OFN October Newsletter

OFN, Ontario Fishing Network, is one of the biggest and best fishing sites around for Ontario. The message board alone has hundreds of regular users, all of which are friendly, witty, and willing to share their fishing expertise on a variety of subjects. Every month OFN puts out a newsletter with great articles, reports, photos, and videos. This month is no different than the previous. Lets take a look at the highlights in this months issue, October 2005.

“Setting Your Sights on a Trophy” by Justin Hoffman
Justin Hoffman breaks down what it takes to be a trophy hunter. Get ready to do your homework if you’re serious about catching huge fish. You can’t just go about trophy hunting in some slapdash random manner. You have to know your target, its behaviour, hang outs and more importantly when and what it likes to eat most. This means you’ll have to sit down and do some real research. Justin recommends checking out various forums online, local ministry studies, and tournament results for clues on where the trophys may be. You’re not going to want to spend all your time fishing a lake that only yeilds 40″ musky when you’re looking for 50″+ trophys. When you find a body of water that you know, through your research, has a few trophys waiting to be caught don’t mess around with those micro lures, go big, or go home. Big fish have big appetites and you want to be throwing a bait that reflects that.

Catching trophy fish, regardless of the species, is more to do with skill and advanced preparation than anything else. It takes a well-executed game plan and long days on the water, but the overall results are certainly well worth the effort. Putting the net under a rare trophy fish is the ultimate angling high, and one that won’t soon be forgotten.

The search for a trophy fish starts well in advance of getting the boat or your lures wet. In order to catch a big fish, you need to start thinking like one, and this is when preparation becomes key.

Deciding on a body of water is the number one priority. You need to specifically hit a lake that has big fish potential. An easy step to accomplish this is through the beauty of the internet. Start by checking out recent tournament results from various lakes in your region. If the Big Fish award from each tourney is tipping the scales past trophy proportions, you may have found a good place to start. Message boards or lodge advertisements are other great areas to delve into. People love to scoff about big fish being caught, and you can use this information to your definite advantage. Contact the local ministry and enquire about recent netting or electro shocking studies. (One lake I frequent for bass did a study some years ago; netting largies up to 7.5lbs and a smallie that tipped the scales at 8lbs! You can bet that I spend some time trophy hunting on that body of water!)

Continue reading “Setting Your Sights on a Trophy” by Justin Hoffman.

Scoring Big Bass with Football Jigs By Tim Allard
Tim Allard describes in detail how the football jig can be advantageous over more commonly used jigs for huge bass. Tipped with a plastic crayfish, salamander, or perhaps even a sandworm fished at a slow and steady retrieve can produce awesome results in the right conditions.

Football jigs can be effective with a rubber or silicone skirt as a flipping jig, especially on baits with a weed guard. However, one of my favorite ways to fish a football jig, and the technique I’ll be discussing here, is rigging the jig with a soft-plastic bait and dragging it along the bottom. Crayfish, creatures, lizards and tubes are some excellent choices for bodies to rig on a football jig. All these baits have appendages that dance as the jig bumps and bounces along the bottom, an enticing action to bass.

Slowly dragging a football jig and soft-plastic body along bottom will produce big bass when used in the right structure areas. The jig should be fished in relatively snag-free conditions. Try them in craggy, sharp-edged rock bottoms, and you’ll loose a lot of jigs. It’s better to drag these jigs in smooth, rock-bottom areas, mixed with sand or mud to maintain constant contact with bottom at all times.

Continue reading Scoring Big Bass with Football Jigs By Tim Allard.

OFN member submitted photo highlights for October.

Check out all the great images on the Ontario Fishing Network photo gallery!

Underwater Smallmouth Bass Video
A great underwater fishing video of a Smallmouth Bass attacking a home made spinnerbait made from components bought at Luremaking.com.

For more awesome underwater fishing videos check out Ontario Fishing Reels. I highly recommend the Musky videos section.