The Ultimate Fishing Report *PICS*

[steverowbotham]

I have the day off and I am very bored. I just bought my new float reel last night, but I have no roe, or desire to wake up at 5am to go fishing today, so I'm doing my 2008 summary.

 

I noticed Ben had done his report today as well and I dont want to take away from his, so make sure you check his out too... It's called My 2008 YEar in Review by BenBeattie. It's a good one.

 

Every year I do I recap of my season for personal interest, I have them all saved since 04 and this year is no different. And I will share my season with you!

 

I will recap on different types of fishing and not necessarily my most successful days, but my favourite days.

 

Ice Fishing

 

February 1-3, 2008

Lake Nipissing

 

My girlfriend, my dad and I rented an on ice bungalow on Lake Nipissing for Friday-Sunday. We stay with Grump and Grumpy’s (www.grumpyfishermen.com) and have for the past 4 years. Great guys, great bungalows, great fishing. If you’re looking for numbers of walleye, choose a different place though. It is more focused on perch/whitefish. The huts are located in about 15 feet of water over a sand flat.

 

Over the three days we landed over 150 perch, 30-40 herring, 5 whitefish, 2 pike and a walleye. It’s always fun to spend your weekend with family.

 

 

 

 

February 5, 2008

Lake X

 

This day we spent a few hours on a back lake searching for some brookies. My luck was completely off and I lost 4 fish at the hole, but a couple buddies landed some nice brookies. I drove, so they let me eat some

 

 

 

 

February 7, 2008

Lake Y

 

After having some success a couple days earlier, we decided to try another back lake for rainbows. Spoons caught some small fish, but the best bait …. Live worms. In February.

Caught quite a few, here’s the best one of the day.

 

 

 

Steelhead

 

March 27, 2008

East Trib

 

I think EVERY trib was on this day. We fished 3 different tribs and caught fish in every one, and each one got better. My buddy and I lit them up. We landed well over 50 fish, once we ran out of roe, pinkies worked just as well. Just one of those days. I’m not blurring out the backgrounds. If you know it, you know it. Don’t complain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 3, 2008

East Trib

 

I headed back to the better trib from the previous week, but the water was blown. Headed to another and found it high, but not chocolate. Still dirty nonetheless. Kelli and I each got some fish in the high water.

 

 

 

May 31, 2008

Lake X

 

This lake is an absolute gem, but I don’t want to reveil this one. Some probably know it, some wont, but if you ever do figure it out, you will have a BLAST!!! Some of the best crappie fish I have ever experienced! Cal and I were ripping bucktails for walleye when we double headered with 14 inch crappie. So we started targeting crappie, and it was non stop slabs the rest of the day!

 

 

 

June 9, 2008

Lake Simcoe

 

I had about 1.5 hrs left before dark and I thought I’d shoot down to the lake and get some din dins. Small tubes under slip floats revealed a school of big perch had moved in to feed!! Needless to say, I had my dinner, and a couple more!

 

 

 

PIKE

 

I only fished pike a few times this year, which is odd for me. Most of my pike fishing were tournaments on Lakes like Sparrow, Canal and Dalrymple where 2-3 pound pike are average. Nothing really exciting to share. The only real awesome pike day I had was opening day.

 

May 10, 2008

Lake Couchiching

 

We had an open tournament on opening day on Lake Couchiching. Not too many boats showed up, I think there might have been 8, I cant fully recall.

 

We headed to our first spot and I started throwing a Shallow Invader, it’s a big musky bait, but it catches big pike as well. My buddy was throwing a rattle trap. Believe it or not, I struck first. My rod doubled over as I fought the 38.75 incher to the boat. Cal quickly landed a couple in the 30 inch class on rattletraps and we moved on. We went sight fishing in the shallows throwing soft jerkbaits and big 6 inch white saltwater grubs. We landed a few more fish, one around 36 inches. We won the tournament and big fish with the 38.75 incher,

 

 

 

 

BASS

 

Okay here’s my bread and butter! I love bass fishing beyond any other sport or hobby there is! Fishing is my passion, bass fishing is my life! Unfortunately, they are closed for the majority of the year!

