fishing, sometimes an uninsulated pop up is a bit rough to sit in when its -30 and windy, thank god we kept catching fish or I may have quit until the warmer weather showed up. slab crappie can help the mood a bit too. Finally i got a few fish that were pushing to the larger size of my PB Range. Nothing like some foot long crappies to warm you up on a really cold February day. My girlfriend tells everyone i tried to kill her by bringing her out in the cold this year fishing. Here she is doing her best mount everest victim impersonation. She survived, but the fact she got skunked that day didnt help my cause either...I still convinced her to come fishing with me this spring so shes not totally over it yet lol. with the general lack of size the guys and i set out on one cold but calm beautiful february day to do some exploring. This particular spot didnt produce any fish, but the smooth thick ice made it just a neat spot to set up camp and hang around for a while. with the historic ice conditions family day brought the opportunity for myself and my brother who rarely visits up north to do some exploring to areas we had never been on snowmobiles before. Needless to say, seeing the big water by sled was a really really cool experience. Who knows when or if we will ever get to have this experience again. Things also warmed up on family day enough for me to bring the kids out fishing. What a riot it was having my 8 year old neice and 6 year old nephew in the hut for the afternoon. They loved fishing with a flasher. its almost like a video game for them, and heck they even caught some fish! I think they actually adapt to this kind of fishing well because they are willing to do exactly what you say with 100% conviction. You say drop the bait they do it immediately, raise it up...yes sir! Heres Owen with the first pickerel of his life. as march came, the ice just kept getting thicker. this particular adventure for crappies, saw my gas auger break (the new jiffys are absolute garbage, buyer beware!) Back to the old manual it was...punching holes through 36+ inches of ice manually is a good work out I tell ya! not being much of a fish eater myself, I have to say, crappie as far as fish goes, is pretty darn tasty. I had never felt this way before but the idea of trying to catch a nice 10 inch crappie for dinner added a level of excitement to my fishing experience I had never felt before. I caught a perfect 10 incher and threw it into my ice livewell...only to discover half an hour later my fish had escaped back down the hole through the wall! I couldnt believe my misfortune. my heater gas ran out and it was damn cold outside, my holes were freezing up and I was getting very cold.. Absolutely freezing and getting very hungry things were looking grim as i continued to catch fish too small to justify taking for a meal. Sure enough this beauty bit my bait at the last minute, the feeling was somewhat overwhelming knowing i had just got myself dinner. deep fried crappie tacos with lime crema and cabbage slaw...damn I go could go for some right now. later in the week i headed out for a fish and once again manually drilled my holes (stupid jiffy was still getting fixed) but was greeted with a screen absolutely full of crappie. Like shooting fish in a barrel, but dad swung by on the sled and watched me pull out fish after fish. His exact quote as he sat and watched me "now this is fishing" Things finally started to warm up, spring was in the air and the crappie fishing was awesome. Getting greasy, snagging slabs, Daves safari completing the look with the ice conditions being as good as they were, my dad and i ventured for the first time out on the sound for some laketrout, It instantly became one of my favourite ice fishing experiences I have ever had. We all became addicted to ice fishing lakers in one trip. spring also meant the end to hockey season. My team that I run has played together for 11 years, year round for 8 of those 11 years and never won a chip together, well it finally happened this year, after being pretty awful all season, a magic took over the team in the playoffs and we all played the best hockey of our lives for 6 games straight and took the True North Title Home! next job on the list was digging my boat out of its winter slumber for our annual bass fishing trip to the souther united states. This year we were returning to lake marion santee cooper SC. Digging my boat out of 4 feet of snow, things went without a hitch. minor details, swapped a hub on the trailer and we were in business, unfortuantely this year the fish did not cooperate at all. We caught a total of 4 bass over the course of 4 days, not a single one over 2lbs...caught some by catch, a close to 20lb cat fish, some chain pickerel, warmouth, shellcracker and crappies...but just couldnt find the bass. Sadly santee may be headed the same direction as many famous fisheries that simply see to much tournament pressure with anglers hammering fish on beds. Oh well the escape to the warmth was welcomed, especially with the winter/spring we were having. I remember one specific moment as we came out of the mountains of west virginia having driven since 6pm the previous day and pulled into North Carolina at 7 in the morning. We hopped out the car and the smell of spring in full bloom was almost overwhelming. A cool experience having not smelt nature and plants alive for the past 6+ months. a cool chain pickerel gator territory driving and fishing the narrow rivers and ponds of "the hatchery" after personally getting skunked for bass after driving close to 3,000km I sure enough got my birthday bass after all thanks to my niece