The Baron

Oh, great - my local shop sells them too. d**n it. 😂

@TnRiver46 There are so many frogs with bells and whistles now, it’s almost too much. But I was talking with the owner of the very excellent local fishing store I frequent about frog fishing and he was talking about the Spro paddletail legged frog as a great search bait. He wasn’t trying to sell me one, but I said you talked me into it I’ll try one. It’s got very sturdy hooks, casts very well due to its weight and even though I thought that bowfin destroyed it everything went back together like new. I’m not sure if I have any other Spro frogs, but I’m impressed with the quality.

I’m late to the party - looks like I missed some good fishing. @Bluebasser86 Congratulations to Lake, on the board on what looked like a tough bite. And to you for the win, of course. 👍🏻 @Dominat0r Sounds like you moved to a good spot, when you can fish every day.😎 I can’t remember where I left off here… oh yeah, was out last Saturday and Wes absolutely annihilated me at frog fishing. Not sure I posted about that yet, it might have been too traumatic. lol We went out to a new lake yesterday afternoon-evening. It was too hot at the start and the first bay we chose was dead, but cooled a bit and the bite got decent after about 6pm catching 5-6 each. I caught my first and biggest on a spinner bait, then was fishing a Spro Flappin’ Frog. It’s a pretty neat bait, like a more subtle buzzbait in open water or fish it right in the pads like any other frog. I caught a few on it, the first was about a 5# bowfin that gave me a great fight. No pics though, he spit my frog in the net and the hooks got very tangled up. I thought about picking him up for a quick photo, but he didn’t like that and I didn’t want to mess with him when there was hooks in the net so I just reversed the net in the water and let him go. 👋🏻

Same here - 7” is about my cutoff for photos. 😝 My 14yo. son watches YouTube videos, but seldom finishes one - his attention span is about 5 minutes max. thanks to endless scrolling of TikTok type clips.🙄 Thankfully his attention span on the water is much longer and, even with no livsecope on our boat (lol), he’s getting quite good at fishing. He put on a frog clinic Saturday morning - I ended up watching his technique/cadence and having him give me tips, because the way he was working his frog blew me out of the water on numbers. Still young enough that I had to unhook most of fish though. lol

lol - Not so fast @ol'crickety… I started with a fluke Tuesday evening. Caught one pike while Wes had 3-4 blowups and landed one/lost the monster bass, so I switched.😊 That said, from a canoe it’s probably easier to get a hook in with a fluke. But yeah @TnRiver46 I was throwing (have thrown before) a fluke on a 1/8oz. belly weighted swimbait hook and also sometimes weightless. It comes over pads surprisingly well and sometime when you let it sink into a hole… 💥 😎

We have had days where they seem to eat it much better, and even I get decent hookups. Last evening even Wes thought they were just angry swatting at it, not sucking it right in. Don’t know what that means - change color? Or frog size? 🤷🏼‍♂️

40# braid on a 7’4” heavy/fast rod. For me, I know it’s my timing - I react too fast, can’t seem to give them that second or two that “they” say it needs. My hooksets are sometimes too lazy. Wes is much more violent - sometimes he hooks up, sometimes we duck frogs. 😆

Wes is super keen on fishing right now, so we went out after work Tuesday. We went right back to an area of shallow pads where we were catching some on Sunday evening. Wes started out with a frog and I was throwing a white fluke. I caught one pike to Wes’ 3-4 blow ups and one landed bass, so I followed his lead and got to froggin’. Shortly before I switched, Wes cast up past a patch of floating grass in the pads, about 5ft. off shore and in 2ft. of water. As soon as he passed the grass he got whacked, and bowed his 7’4” heavy rod over on what looked like a good hookset. They all seem big when you’re winching them out of the pads, and he got her out of there OK to the 4ft. deep open water. I picked up the net, and watched his line swimming fast toward the back of the boat under tension, then the beast jumped and we both gasped at the size of it as his frog got thrown.😱😩 I’m guessing it was well over 4#, maybe 5 or better which would have been a new PB for Wes. I was proud of him that, although disappointed, he didn’t dwell on the heartbreak and went right back to catching them. As usual, our hookup percentage was dismal (mine was zero 😒) but we had multiple blow ups and a ton of fun. We were mostly just happy we found fish - a triumph in itself this year. And the sunset on the shoreline was beautiful. Oh, and we added some Bass Pro velcro rod straps to our little dream boat. Very happy with them and it’s way better than our rods being a jumbled up trip hazard. 👍🏻