 

IT is extremely hard to narrow it down to my favourite 3 days of the year! So I decided to add a TOURNAMENT section to make it easier so here’ goes

 

 

September 2, 2008

Lake Simcoe

 

It was a flat calm day and we knew the fishing would be tough, as calm/clear water isn’t exactly the stealthiest approach. We also knew we would be able to make them bite if we were patient. We got em real good dropshotting slammers and deadsticking tubes. Caught over 40 fish! The fish right below this was released before the “group pic” because it was hooked deep and we didn’t want to risk killing it, but she was a 6.5 pounder!

 

 

 

 

 

September 26, 2008

Lake Simcoe

 

I decided to fish a different area of the lake than I usually do in the fall. Go big or go home right!? I looked for the same features that I do in my other areas and after 3 fishless hours, it finally paid off. We spanked em! I got em on jerkbaits, Kelli on spinnerbaits and my dad on a tube!

 

 

 

October 12, 2008

Twelve Mile Lake

 

Some of the best October weather I can recall. We spent the weekend at Kelli’s cottage just smashing the smallies on jerkbaits!!!

 

 

 

 

BASS TOURNAMENTS

 

June 28, 2008

Lake X

 

Every year on opening day, our club holds a tournament where the member must fish with a girl or a child. The lake is a small lake, so I don’t want to reveil it, if it is very relevant, you can probably search it on our club’s website (www.barriebassmasters.org)

I fished this year with my cousin Brent. He is 15 and a member of the Junior Bassmasters program where he has now won 3 tournaments! I’m pretty proud of him.

Anyways, we caught fish almost all day on spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, tubes and spider grubs! We weighed our biggest 5 for 16.50 pounds and finished 1st

 

 

July 24, 2008

Lake Champlain

 

What an awesome fishery! Ryan and I found a spot today that was LOADED with big smallies, we weighed 17 pounds, the 3rd best weight over the 2 days of the tournament!

 

 

 

August 6, 2008

Lake Dalrymple

 

This was the 3rd stop on the Bass Pro Shops Employee Series. Cal and I caught all of our fish before 9am. The bigger fish came on Carolina Rigs on deep edges, the 3 pounders were on frogs up shallow. We weighed 18.56 pounds, including a 5.12 largie and a 4.84 largie, and we placed 1st. Big fish weighed was 5.48 by Eva Louie.

 

 

August 13, 2008

Lake Couchiching

 

This was a Barrie Bassmasters afternoon event. I started off fishing shallow and kept catching all 1-2 pound fish so I went to deeper weeds where I caught all of my better fish. Barrie has a 4 fish limit per angler, but we weigh 8 fish as a team. Our 4 fish goes towards Angler of the Year points and the 8 fish goes towards our team weight to win the money.

 

My 4 fish went 13.55 pounds and I had big fish with a 4.40 pound largemouth. Our team weight was 24.65 pounds. I placed 1st as an individual and we placed 1st as a team.

 

 

 

September 21, 2008

Lake Muskoka

 

This was the final tournament on the Barrie Bassmasters schedule. I needed to place 3rd or better to win the Angler of the Year award, and the guy in 1st needed to place 5th or worse.

 

The day started off slow, the I found the fish and POUNDED them! Best day I’ve ever had on that lake. My 4 fish went 13.85 pounds and my big one was 4.55

I have never caught a 4.55 on that lake so I was sure I’d win big fish too. My dad came in with a 6.15 largemouth!!!

Anyways, I placed 1st and the guy that was 1st placed 7th so I won First place and Angler of the Year!! Pretty exciting!

 

 

 

October 15, 2008

Lake Couchiching

 

This was the Classic for the Bass Pro Shops employee series. The top 10 teams qualified. I had fished our club classic on Cooch just 2 weeks prior and although I didn’t do very well. I caught 2 fish over 3 pounds in the last 15 mins of that tournament on a spot I had found, so we figured we’d start there. We caught 3 fish arouns 3-3.5 pounds right away.

We then moved to Big Chief and caught another 3.5 pounder. Another move to Cooch Point, caught a 3 pounder. Fish turned off after 11am and never caught another fish! We got our 5 and weighed 16.50 pounds to take first place and the Championship!!

 

 

 

This was by far my best season as far as tournament success goes, I hope to have another good season ahead of me!

 

Thanks for reading, or scanning the pics, hope you all enjoyed, I know I did!