and nephew..they are the best! my girlfriend craving some heat herself convinced me a trip to the beach was a good idea...who was I to say no? Off to Cuba we went...and me sneaking some fly fishing in every day made the trip very enjoyable I even convinced her to let me go out with a guide for a full day. My casting directly into 30km wind was definitely not up to snuff. I spent a lot of time not casting the fly rod, but a cool experience none the less, catching baracuda on the fly as well as spinning gear, and putting a beating on some snapper feeding the entire camp with fresh fish. I got lucky enough to cross path with two fairly large cudas that I ended up catching in 2 consecutive casts. dont worry about the nasty gill grabs, these fish were eaten by the guys at camp! I thought cudas were poisonous but what do i know? immediately upon my return to Toronto I had to make the drive from Toronto to Kapuskasing via sudbury and cochrane. How nice of the north to greet me with a nice May snowstorm to drive through for my long ass drive. Needless to say, this was a very very very long day lol as I got through cochrane and headed west to Kap, the snow had stopped and the sun was setting beautifully, and sure enough these two moose were standing right in the middle of the road, I had never seen moose so close without them scaring me to death and nearly killing me. This was a nice experience I saw them from half a kilometer away and got to pull up slowly and snap photos. Really changed my whole mood after the drive I was having. Back to Pointe Au Baril some big time boat work was in order. On a trip for pike, I was doing some autocharting running the Troller on 10 for a few minutes when my motor shut off. I wasnt sure what the heck was going on. It seemed to almost intermittently work? but then would fail? So my fuse wasnt blown? I headed home to investigate and this is the state i found my ground cable in. The POS plug that minkotta uses had caused my wires to slowly tear while vibrating causing an increase in resitance on my ground wire which eventually lit the cable on fire. That along with re configuring my electronics on my boat to add a helix 9 to my two 7's resulted in some long hours rewiring the boat, it was worth it in the end, i enjoy the work and the boat is running perfectly now. once the boat was back in commission i tried to get into some pike. Caught a few in the 30's but man the giants were just not there this year probably due to the crazy spring we had. this cheeky walleye came out of 4 fow on a new growth weed edge. The swimbait was only about 5 inches shorter than the fish lol and then it came....bass season finally arrived after what felt like an absolute eternity. I actually quit fishing at the end of May to build up my anticipation. I spent my time organizing my tackle, cleaning the boat up etc etc. By opener, I was absolutely losing my mind, luckily my third fish of the year was this 4.6lb beauty a new PB for me on the kawarthas. the fishing was tough on the sunday of opener with our small derby's winning bag not reaching double digits. It was an absolute grind. We got good numbers but just could not find any decent fish. I sure could have used that 4 on sunday rather than saturday lol. Heres Jake with the pathetic "big fish" sad indeed lol as is always, the following weekend brought about my favourite fishing time of the year, Zone 14 bass opener. I went up early and spent the friday re-organizing and cleaning the boat for the week ahead. Here is The Number One Sorcerer looking nifty. Opening day didnt disappoint, Jake was super late so we didnt even get on the water until 9am, but we quickly scooped up a 19lb bag, and over 30 fish with the average size being high 2-3lbs. Just an incredible day on the water. I even caught my first of two pickerel over 5lbs that day in 3 fow on a chatterbait caught another one in the evening as well...what a pattern lol a pike with some muskyish barring, i almost thought it was juvi tiger! hookset after hookset This particular evening I got onto a topwater bite for the ages, I ended up bringing in close to 17lbs of fish in about a 15 minute period all on the megabass dog x. Insanity These sunsets were as good as i remembered, minus the swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes lol sometimes you gotta trip flip for a few green ones too, with the flooding on G bay, go figure we now have a pretty awesome timber fishery for largemouth. Where the heck was I? Flipping 1oz texas rigs into timber for green ones on G bay, go figure. speaking of flooding, here is our yard on the lake side looking towards my neighbors. Not pictured, is the 3 days of my vacation week i spent taking out our dock cribs and re-installing our docks. My favourite part was diving 7 feet underwater to grab 100lb rocks inside a 4x4 crib. Fun stuff lol when the average size of fish is the example below..and the numbers are way way way into the double digits it makes for a good time to the point you almost get tired of catching....almost.... my bass thumb after 5 days on the water was telling the story nicely one final 15+lb bag was in order before the dock work began late in the week. The crankbait bite was absolutely on fire just another classic G bay day. over the course of this entire week I think grand total I saw 5 boats fishing? Only one within 200 meters of my boat. It literally doesnt get much better anywhere else in the world. the final sunset of my week of vacation was a fitting ending to an incredible week. Thanks for reading, until next time (approximately 6 months from now, probably just as ice season is about to kick off) Peace!