valleybassman

Happy Bass Day (Day 2)

Day two did not start out as well as day one on Calabogie Lake did. We were up around 4:30am and it was already raining. The sky was clouded over and the wind was blowing steady. My brother in law Jordan Ranger and our friend Chezzy and I went down and launched out onto Constant Lake in zone 15. We started out fishing Constant Creek from the launch in Balaclava which feeds from the main lake. The creek is lined with stumps and lay downs both in and out of the water all along both sides of the creek. We spent a good hour on the trolling motor casting senkos, buzzbaits and one of us was using a Heddon crazy crawler on spinning gear in and around all the stumps. We had a bunch of fish all around the one and a half pound range but no monsters. On the last corner of the creek just before it opens up into the main lake, I landed a chunky little three and a half pound largemouth off of a submerged stump. Out onto the main lake, we pulled into a bay that we had fished the previous year on opener and had very good luck in. We were throwing senkos and having the same results we found in the creek. I'll never complain about catching fish but we were looking for something a little bigger. We headed down lake and tried a bay we'd never tried before. The water was shallow and the wind and rain had started picking up so we figured our chances were slim on finding anything. Chezzy cast a Wave Worm Bamboo stick into a bunch of pads by the shore and his line took off. He set the hook and landed a 5lb bass. I knew the size before we weighed it as he'd had a hot stick the day before and landed two five pound largies on Calabogie. We continued to follow the shoreline of this bay which was small lay downs and stumps combined with some bigger lily pads. I was casting my Blackhawk Custom Baits pole dancer in halo colour in between the pads and the cat tails on shore when I set the hook on my second three and a half pounder of the day. By the time we got down the the back of the bay the wind and rain had intensified yet again so we spent a good chunk of time with out heads down just motoring out of that bay taking the odd cast here and there at structure we thought looked good. We made it to the end of the bay and were rounding the corner to head to the backside of an island when Chezzy loaded up with his second five pound largie of the day on the same Wave Worm on a bunch of pads right along the shore line. We spent the next hour probing the bay for any other giant bass that might be lurking around but to no avail, couple of snags, couple of lost baits to pike and the constantly intensifying weather finally got the better of us and we called it quits around Noon. None of us could really complain about that though with the weekend we just had.

Single Launch. Free

Lots of parking. Single launch.

Single boat launch. Free launch. Moderate parking.

Single launch. Limited parking

Single boat launch. Free parking. Lots of parking spaces.

Smaller launch, moderate parking, Parking pass required.

Larger boat launch. Launch fee required. Ample parking

Small free public boat launch. Limited parking.

Early spring Pike

It was an unseasonably warm day on May 12th so my buddy Nathan Wainman and I decided to head out on White Lake, Ontario in zone 18 for some much overdue pike fishing. It was a very long winter and I was chomping at the bit to get some open water fishing under my belt for this year. We pulled into the launch around 9:30am, got our gear into the boat and were ready to go. Looking around the lake from the launch we decided to try the closest bay to see if we could find some post spawn pike lurking in the shallows. With water depths ranging from 2 to 5 feet and the bay being full of freshly emerging weeds and wood cover, this looked like the perfect place to start. 3 casts into our trip I ended up hooking a smaller largemouth bass who hadn't started spawning yet on a top water popper my good friend Benny Edwards made for me all the way from Australia. After a quick release we left that side of the bay and headed to the other side. A few more casts later and I had another bass on the popper. We left the bay as not to disturb any more bass and tried out in a little deeper water to see if we could pin point some pike. We drifted with the wind out of the bay, slowly moving over depths of 3 feet, to 5 feet to 8 feet. It was in about 5 feet of water, Nathan got his first fish of the day. We'd finally found the pike. He was using a 6'6" spinning rod and monofilament line. His lure of choice was a single blade spinner from Demonic Custom Tackle tipped with a live minnow. I had put the popper away and changed to a Mimix Corp Jaws Buzzbait and was on my 6th or 7th cast when another pike came out of nowhere and crushed my lure. I was using a 7'6" Heavy Quantum rod and Pflueger Supreme baitcasting reel spooled up with 65lb Sufix 832 Braid. Some twenty minutes went by with no more action on the top water buzzbait and a couple more smaller pike landed on Nathans' spinners made me change out the buzzbait for a Demonic Custom Tackle spinnerbait, or SINnerbait as they call them. This one was in a black and purple pattern. With that we headed up the next shoreline in search of some bigger fish. Wind drifting again out from shore to deeper water, we hit a couple more pike but in a little bigger size this time. The wind seemed to die down a wee bit so we headed down the lake to try another couple of spots to see if we could find water that was the same depth as what we had been catching the fish in previous. We spent the next couple of hours jumping from bay to bay and finding fish but by no means were they giants. One even gained himself a brand new black and purple spinnerbait. We boated 20+ fish in the 6 hours we were out and for the first trip on open water this year, I'll take it.

