The Baron

Bob, I’m so very sorry for your loss. I’ve been absent since the ground turned white here, catching up now and I also apologize for not seeing this sooner. I cannot possibly imagine how you feel, but I’m very much aware I’m living a very good life right now. Good job, good marriage, good kids (16 and 18) and good health. And I’m for some reason aware this will not be forever, so possibly not just blessed by God for where I am, but blessed that He’s given me the awareness of how good I have it right now. Which I don’t remember everyday, especially in winter I stare at the empty part of my glass too much, but things like your strength to share give me a sobering reminder to not let any day pass without showing love to those who make my life whole. I don’t have a tattoo, likely never will, but if I were to get one it might be along the lines of what you mentioned. “This too shall pass” or “nothing lasts forever”, with the awareness that refers to things both good and bad. Life is a personal journey, for sure - wins and losses, laughter and tears, sunshine and tornadoes. Thank you for the reminder. God bless.

Our season was also “meh”. Bought a brand new Lowe Stinger 195 Bass in February (we love it - I’m very blessed to be able to afford such a nice boat). We have an early catch and release only bass season here on Lake Ontario/the St. Lawrence River that ends May 10 so my son I were super excited to get started with the new boat. But winter dragged on into an exceptionally cold/wet spring and I kept bumping our pickup time for the new boat. I finally drew the line and picked it up on a rainy day in mid-April (we’d hoped to be fishing by April 1). Took it straight to a local shop to have the dealer package basic Minn Kota swapped out for a Garmin Force, then waited another week for it to stop raining. Finally, in late April we got out for our inaugural voyage… and the new trolling motor wouldn’t steer. 😕 The boat/motor were great, but we couldn’t fish without a trolling motor. That turned into a two week process of getting the trolling motor fixed - Garmin support was great, but it wasn’t until early May we finally got out for bass. And of course the weather remained cold and wet, and we had little luck - guys who fish the lake regularly told me the cold had the bass way behind and no one did very well in the spring season. So the early season ended and we had to wait until the 3rd Saturday in June to bass fish again. Our soaking wet spring turned into a summer drought with lake levels 2+ feet low and the summer fishing was generally poor for everyone I know, largemouth especially poor with weed growth being affected by the low water. I had my hopes up for fall and we did have a couple decent days, I finally caught both a largemouth and a smallmouth over 5# but nothing really big (over 6# is the line for “really big” up here). Sadly, by early October both my son and I both tapped out on poor fishing. I’m hoping to pick the boat up today from getting winterized, and will double tarp it until next spring with hopes 2026 will be better. 😕🤞🏻

This is awesome - congratulations! 😎 It’s amazing how much an “I know I’m gonna catch ‘em” attitude can help.

We’re all done for 2025, just pulled all the gear out of the boat on Sunday. Our last couple trips were disappointing and it’s been too windy to try again. We were so excited about the year with the brand new boat, but it was a horrible cold, wet spring so our early season was a bust. Our regular season was mediocre with just a few good outings. We love the new boat and have got a little experience under our belts with these Lake Ontario smallmouth, but hopefully next year will be better.🤞🏻 Now we pray for a short, easy winter… because I ain’t got any more long ones in me. 😒

I was off last week. Didn’t fish nearly as much as I thought I would, I’m finding that fishing every other day is good for me. Partly because I’m slowing down, partly because the fishing was mediocre last week. Tuesday was an absolute pike fest - we couldn’t avoid them. Only caught a few 1.5-2.5# bass, but probably 30+ pike on a back lake, most 2-4#, one about 7-8#. I missed a couple days, then was out on Lake Ontario with a buddy Friday. It was slow, I caught a few and had a few followers. Later in the day we saw a few nice ones in 3-4ft of water (visibility is 10-12ft.) but they wouldn’t bite anything. Just a slow day, but a couple pretty ones.

The good (if there is one) about the prop is that it was already chewed up from power loading here the last trip. Then we found a shoal on the Ottawa River (while idling, looking for it 😆) and added more edge damage. So I was already calling this our spare prop and planning to get a new one, possibly stainless with a different pitch to see if we can’t squeeze a few mph out and get out motor running closer to the factor WOT rating of 5800rpm - right now we only run about 4600rpm. Anyway, we heard the thunk when Wes was loading and knew he’d hit a rock. I sometime get pretty angry about mistakes that cost me money, so Wes was probably relieved when we pulled the boat out and I looked at the prop and laughed. No damage to the skeg or the boat and the prop was already condemned. And not Wes’ fault, he did a perfect job coming on the trailer, it would have happened to me just the same. And we have to power load here - I tried wading in and cranking from where the boat stopped on Wes’ initial slide on and just couldn’t do it without the power assist.

