Long weekend report

[SlowPoke]

After working day shift all week and waking up at 2AM (day shift?), I was looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday... 5AM. Muskiestud (Chris) and I decided to head over to Long Point Bay, or as I like to call it, The Bermuda Triangle. While downstairs getting my tackle ready, Chris rings the doorbell 20 minutes early at 5:40AM and my WIFE answers the door! I ran upstairs as quick as I could hoping to save Chris' life. Fortunately my wife was already awake and let him live.

 

Chris and I headed to Port Rowan to find that it was Bayfest weekend and the town was partially closed off. We made our way to the launch but decided to leave in case we got trapped in town by the crowds. We made our way to Akers Marina/Trailer Park and launched there. Great launch, $10 and put us right on the area we intended to fish.

 

We were in seach of weed pockets for bass and pike using the 15-20K East winds to drift. It wasn't a bad outing for one of us! I could only manage a single pike with an eating disorder. Chris did pretty well for the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were on limited time and had to leave before my fishing action really heated up

On the way home we could smell oil/grease burning on my Tahoe. Turned out to be a leaking differential spraying back on the exhaust. Yay! Tahoe goes in for surgury on Thursday. Thanks again Burmuda Triangle.

 

We got home and I jumped into the van and left for Lake Simcoe. Another damn lake that has my number. We arrived at my Claude's cottage around 7 for dinner. We were thinking of heading out for an evening fish but the wind was gusty and beer was cold.

 

Sunday morning I was able to sleep in again, 6:15ish. We got onto the water shortly after and began the long pound down to Cooks Bay. We spotted a few prime spots for pike and setup for a drift in the stong winds across some isolated weed beds. As we approached the first bed I could see a change in depth from the bow and mentioned to Claude that we should be able to get something here. Bam! White spinner bait does it again. This pike put up a real struggle, under the boat, back out, deep into the weeds, back under the boat... I chased it to the back of the boat, wrestled it some more, it took another run and finally came in kicking and screaming. While netting it, I could hardly see the pike for the weeds on the line! It was quite a stuggle and I was expecting a 36"er but I doubt it was anywhere past 30". We got a picture on Claude's camara phone but it didn't turn out. After looking at the picture I joked with Claude "what do you use to clean the lens, Coke?" he replied, "Clean the lens?" LOL

Claude caught a couple impressive rock bass on subsequent drifts and then we headed over to Crates for some gas.

 

The winds were pretty stong so we headed over to Snake island for some cover. Found some neat spots but they didn't produce. Went around to fox island where there were about 25 sailboats over some prime fishing spots... d'oh! We decided to head in for the day. Claude was taking the sailboat out and I went down to Bass Pro to redeem some gift cards.

 

Sunday I woke up around 6:15 and my father in law (Phil) was already enjoying the sunrise from atop the boathouse, Claude was still asleap. I worked in my new PP line for 20-30 minutes to avoid the prime-time bird nests on the water. Claude made it down to dock and we headed out. Started doing a little trolling in front of the cotttage where I saw some fish jumping that were out of casting range and we picked up a few baby smallmouth. Strong winds again today, trolling sucked! Headed over to Fox shoal. I had found the co-ords on my Lowrance and wrote them down then manually entered them into Claudes hand-held Garmin. He was pretty impressed that it put us right on the mark. He's still learning his Garmin and is now seeing it's value. On our first or second speed drift Phil picked up a nice 3lb smallie on of all things, a hook and worm and my daughters spinning rod. Claude and I didn't catch anything on subsequent drifts but seeing Phil nab one was the pay off. It was nice to pick a spot on a map, find it and have it produce something. The wind was really picking up and we decided to head in closer to a shoal about 2 miles from the cottage. It looked like a nice spot but we couldn't stay on it. We marked it for future exploration and headed in for the day.

 

When we arrived at the cottage Claude's phone rang as we were bringing the boat in on the marine railway. His wife told us there was a fox somewhere down on the breakwall where we were and that it looked rabid or at the very least, mange. We spotted the fox sitting by the pumphouse within a few feet of the stairs up to the cottage. The only other way up was to climb the cliff on the other side of the boathouse. Phil and Claude climbed up and I armed myself with Claude's fishing net (2yrs old and still in mint condition LOL). Claude went to call Animal Control and could only leave a message. We wanted to keep track of this fox in case it was rabid. It eventually got up and moved to the edge of the breakwall perhaps to take a drink but could not reach the water. I statred to walk to the stairs and it turned around and retreated to it's spot by the pumphouse cutting me off from accessing the stairs. After about an hour with no reply from Animal Control we decided to look after this thing ourselves. I was able to net the fox and we held it underwater for a moment in the lake. It was a quick death and probably a relief from the visible anguish this fox was suffering from. A bit of a sad ending to our otherwise great weekend.

 

-Brian

[fatherof3]

sounds like a good weekend,too bad about the fox

[mcallister.grant]

Sounds like a fun weekend... It kinda sucks about the fox though. I wonder what got into it?

[Guest Johnny Bass]

Great Report. Too bad about the fox.....Are you sure it was rabid??? It sounds like it was thirsty. A rabid fox would attack on sight wouldn't it??

[ccmtcanada]

Wow Brian...your outings are NEVER boring are they? At least the Tahoe broke down AFTER fishing for the day...LOL. Sounded like a pretty windy weekend, but at least you got out there caught some fish! Too bad about that fox...sometimes you have to make a spur of the moment decision!

[fishindevil]

Nice report & nice fish !!!!!!! sounds like everyone got some fish ,had a good time ,to bad about the fox man whats up with that????..lol..lol:w00t: .....thanks for sharing brian cheers

[Mike the Pike]

Great report Brian.Too bad about the truck.

 

MTP

[Gerritt]

Awesome report... to bad about the fox though but you did the right thing if it was ill. and the Chev...well... sorry there too brother..

 

but at least Chris got on some fish!!

 

Gerritt.

[SlowPoke]

The Tahoe is under the knife as we speak... it should pull through.

I don't know what happened to the fox. If it was rabid, it was too weak to be agressive. It did appear to be riddled with infection around it's hind quarters. Open wounds... nasty stuff. We put the fox in a garbage bag and kept in the pumphouse in case Animal Control wanted to inspect it. I don't know if they called back, came by or what happened after I left. I might be fishing Lake O with Claude this weekend and I'll get an update.

-Brian

[SlowPoke]

$388.74 to fix the Tahoe... it's going in the lake too. It's the humane thing to do, right?

I'm surprised this thread hasn't elicited some Michael Vick comments.

-Brian