 

There's still a bit of time left in the year, and I just got my new float reel so I'm excited to do some more chromin', but for now, here she is.

Edited November 21, 2008 by steverowbotham

[snag]

Amazing

 

I was thinking about how much fish you'd have in the freezer if you kept them.

 

You'd need a walk-in freezer the size of a house!

 

Impressive.

 

[tinbanger]

you fish for more than smallies !!

 

Seriously , an excellent report.

 

TB

[trapshooter]

Thanks for the shout out Steve. lol

 

That is great report there yourself. You had some excellent multi-species fishing this year with loads of big fish. Congratulations on the tourney success as well. Good luck in BC.

[tbayboy]

Great recap Steve even if it's only November - funny how snow makes you want to look over the years pics . You had another great year - can't wait to see what's up your sleeve next year.

[lew]

You boated alot of nice fish this year Steve, specially some of those hog bass

[johnnyb]

Awesome report -- and a great year!

[steverowbotham]

Thanks guys, it was a great year. Next year will bring much different reports as I am planning a move to BC. I wonder if there's a BCFNcommunity ??

[misfish]

I wonder if there's a BCFNcommunity ??

 

Maybe you could start one Steve????????????

 

Great report and you did real well this year. Oh to be young and have the time.LOL

 

Thanks for taking the time and best of luck to you out west.

[Moosebunk]

 

Very nice Steve. Good hodge podge of species and some bigguns too. Like the bows very much and those lengthy pike are some good fish as well.

 

Good luck in the 09 dood.

[sharper]

Nice recap of your year.

[Leecher]

Great review report and beautiful pics Steve

 

Most impressive

Again great job and keep on fishing

Thanks for sharing and best of luck for next soft water season

Leechman

[Rustic-Fisher]

Nice purple rain suit Barney!!!!!

 

Good season, cool pics,

We'll do the ice fishing thing this year!

 

 

RY

[MCTFisher9120]

Very nice year summary report. Now im thinking of doing my own now...think this is the second summary i have seen so far.

 

 

Thanks for Sharing

[Whitespinnerbait]

Very, Very impressive report......Man, those smallies are something else

 

Congrats Dude

[steverowbotham]

thanks everyone, it certainly was a fun season

[Stern Rules]

I wish I had half the year you did. Good job.

[Roy]

Steve, you've had a stellar year and I thank you for taking the time to put it all together for us to enjoy. There's not a heck of a lot I can add to what's already been posted but, if I may, there's one thing that caught my eye and I'm sure that most others noticed as well.

Ben posted his year end recap not long before you did (His is a super report also). You read his report and appreciated it as much as the next guy BUT, you also took the time to mention Ben's report in your opening comments. That speaks volumes for your character Bud.

 

Thank you again Steve. Your Dad has one more thing to be proud of and we're glad, as a community to have you with us.

 

Good luck out West. I just hope you keep posting.

[Radnine]

Hey Steve,

What a great report. Thanks for it.

Just how much time do you spend on the water (sorry if you mentioned it in the text of your report, I only buy this magazine for the photos!)?

Ontario's loss is BC's gain. In Ontario there are about 1000 bass smiling to themselves.

Safe travels.

Jim

[TroutnMuskieHunter]

What a great year you had ...congrats and thanks for posting all those pics!...really enjoyed them

[Fishmaster]

Looks like you had a awesome 2008 fishing still got a month or so to add some more ...

[steverowbotham]

Hey Steve,

What a great report. Thanks for it.

Just how much time do you spend on the water (sorry if you mentioned it in the text of your report, I only buy this magazine for the photos!)?

Ontario's loss is BC's gain. In Ontario there are about 1000 bass smiling to themselves.

Safe travels.

Jim

 

I keep a very detailed log, and this year I spent 66 days on the water, including the hard stuff. Seems like a lot, but considering last year I spent 131 days out, this year just didnt seem like enough lol. I'm lucky to have the time, and a girlfriend (of 4 years) who understands the passion, and not only encourages it, but tags along many of the times.

[steverowbotham]

thanks again everyone

[fishindevil]

Congrats on your awesome year steve,and all your tourney wins,as well as angler of the year !!!! keep up the hard work next year...cheers

[steverowbotham]

thanks devil. I expect there will be a lot more trout/salmon reports next year...