The Baron

I would highly recommend going to a baitcaster. A general use 7’-7’6” heavy/fast spooled with 30-40# braid would do much better than spinning gear and still cast a senko well. Baitcasters are not hard to learn and with braid they’re pretty user friendly. With $300 or so to spend, I’d look at a 150 sized Diawa Tatula or a Shimano SLX DC (about $200 USD I think?) and whatever H rod you like that fits the remainder of your budget. I’ve got a couple Lews Speed Stick rods that I bought used when I was still setting up my arsenal, and they seem to offer great value with both still on my deck regularly. Maybe a Lews combo would be a good idea too, I’m just not familiar with Lews reels.

Things I dislike… 1. That our season up here is too short (if September and October could each be about 3 months longer, I’d be very happy). 2. People… pretty much all of them. 3. Any wind over about 10mph 4. Rainy weekends 5. The days when we catch zero bass.

It’s very hot here this week and work is slow, so my young coworker and I did some team building yeaterday morning. 😁 We launched at 4:45am into a creek that leads to a small lake with limited access - leveraging the abilities of my little Bass Tracker 165. Crazy that we could see just fine without needing lights. I caught a 2.5# (-ish) lmb in the shallow weeds where the creek meets the lake, and we saw several others cruising shallow but they weren’t very hungry. There’s a lot of algae clouds already and with very clear water, we could at times spot bass swimming over the light green algae patches. Once we got to the deeper water, I had a pack of 4 nice sized smb follow my little swim jig in, but couldn’t get bit. My partner finally caught one using a white tube on a dropshot before we changed our focus to largemouth. We ended up with about 15 fish over the next 4 hours, all about 2-3# so not a bad morning. I was using a 3/16oz. T-rigged Reaction Innovations Machete worm, but I only had two left and caught the remainder of my 7 fish on the same T-rig with a Berkley PowerBait worm. I really like the RI Machete worms, but durability is poor and I only get 2-3 bites per bait before the tail is gone. I’ve got some Zoom Speed Worms on order to try. We saw an incredible amount of bait in the lake. Hundreds of small bluegill and several times we saw large surface disturbances that were clouds of 1000’s of shiner minnows. Tried to get a pic but it doesn’t even come close to reality - that bait cloud was about 30ft. long. The fish in here are very well fed!

We finally found out @A-Jays secret to catching big smallies - he's drunk! 😆 I keep a few bottles of water on the boat, and will toss in a couple gatorades in a small soft sided cooler for a midday frogging session. But if it’s really hot (that's over 90-ish for me) I'll just fish early morning.

Awesome bass, @A-Jay Great job and congratulations. 😎

I’d recommend an 8:1 ratio on a dedicated frogging reel, spooled with 50# braid if you’re north of the 10# bass line. 65# if you’re south of it.

I definitely like Scum Frogs - they’re a very soft body and have a better than average hookup ratio for me. Good to hear they have great customer service too.

Welcome! I’m just across the pond, in Eastern Ontario.

For me it depends on the bait/hook type and species. For smallmouth, I’ll land about 70/30. For largemouth, my ratio is more like 90/10 - I do love it when that 5/0 gets driven home. But my frog hookup ratio is dismal (<50%) and I’ll lose another 50% of the ones I hook. (I’m working on that, but the learning curve is painfully long).

Yup, our first (and hopefully last - haha) heatwave of the summer just started. Forecast is for 80-85 and feel like over 100 with the humidity. That’s really hard on a Canadian at any time, but especially so early in the summer when daytime highs were still in the 60’s just a couple weeks ago. Our water temps were 70-72 but they’ll be 75 by end of the week. I expect the fishing will get tough, really fast. Our season is so darn short - just opened this past weekend. I’ve got no time for tough fishing. ☹️

The funny thing about Lake Menderchuks (for me, at least) is that finding them and catching that first really good bag produced the peak high. Then you’re back to Google maps trying to find the next one to figure out.

@Bluebasser86 Glad you were there to help and the guy was ok. But really, how hard would it be for the guy in the bass boat to fire up and move out of the way to help a fellow boater in an emergency. 🙄😡

I got out for a couple hours yesterday with my daughter, which is a rare treat (she likes fishing, but all the “conditions” need to be just right). Unfortunately, a slow day but she did catch a 2.5# so that made my Father’s Day… and she was happy too. 😊 I caught one small bass and a kicker rock bass. @IcatchDinks @gimruis 😝

Sounds like a heck of a tussle. I forget which pro referred to spinning gear as a “fairy wand”, back when they started to show up more often at tournaments.

