Way north bass guy

My wife can play the whole song on guitar and knows all the words. I’ve seen her at family gatherings, parties etc. sing and play it and nearly bring grown men to tears. Heck of a song, and a long one too. As a side note, Gordon Lightfoot was born about 45 min from where we live.

Spent all yesterday morning digging a ditch behind our house to install a French drain. We have a huge hill just behind the yard that diverts all the spring snow melt pretty much right to our house, and yesterday was maybe the last dry, semi warm day to rent the excavator. Took about 45 min to dig the ditch and 3 hours to clear and wheel by hand all the wet clay off the yard. Was a good workout for sure. Today I spent the morning installing drainage pipe and about 4 yds of clear stone, and it rained hard the whole time so the new ditch got “broke in” real quick?.

Nobody wants to see this stuff happen to anyone, let alone their kids. Hope everything works out for you guys.

Sounds to me like you need to check your guides for cracks or chips. If your getting frayed after a couple casts, I’ll bet at least one of them is missing a chunk of ceramic. That’ll ruin even the best line in no time.

We had one do that to our feeders last year, in December with almost 2’ of snow on the ground. And last week while deer hunting, there were bear tracks all over the place in the bush, I even had one come running right at me. I had to yell at him three times before he finally turned away from me, at about 10 yds. I was about a 1/4 second from squeezing the trigger on that one. I’ve never seen so many bears still awake this late in the year before, especially with the early, cold, snowy falls we’ve had the last two years.

If you put a big flat screwdriver on just the right part of the screw head, so it spins the head in the correct direction to loosen, and hit the end of the screwdriver with a hammer ( not like a maniac though, just a solid hit), it’ll knock the screw loose. Imagine the screwdriver is like a chisel, and your hitting the end of the handle with the hammer. I had to do this with one of my older boats every fall, it seemed to self tighten over the summer to the point where I couldn’t budge it, but this way always got it loose.

That’s amazing, I have the exact same allergy as you ( and reactions).

If you wait until there’s about 3-4” of snow on top of the leaves, and set your snowblower shoes real nice and low, you should be able to just shoot the whole darn mess right across the yard into the bush ?‍♂️?.

It’s a truck. If you can’t drive it without a few scratches on it (especially on the inside edge of the tailgate), you shouldn’t really be allowed to drive a truck ?. This of course is coming from a guy that uses his truck to haul materials and tools every weekday as a stonemason. Seriously though,if it’s really bugging you, just get a piece of carpet like the other guys mentioned.

The view from my “office” today. And for you southern folks, yes, that is ice all over the lake ( although not enough to be safe to fish on just yet ).

While out in the woods chasing deer today, I was able to safely walk across all the ponds and beaver floods with ease. As much as it helps to get around the woods, it also means there will be no more open water fishing for me for quite a while now.

Second time this month that the busses have been cancelled for snow, it’s not a record for here ( last year we had 5 or 6 in November ), but it’s only half way through. Hard to believe it was only a couple weeks ago I was still in the boat hammering smallmouth. Oh yeah, we’re supposed to get another 8-10” by the end of the day.

That’s funny, and must be from somewhere down south where snow is a rare thing. We’ve had it on the ground here now for two weeks and it doesn’t look like it’s gonna go away any time soon ( maybe in April or May).

A fine way to end the season indeed!

This year the Berkley Maxscent Flatworm in several colours were absolutely lights out for me. I was mostly fishing for smallmouth, but they’d work just as well for largemouth I’m sure, as I use other Maxscent baits and do very well for largemouth with them. The flatworm is fairly soft and has a lot of action, but it’s tough enough that I was able to catch quite a few smallies on one bait before it got tore up too badly. The Maxscent baits are like crack for smallies, they hammer them and do not let go.

Jig worms are always something that I totally forget to tie on once bass season comes, but the few times I have used them up here, they’ve been fantastic. We have a lot of lakes that have small cabbage beds often only the size of a couple boats, usually in 6-10’ of water that a jig worm works great at working the outside edges first to pick off the fish on the edges, then diving deeper into the beds to get whoever’s hiding inside. The beds aren’t usually too thick, and a jig worm can be fairly easily ripped off cabbage stalks without having to reel in and clean off. Thanks for the reminder of them, I’m gonna have to put a note in my boat to remember to tie one on next spring.

Well, I was gonna head to the deer woods tomorrow to see if I could stalk down a buck, but the forecast is calling for squalls bringing up to a foot of snow through tonight and all of tomorrow, and winds to over 35mph, so I guess I’ll wait until Sunday. It started snowing here a couple hours ago and there’s already easily 2” on my truck. Guess winter is here now ?

Good read 12lb. I’d say it was sort of similar for me this year in that I didn’t get out as much as I wanted to ( being self employed and with the wet spring and fall we had will do that to ya), but the times I did get out were all good time spent out there. I didn’t get a chance to try many new lakes this year, due to not having enough extra time, and I really enjoy figuring out new water bodies, but I did try out some new areas of old, well known lakes. Spring came late here so I didn’t get much early open water trout fishing in, it was straight to the big pike. We did pretty good for them, and did find a spectacular “new” local lake that’s full of nice pike, and will be explored much further next spring. Bass season was pretty good, no giants this year, but every time I was out, I did fairly well. Got some decent largemouth on flipping bites and frogging, and the smallmouth were good for numbers and a respectable size. The real gem for me this year was the later fall smallmouth on Georgian Bay. This year I spent some more time offshore with the Helix’s, and when the smallmouth started showing up in their wintering areas, we absolutely hammered them. The last time I was out, once I found the fish, I didn’t move my boat more than 40’ for over two hours, and it was a fish on literally every single drop to bottom. It was the perfect way to end the season for me. The Berkley Maxscent Flatworm on a drop shot was by far the best bait for me this fall. Like you, I also had the privilege of spending most days on the water with my 10 year old, and a few nice ones with the wife as well ( she’s more of a fair weather fisherman). My son is a lover of books, and when the fishing is slower ( in his mind), he’ll read for hours in the boat, which is great because he’s still enjoying it and I can fish. When dad starts catching them though, he’s right beside me with a rod in his hand, and this year he caught some of the biggest smallmouth in our boat. Hopefully winter is NOT a clone of the long, cold one we had last year!

I feel very similar to ya, and said this year I’m gonna wait until I can’t get the boat in the water for ice to put it away, but in the end, Mother Nature always kicks our arse this time of year. I guess I’ll just have to think positively, at least it’ll make for good deer tracking weather.

The towel has been officially thrown in here. I spent 5 absolutely miserable hours in the bush yesterday chasing deer ( well trying to chase deer). It started out as snow in the morning with an inch on the ground, but within an hour it “warmed up” just enough to turn to rain. A very cold, steady downpour for the entire time I was out there. Then the wind picked up. Pretty sure I would’ve had to step on a deer to find one out there. Now it’s supposed to turn from rain to snow today and stay that way. I’ll be in the deer woods again later this week, but the boat is hibernating now.

My wife got me a personally autographed copy of his book a couple years ago for Father’s Day. It’s a great read. I watched his show all the time as a youngster, he was a wonderful contributor to the fishing world. R.I.P.

Probably a sculpin. They look a lot like a goby and are a native species.

I just noticed it this afternoon as well. Maybe there’s some site work being done that’s slowing things down?

First fire of the year today too. Now the long wait for spring begins ?.

Give him some extra Halloween treats, those things are chock full of greatness! Seriously though, hope he feels better soon. Well, it’s earlier than usual for us, but with the long range forecast not looking any warmer, it’s time to put her to bed for the winter and go chase some deer for a bit.