I was up north for work last week (Thunder Bay area) and came back to some much improved fishing. A buddy and I were on the water at 5:30am at a favourite small lake, and the fish actually cooperated. We started on a long underwater point and I had some luck with a couple good smallmouth (3.2# and 3.7#) on an underspin with a white paddletail. After about 45 min. I picked up my cranking setup. Went to bomb my first cast, and as I did I notice the line was looped at the end but it was too late to react and I pulled the second rod guide off because the line had been looped behind it. 😕 Still functional, so I went to cranking parallel to the slope/weedline in 12-16ft. of water and picked up a nice largemouth on my third toss but then crickets with the crankbait. After a while I switched gears and threw a Tokyo rigged 10” Power Worm around the inside curve of the weed line, closer to shore in 8-10ft. of water. I picked up a couple 2-2.5# lmb within 5 minutes - I love that 5/0 hookset.😁 My buddy had caught a few and lost a few, so within about 1.5 hours of fishing we were into double digits.👍🏻 We fished some more weed lines and settled on 8-10ft. of water right on the weed edges as the pattern. Both of us dragging worms and we caught another 10 or so in an area that’s been good to us in the past, but that was over about 2 hours. That bite died, so we moved to a little hot spot I’d found on a previous trip. It’s a very specific spot in about 14ft. of water where there’s a tree top with weeds on the bottom, or maybe it’s a rock covered in weeds (if I think of it next time, I’ll idle over it and take a pic of my graph to see what you guys think it is). We rolled up on that, hit Spotlock and I told my buddy the cast to make. The fish were there, and between his TR worm and my Berkley Hit Worm on a dropshot we boated 6 more 1.5-2.5# lmb in about 15 minutes. 😎 By then it was about 9:30am and the heat quickly got bad (88F, humidex 100F - that’s extremely hot for up here). We pressed on fishing for another 1.5 hours with only a couple small bites, then called it a great morning and bailed. I turned the AC in the truck to “Canadian” and by the time the boat was packed up it felt like heaven in there. 😊 I got home about 1:30. Wes (my son) made me an awesome 2 egg sandwich on a bagel, then I shaved, showered, and absolutely crashed for a 2.5 hour nap. Wes was suuuper pumped about fishing and I’d told him we’d go in the evening. Wes had to wake me and I was not too thrilled about going back out in the heat, but it wasn’t too bad once we were on the water around 6pm. We went out on a different lake and caught about 1/2 dozen each, including a nice fattie for me on a frog. Wes don’t want any pictures of him or his fish, said they weren’t big enough. So after struggling through July, today was a great day of fishing - hopefully I’ve turned the corner on my summer slump. 🤞🏻

@NorcalBassin I absolutely love seeing stuff like this. Fishing with my kids are my most special days. My son is a keener, my daughter likes fishing but all conditions need to be perfect - not early, not too hot, not for too long… lol