Dang, that’s a heartbreaker @BrianMDTX. Sounds like you did the near impossible getting her out of that tree though, with “fairy wand”. lol

Our bass opener finally arrived yesterday. It felt great to get out. I’d watched a few YouTube videos about speed worms and it intrigued me, so I had a couple packs of Reaction Innovations Machete worms to try. TR with a 3/16oz. tungsten weight and a 5/0 EWG this produced 1/2 doz. fish very quickly, with a 3.1# and a 3.9# in the mix. So I handed that rod to my son and one ate it on the fall on his first cast. I picked up a TR Bandito Bug and caught a couple more bass and a decent pike - odd for one to grab a bottom bait and can’t believe I landed him on straight braid. Our first hour was fire, then the next two were dead but it was still a great opener. 😎 We did have an unusual occurrence. We’d only been fishing 1/2 hour and hit a good spot, landing 4 good bass almost back to back. I then realized a boat that had been stationary at about 100 yards from us was now less than casting distance away (he came from further out in the bay, to almost right along side us). I considered speaking my mind, but he had a couple kids with him. So I just said hi, how are you and cast right up the side of his boat where I’d been casting anyway. He didn’t get the message, but after catching nothing after 5 minutes he looped around right to where we’d been, the whole time within 60ft. of us, as we slowly moved on down the bank. 🙄

Yes, absolutely. I'm in SE Ontario and do very well on white paddletails, on either a jig head/ball head or an Owner Flashy Swimmer underspin.

The second is a Paw Paw Plenty Sparkle (c. 1950's) which were made in Michigan. They're similar enough maybe both are by Paw Paw but I was googling through photos and couldn't find an exact match for the first one. Both are a very nice find, look to be in great shape - possibly repainted? They'll look great in a collection, and I'll bet they get bit too if you wanted to throw them. https://finandflame.com/paw-paw-plenty-sparkle-lure/ https://www.mybaitshop.com/collections/paw-paw

I've not tried either of the two you mentioned. I use Seaguar Blue Label 8#, 10# or 12# and have been very happy with all - thin and relatively soft, but strong and seems to wear well.

I'm late to the party - I was about to start my own thread about GoPro's because I'm in the market for one, but thought I'd do a search first. My #1 reason to get one is the photos - I've got enough pics holding my phone at arms length, while I smear my cheek with fish slime trying to fit the two of us into another photo that looks identical to all the others. I want real hero shots like you @A-Jay and also it's likely just a matter of time until my phone goes in the lake, so I'd rather keep it safely stowed. I was thinking just buy a GP Hero 12 and be done with it, but maybe I'll try to find a lower model for a deal on FB marketplace. See how we like having a GoPro, and then upgrade for there. Q - how do you take photos? With a GP mounted on our console, can I just turn around and hold up a fish and say take a picture, or does the camera run full time and you just grab a pic out of the video?

I've got nothing to add yet, I'm still just perving all y'alls fish photos. lol. Work's been very busy, and any day I could maybe go fishing it's been raining. 😒 But, busy work means a few extra Canadian Pesos in my pocket, everyone here is healthy and our little Sea Bass is ready whenever we are. My son and I are pumped for it, and my daughter has even said she's looking forward to fishing.😁 I just need work and weather to align - so many techniques I want to catch a big ol' bass on first!

I thought our late winter pike season was gonna be on fire. We were out March 8 and water temps were still a bit cool - 40-43F in the back bay - and we caught a couple. Went out two weeks later and max. temp we could find was under 40F. Tried a smaller lake with same result, and caught zero. Now pike is closed until May 4. 😕

I replaced mine last year with pressure treated lumber and boat bunk carpet, bought at a local marine shop. Glued and stapled, was easy to do and the boat slides on easily.

22lbs. is a great day! I tried the VMC crossover rings last year, and was quite happy with them.

So many great photos, guys. 👍🏻 We’re still stuck in winter water temps here. I snuck out today on Lake Ontario, looking for some early pike with the backup plan being the early catch and release bass season. Sadly, the sunshine they promised never came and it was very cool on the water. The surface water temps on the main lake were the same as two weeks ago (35F) and the back bays that were up to 42-43F on March 8 were only 37-38F today after a cold snap last week. We didn’t even try pike fishing. I was going to try a big rock flat area for smallmouth, but with a SE wind the rollers were not to my liking in a small aluminum bass boat. So, we went for a boat ride up the Cataraqui River to have a look at where we’ll be slaying big largemouth in the summer. 😊🤞🏻 So, no fish… but I own a boat and was out on the water for the third time in March. If it was only 20 degrees warmer…