Bass bite for Team Leighton

A report from Robert Leighton, Angler's Atlas field staff volunteer in Dacre, Ont., about a team effort on Constant Creek: My son loves to go fishing. Even at five years old, he asks me to take him all the time. We go down to the local boat launch and we'll fish for hours. I remember on bass opener here in Ontario, which is the 4th Saturday in June in the zone we live in, we got down to the launch and parked the truck. After getting our rods rigged up we proceeded to throw soft plastic stick baits into the creek. I was using a custom purple and green Rego Stick from The Rego Tackle Company and my son was using a straight purple by the same company. He got his second fishing rod for Christmas. By having two rods (a five-foot, six inch Ugly Stick and a six-foot Camo HT spinning) it's easier for him to fish different lures without having to stop and tie something on a single rod over and over again. About the second cast with my Bass Pro Shops seven-foot Bionic Blade and Pflueger President spinning reel, I could feel a tug at the end of the 8-lb. Stren monofilament. I reeled down and set the hook. There's no better feeling than that first fish of the season. I looked over at my son and wondered why he was looking upset. "What's wrong chum?" I asked him. "I'm never going to catch a fish," he said with sorrow in his voice. I had to come up with something to raise his spirits and keep him interested in fishing. Remembering my tournament seasons, I said, "Buddy, we're a team. It's exactly like when Daddy used to fish tournaments. Both of us catch fish and it counts towards the total for Team Leighton." The smile immediately jumped back onto his face. "Really, Daddy? We're a team?" He asked. "There's no one else I would rather have on my team than you, chum." I reassured him. We fished until it got pretty hot and went home to cool off for a while. He asked me again a couple of hours later if we could go back out again. We hopped in the truck and decided to try another spot. Our second spot produced six more largemouth bass to add to the four from the morning. He got upset a couple more times, so I had to remind him that we're a team and all these fish count for our total. We ended opening day with 12 largemouth bass that were all safely released. Since the opener, "Team Leighton" has just over 20 largemouth bass, two smallmouth bass and a couple perch. I lost count a while ago of the sunfish. Team Leighton consists of me, my wife, my son, 5, and my daughter, 2. We've all contributed to our team count and my son asks me everyday if we can go fishing. This was my goal from the start so he didn't lose interest in our great sport. He's landed four or five bass all on his own and tells me every time we go that he's out to catch a big one. To me, there's a difference between taking your kids with you when you go fishing and taking your kids fishing. By taking them, you instil a love for a sport that can be passed on from generation to generation and give them a sense of accomplishment that no video game could ever do. My son is learning some valuable lessons, too, like how to release bigger bass (our biggest is about a 3-lb. largemouth) and how to work different lures like a frog, spinnerbait, crankbait, etc. Just remember, for kids, it's hard to beat the standby bobber and worm when the fishing gets tough. In photo: One for the team.

Big walleye hooked from dock

Robert Leighton, Angler's Atlas field staff volunteer in southern Ontario, reports on a Lake Ontario walleye catch he'll not forget: I'm not sure when I turned against two-piece rods. Since fishing tournaments, my whole rod collection has become one-piece fishing rods and my two-piece was put away. Taking a trip down to Napanee for a friends' wedding anniversary party forced me to bring my split pole out of retirement because the one-piece rods won't fit in the car. My brother-in-law and I decided to sneak away about two hours into the party to head down to the Amherstview ferry pier as we had a hot tip that big walleye were biting just after the ferry left for the island. Reluctantly, I brought along that old two-piece Abu Garcia Max Action rod (it was better than nothing) and Shimano Sienna reel, spooled with 17-pound Stren monofilament, and tied on an orange and yellow Reef Runner. The water off the pier drops off considerably with enough depth for the ferry to dock. It was shortly after midnight and we had been there about three hours, just the two of us and a family of three, with no indication there were even fish in the water other than the odd carp and gar pike you could see swimming lazily in the water under the glow of the lamppost. I decided to try something different. I tied on an orange-and-white lunker hunter from War Dog Lures. I cast out as far as I could, let the newly designed spinnerbait sink to the bottom and slow-rolled it back to the pier. On my fourth cast, I could feel the rod load up. I reeled down so my rod was level with the water, heaved back and set the hook. I don't have a lot of experience fishing at night, so I could only go by feel as to what this fish was on the end of my line. I would reel up a few feet and the fish would pull a couple back. By this point, I knew it was a bigger fish. Somewhere between five to 10 minutes later and I had it up to the pier. My brother-in-law climbed down a dock ladder to retrieve the mystery fish and almost dropped it back into the water. When he slid it over the railing, I was beside myself with excitement. It was in fact, a walleye, a BIG walleye. Seeing as I left my camera at the house (of course) we took a quick weight of it and my brother in law snapped a pic on his camera phone -- 9 lbs. 8 oz., breaking my previous personal best by 3 lbs. We released it back into Lake Ontario as a chill started to take to the air, and fished for another hour with not so much as a nibble. The only action was from our lures getting snagged on the break where the water comes up from 30-plus feet to about 15 feet at an almost wall-like structure where the ferry pulls in. We figured that after the ferry docked and left, the propellers kicked up all kinds of silt and debris off the bottom. The fish would come in shortly after to feed on the minnows, which in turn were feeding on the swirling specks of food in the water kicked up by the prop wash. It was definitely a night that will forever be etched in my mind as one of my greatest fishing trips. That old two-piece rod is now my trusty travel companion and has earned a place in my regular rotation.

Tomorrow is another day

Perfect ending to a perfect day on the water.