My son and I fished a private access lake Friday afternoon-evening, on invitation from a friend. My friend claimed the lake had plenty of 5-8# bass in it… but a 6# bass up here is a very rare catch and over 7# would be big news in the local fishing world. So I was excitedly optimistic, but skeptical. My friend fished in another boat with a buddy and not too long after we started fishing they had a big one on. We were only 50 yards apart and hearing “oh, yeah that’s a big one!”… “get the net”… “look at the size of the mouth!”… excited laughing… high-fives… Wes and I were riveted with anticipation for the monster to be revealed… then a fat 2.5# was hoisted high for us to see and “look at that one!” shouted to us. Right away I knew we likely had the only scale to ever grace these waters.🫢 All humour aside though, this little 8 acre oval provided good fishing and we caught several 1.5-2.5# fish which made me plenty happy after so many 1-3 fish outings. That said, the fishing was up and down through the day. This is a natural lake, fed and drained through a swamp/small creek on either end, the deepest hole being 15ft. the east end with most areas 6-10ft. The lake is rimmed with a fringe of lily pads, the bottom has submerged weeds everywhere… and bass seemingly everywhere we fished. I decided to start out by frogging the entire perimeter, with Wes throwing our go-to flashy swimmer with a paddletail as we slowly graphed most of the lake to get a feel for it. I only caught a few, but missed another half-dozen bites, a few of which looked like quality (3#+) fish. They just weren’t biting the frog well, but I was having fun. Based on my bites, I coached Wes to cast right at the edge of the pads and he started catching some, most almost immediately when his bait hit the water. After one round of the lake (about 2:30-3:30pm), the 4 of us had probably caught 20-ish fish, with a few over 2#. My friend and his buddy were seriously out fishing us, drinking beer and throwing “rubber worms” when I asked what they were using. They had one spinning rod each, so I was feeling a little stupid with 8 combos in the boat and not catching as many as them. I put the frog down and I started cycling through baits while Wes started throwing a wacky rigged senko. I threw a senko, Texas rigged 10” worm, flipped a beaver, a chatterbait, spinnerbait, whopper plopper… and we went through a painfully dry spell of probably 2 hours, even our buddy’s bite almost shut off. My buddy said this was the worst day of fishing they’d ever had, and I was was thinking yes of course because I’m here and I’m cursed this year.😖 But then he “mentioned” that one of the other owners on the lake (there are only three) had seven guys up fishing for the past week. So, 8 people fishing an 8 acre lake for 7 days straight. Adding at least 2 of those fishermen were on the water sunrise-dark every day.😒 That really burst my bubble, because I thought there were only 2 owners on the lake and only my buddy fished it occasionally. Oh well - I guess any lake you can drive to and launch a boat in ain’t gonna be untapped. I just didn’t expect the poor little lake would have been hammered by 600+ man hours of fishing the prior week. 😭 Anyway… our spirits slowly sank as the other boat enjoyed a beer fuelled dink fest. Then, I finally cracked the nut. Wes somehow got his line wrapped under the spool of his spinning reel and while I was fixing that a 1.5# grabbed his senko and I had to hand line it in. That was unrealized clue #1. I kept cycling baits with zero bites, then Wes blew up his bait caster and while he was trying to fix it a really good bass grabbed his paddletail off the bottom. Wes said “I’ve got one, what do I do!?” and I heard it jump, but didn’t see it. Wes went into panic mode saying it’s huge. I said just hand line it in, and there was a brief struggle then it was into the deeper weeds and gone (no hookset at all). Wes was frustrated, and now his line was a total mess so I said I’ll fix it. I didn’t realize his bait was still laying on the bottom and while I was trying to fix things another small bass grabbed his bait. That’s when the light bulb came on. I ended up cutting off a bunch of almost brand new FC Sniper (😩) then we were both back in the fight. I said the key is fish slow… like, deadstick slow. I tied on a weightless white fluke and we proceeded to cast onto/close to the pads and work very slowly back into the deeper water with 5-10 second pauses to let out bait sit. That was the ticket and we started catching ‘em. By now it was about 7pm and the evening bite started picking up for everyone. In the last half hour, I switched to a popper and got several bites by just casting it out and waiting 10 seconds, then if nothing grabbed it I’d give just a few twitches and long pause again. I only hooked half the fish that swirled on the popper, as the “bites” seemed very lazy. All in all, a good day. I do really look forward to trying again when the weather cools a bit - my fried still swears there’s much bigger bass in there.

Nice bass! 😎 A 6# largemouth is a once every third year fish up here, if you’re lucky! Amazingly, for those who fish Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River 5-6+lb. smallmouth are far more common than largemouth of that size.

I’ve been having a rough time of it in July - the summer grind is definitely here, and has been for too long. How shallow is shallow where you are? If cranking squarebills, you definitely want to focus on shade whether it be from the tree line itself or any structures (docks, logs, rocks, etc). If you can find deeper water, I’ve got almost all my cranking fish in 14-16ft. of water, off ledges where the shallow weeds start to taper off. That’s in fairly clear water, your weeds may end and/or the fish find lower light in shallower water if your water is strained.

Our go-to wacky setup is either a Yamamoto or Yum Dinger, always with a 1/16oz. VMC jighead, occasionally 1/8oz. if fishing a bit deeper. The Senko falls a bit faster than the YD, but both have better action with a weighted head IMHO.

… what would you get? I prefer sub $200-ish. I keep dialing in my combos and want to pickup a new frogging reel. Right now I’m using a Curado DC 151 8:1. I don’t need the DC feature and last good frogging day my drag was slipping when I had to really drag out of thick pads. I do like the 8-speed, but will step down if that’s better for heavy pulling.

Gah, losing three good ones is rough! It’s too easy to arm chair analyze, but maybe the softer rod and hybrid line add up to just a little too soft to get a good hookset on a big fish? Maybe try swapping the reel to a MH/fast rod? Could be no different, but I throw spinner baits on a fast rod with fluorocarbon and haven’t had any issues landing fish… but I can’t recall catching any spinnerbait fish over 3# either.

That sounds like a great day!😎 Have you been using whatever topwater bait the fish were missing? Might be time to change the hooks. If doing that, I’d add a feathered treble as well.

That map is interesting - haven’t seen it before. I checked a few small lakes that are on my radar and it doesn’t list fish species. I’ll take a better look on the computer this weekend. 👍🏻 But, unfortunately, there aren’t many logging roads in south/eastern Ontario, with very little crown land other than the various Parks. There are gravel roads, but not many uncharted lakes. Certainly could be better fishing on some of those smaller lakes, but there’s very few without cottages or even landlocked by private land so it would take some time to search out the hidden gems. Northern Ontario is a much different story, but too far away for me to day trip (I’m not a camper). All that said, I like fishing from our boat and there’s no reason I shouldn’t be doing much better on the lakes I’ve been fishing - just seem to be struggling this year. Still lots to learn and skills to acquire.