Took Wes and a buddy out yesterday, to one of our favourite little lakes. The boys caught several up to about 2.5# with a few smallmouth sprinkled in, and Wes caught a 3# largemouth but didn’t want photos. I think because his friend didn’t care about photos Wes was playing it cool. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I caught several in our little hotspot area, of similar size to the boys. Then I suggested we move to the wind blown side of a fully submerged weed edge that drops from 4ft. to 10ft. The weed edge curves so forms a submerged bay about 75 yards across and it made sense to me the fish might be waiting for bait in there, and I was right. After catching another 2# on a dropshot, I decided to go for a bigger bite and started throwing a buzzbait. Darned it that didn’t work when a 5.15# blew up on it. I seem to be attracting skinny, ugly fish this year and she was no exception - if she was of proper fall proportions she’d have weighed over 6 for sure. Compare her shape to the 3.5# I caught about 5 minutes later. So, a good day of fishing and beautiful weather. But this lake is 2ft. low and the launch is just a spot to back in off the shore. Being so shallow it was a struggle to get off/on the trailer last time but we really wanted to fish it again. We got off/on a little better than last time, but Wes found a rock when power loading. I’ll be heading over the the local prop shop today. lol

Hi Steve! Welcome, from Kingston, Ontario.

PB alert! Congratulations @WaskaCrank12. I’ll bet that smallie put up a good fight - they’re feisty!

@Swamp Girl Yeah, a good day for sure. And we did it without FFS. lol To put it in perspective though… there was big tournament out of Kingston a couple weekends ago. There were multiple bags over 25# weighed in, two bags a hair over 29# the first day. Yes… 29# for five smallmouth. Big fish for the tournament was a 7.66# with several over 6# weighed in. This smallmouth fishery is crazy. But so are the boats we were ogling at the weigh-in… two or three big screens at both the bow and the console was standard.

Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well, what does he know because we pretty much did that yesterday on Lake Ontario and it worked.😁 Wes invited a friend who loves fishing but has never fished from a boat (nice kid, and a very well mannered guest). We blanked at our first spot even though we’d caught them there before the area looks great (10-14ft. with rock bottom and stones scattered all over). After a poor start, we headed to a spot where we have reliably caught lots of 1-2# fish, the plan being just to get his buddy into some. Wouldn’t you know it, we rolled up and Wes stuck a 5.3# about five minutes in. Not long after, I got a 5.1#. I caught a couple more 2# then we couldn’t find them again, so moved on. Made a fairly long run to a spot I’d picked off the contour maps, and with no experience here I recommend we throw moving baits and l see if we get any bites or followers before we start finesse fishing. About 8 casts in with a small bladed jig Wes landed a 5.7# 😎 Took us a while, but his buddy finally got one at the next spot - a fat 4.5# on a Ned. I’d been trying to coach him to stay in contact with his bait, but he had a bad habit of slack lining and sure enough his fish was hooked in the gullet. Luckily, I was able to safely reach in an cut the barb off so the hook slipped out and his fish swam off strong after a little rest in a well aerated livewell.👍🏻 By then the SW wind had picked up, so we left the quickly growing 2ft. waves to try for largemouth in a sheltered bay. The protected south shore produced nothing, so we jumped to the windy north shore to try some docks. I really liked the look of a big covered dock with metal posts, and sure enough I caught a 3.5# largemouth there to end the day. It was a great day, very happy that maybe we’re learning a bit about these big Lake Ontario smallmouth. I think we were doing the right things a month ago, but looking a little too shallow for big ones. And we did enforce what a tournament angler told us, that once you find them at a certain depth on a given day you can pretty much shade your map and cut out 90% of the lake. Yesterday we caught all but one of our big fish in 11-12ft. of water, nothing deeper and only the last one in 9ft after the wind and waves had come up.

Glad to hear you’re back at it! For sure a 3lb. will get your heart going! 👍🏻😎

Too easy! I had something similar happen to me many years ago. We were on a canoe trip up the Petawawa River and I was catching nice smallmouth like crazy on a Rapala rattling Fat Rap. I’d caught a ton and should have retied much earlier, but finally caught one that broke me off. I was bummed because that was my hot lure and I didn’t have a spare. But about 5 seconds later, the bass jumped and I heard my bait rattle and saw ripples on the calm water about 10ft. from where the fish jumped. I paddled over, retrieved my lure and went back to catchin’ ‘em.😁

Hey @TnRiver46 and @Peacedivision…. good fishing! But how do you guys post so many photos? I have to shrink mine to max. 2mb total pics, so they’re very grainy and four is about the most I can post. Definitely can’t post any video. 🤷🏼‍♂️

@BluegillsTightlines … social media is a cesspool. Keep posting your pics here though, please - we want to see them and hear your stories.👍🏻 Like this beautiful, fine specimen I caught today on a frog. We named her Anna… Anna Rexia.🤪 She had the head and length of a 4+, but probably weighed 2.5#