The Baron

Wow, that’s a rough trip for sure. But at least you got all the bugs ironed out in one go. 🤪

Great stuff! ❤️

That’s why I don’t even want to start musky fishing at my age. A buddy offered, I declined. I’m honestly not interested in throwing 1/4 - 1/2 pound baits all day, then doing figure 8’s to wrestle a beast into the net after a 6 second boat side thrashing. I’d rather hear the braid sing after jacking a big largemouth out of the weeds. 😁

😂

Yeah, a few times I went 2-3 and even 4 consecutive casts with a bite. And it was actually about 35 fish in about two hours - I lost 15 minutes after just the first fish when my lure caught a rod behind me on a back cast (been a while since I fished from the canoe, I forgot where I was) and blew up. Then it took 1/2 hour for the last two fish, the bite slowed quickly but I wanted to hit the 40 mark before I quit. Believe it or not, I recovered from this beauty! 😬😂

Aha - I didn’t know what those letters actually stood for. Thanks - and I agree!

Welcome! I was fishing with a Diawa Aird-X 7ft. medium and Diawa cc80 yesterday. With 10# Trilene Big Game, this is my light topwater setup (poppers and small ploppers). Very happy with both rod and reel, but it’s not a general use setup. But if assembling your first baitcater for bass, I’d walk into your local shop and buy a Lews combo 7ft. MH/F with an 7-speed reel and spool it with 40# braid. That’ll cover the majority of largemouth bass weed/wood fishing techniques pretty well. If not Lews, Diawa also offer great value at the lower prices IMHO - a 7ft. MH/F Aird-X and cc80 with braid would be good too.

Excuse me, I bought one of the 20 homes here so I now own the lake. Ridiculous.🙄

Our pre-spawn season was a complete bust, due to cold, wet windy weather.☹️ Certainly the big females are a lot lighter post spawn, at least until the fall. We’ll boat some 4+ through the summer, most likely when frogging or flipping. But our best chance for 5 largemouth will be in September-October. A 5++ smallmouth could come at anytime on Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River - I’m planning to spend more time at that, now that we can do it safely in the bigger boat.

I didn’t want to deal with the opening day boat launch craziness, so I channeled my inner @Swamp Girl for our back lake bass opener. I left home at 3am, did a 45 minute drive then a short canoe carry into a small lake that’s overpopulated with small bass. I did one round of the lake from 4:45am until 7:45am when the humidity started - we’ve gone from wet cold weather, straight to a heat/humidity warning.😒 Anyway… the trip did not disappoint, and I caught 40 bass in less than 3 hours. Biggest were a couple 16” and a 17”, but you can see how skinny the fish are. The 16”+ are actually the biggest I’ve ever caught in this lake, many are less than a pound. I used a light topwater setup with a small black popper, and they just kept biting it so I never put it down. Lots of bluegill snapping all over the lake and I caught a bunch of them too on my tiny #8 treble hooks. I saw turkeys, several deer, watched two squirrels fighting so fiercely they fell out of the tree in a tangled ball, heard coyotes… and saw exactly zero humans. 👍🏻 I passed a couple small boat launches on the way home, both were packed with trucks/trailers half on/off the road, way over capacity for parking.🙄 I meant to make this trip last year, glad I finally did it. I got my topwater numbers fix for sure, time to switch to a bigger boat and bigger fish.🤞🏻

I know the feeling - the dog day’s of summer (that’s August up here) were very slow for us last year. Stay cool and try the magic first hour of the morning, before the heat gets up… followed by a nice nap in the A/C. 😎

The Black Fury is a classic pike lure in northern Ontario (and probably many other areas of Canada). But everything bites a spinner. 👍🏻

We’ve got the same scale, two seasons now. Generally good, but sometimes it won’t register any weight (reads 0.0). Sometimes reset works, sometimes not. Seems random and it’s annoying when it refuses to read, but it works more often than not. If we were giving out stars, I’d say 3/5. Until I see the price of a Bubba, then I give our Rapala another star for being reasonably priced. lol

Nice one @Swamp Girl 😎 I hope your good wishes come true for Wes and me! 🙏🏻 😊 @Pat Brown … I finally went back and caught up on this thread. Congratulations on another DD and personal best. Great story about your thinking and the battle. 👍🏻

4# is solid. We “should” catch a few each season, but over 5# is a lot tougher. Once we figure them out… we might catch some of these plentiful 5# plus Lake Ontario smallies.🤞🏻 Yes, Wes is Defensive End for a local AAA team (Kingston Grenadiers). Also the long snapper on the special teams for punt, field goals and point conversion.

Well. I was going to start a new thread about our first fishing trip in our beautiful new boat. But I was four paragraphs into complaining about our long winter, cold wet spring and new trolling motor woes (all fixed, Garmin support is good). I decided that’s all behind us now… skip the negative, full speed ahead! Wes and I have been looking forward to fishing our special zone 20 (Lake Ontario/ St. Lawrence River) early bass season. Our new boat is a Lowe Stinger 195. It’s so much more sea worthy than our little Bass Tracker 165, we’ve unlocked a whole new world on these bigger waters. We got out Sunday, radar said rain but it never did so things finally went our way! Water was too cold for smallies on the big lake (44F even in the shallows) so we focussed on largemouth. Went up the river to a broad shallow flat, found 55F water and figured that’d be money. It was and we caught about a dozen, fishing bridge pilings in 2-4ft. of water. Each piling has a rock/gravel base and a solid wind was creating current around those. We were into fish right away on a red bladed jig and a red/orange spinnerbait. The reg’s say “immediate release” but we paused 2 seconds to snap a quick one of just our first fish each of 2025. 😎 Wes caught a nice est. 4# which I videod on my phone. Turned out as a 3 second video of my feet. 🤦🏼‍♂️ Our early season ends Saturday, and Wes has his first football game so this might be our only outing. Hoping the 3rd Saturday in June comes quickly and we have a good summer in the new boat. She still needs a name!

Yeah, same here @MRQturbo. Wet and windy, haven’t got out for Zone 20 bass. 👎🏻 Not much time left, hopefully at least one try. Then hoping better conditions for pike opener. 🤞🏻

I’ve got a brand new 2024 Mercury 115 ProXS. Is the Mercury Vessel View mobile app add on something worth doing? Do you consider it a nice addition, or necessary equipment? I’m trying to figure out what it will do that my gauges don’t. One question is, if I don’t get VV, how do I know the hours on my engine for maintenance scheduling?

He is, but he’s a darn sight smaller than my 6’3” / 240# self. Which is why my fish look a lot better when he holds them. 😁

Your 😝 I guess I’m just seeing things. I know he doesn’t fish like Brandon. lol

I don’t know what my PB smallmouth is, none over 5# yet so I’m not keeping track. My son caught a 5# 7oz. so I won’t weigh in officially until I’m winning. lol My PB largemouth (5.35#) was caught on an Owner Flashy Swimmer with a white 4” XZone Swammer. Best pic I have of my PB is with my buddy holding it. Tell me my buddy doesn’t look like Brandon Palaniuk!

Senkos for me, Yum Dingers for the kids. 🫢

Dang, that hurts.🙁 Congratulations on the catch. Sorry to hear the quick release.

Holy moly! Happy birthday, indeed! 👍🏻😎👍🏻

Be careful @AlabamaSpothunter… I have a truck, and I know how to use it! 😁