My summer fishing has been generally very poor. I’ve fished far too much for a handful of fish each time, with only a few over 3# and a couple over 4#. Of about 20-25 outings, I’ve only had three days I’d call good and only one day when we weighed a decent five fish bag (17#). Thankfully that day was shared with my son, which made it even better. I took two weeks off in early July to fish, and when it was over I was actually glad I was going back to work and wouldn’t feel obligated to keep banging my head against a wall trying to have a good day of fishing. I’ve found myself actually coming home angry about fishing, but I know that’s dumb and maybe I just expect too much. I actually think I fell into the social media trap this year, seeing everyone else’s photos and thinking I’m the only one who sucks at fishing. When in reality, some of my own posts are of me smiling with a decent fish… and no one seeing it would know that was the only good fish I caught all day. All irrational stuff and I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year (fishing success and associated mental-health wise). 🤷🏼‍♂️ I was out with my son last Sunday and we caught only 2 bass (on was tiny) and a pike for almost three hours of fishing. He complained it was so slow, I said yeah this is how it’s been. He asked me then why do you keep going fishing? It actually took me several seconds to answer and what came out was “because I keep hoping maybe it will be better next time”. 🤞🏻😒

Curious what rods those are @A-Jay ? I feel like there’s good value for money and very solid options at $150-$200ish CDN (probably $100-$150 USD) for any rod or reel. For myself personally working in that price range, I’m gravitating strongly toward the Diawa line. I’ve been steadily growing my lineup over the last few years, getting a lot of my reels off FB marketplace to save money so been mostly buying what’s a good deal. I’ve ended up with a Couple Curado DCs that I don’t love any more than the Diawa cc80 I just got, and I’ve got a Shimano Stradic and Ultegra that sit at home while I fish a Diawa Revros that is on the deck constantly and a pleasure to fish with. So for me, I feel like Diawa gives me a lot more satisfaction than Shimano in the low-mid range pricing. I’m a little less dialed in on my rods with my collection all over the map, but feel like Lews offers great value in their Speed Stick line. I’ve got more St. Croix rods than any other brand (Bass-X and Mojo Bass) and like those a lot. But I’ve also got Dobyn’s, Okuma, Diawa and Halo rods that I’m very happy with. I’m getting close to filling all the slots of combos I “need” and may be phasing a few older things - likely with Diawa reels. I’m sure as I gain more experience I’ll keep dialing in rods and reels for specific techniques, with the natural progression likely being more expensive options.

Yeah, I was away from the sport for a very long time so gravitated to the Rapala name which was a mainstay “back in the day”. I’ll be trying others, but am happy with the DT14 so just added a DT10 and DT16. I do like the simplicity of the name vs. some others that aren’t so self explanatory - pretty handy for a beginner.

My fish pics are about the same. I’m 6’4” and XL leather gloves fit like spandex so all my mister fish look small. 😂🤫😂

Didn’t slay them, but I got 3 decent ones with a 100% landing rate. That was on a lake I’ve only fished once before so not terrible. I’m still dreaming of the day I crank up multiple fish from a fired up school - maybe that’ll be next time. lol

Very nice! I'm off shortly to do some deep cranking myself - which I've just got onto and am starting from near zero experience. I got a few my first time at it, hopefully I do as well as you today! 😎🤞

I snuck out this morning before work, mostly to test a new rod I bought yesterday for my dedicated deep cranking setup (Lew’s 7’6” MH/moderate “Perfect Crankbait” Rod with a Shimano Curado DC 151 and 14# FC sniper). That said, I started out at dawn with a Whopper Plopper and caught a few smb/lmb, one monster rock bass and a 3#-ish pike. The first lmb (in photo) was bleeding so I put him in the livewell for 15 minutes, after which it appeared to have stopped. He was harder to get out of the livewell than he was to catch in the first place - very feisty and swam off immediately.🤞🏻 Then I got to cranking over mixed coontail and sparse weeds in 14-15ft. of water off a flat. Am thrilled that the setup will bomb cast a country mile. Caught a 2.5# lmb on my third cast, which made my morning. I moved to an offshore hump and fished the ledge where it falls from 10-30ft. I another 3 lmb, and a pike. One of the bass came in with 4-5 buddy’s chasing him, but that was my last bass. I’m quite happy with the new cranking setup, especially with the rod for $100 CDN. 👍🏻