Lake Scugog Musky Report, June 24-25 2006

Since musky season opened on the first Saturday of June, Team Fury has been hard at work each weekend chasing the fish of ten thousand casts. Contrary to past musky trips, locating fish was extremely difficult. We targeted musky on Lake Scugog which is located about an hour from Toronto, Ontario. While Scugog is very close to the largest city in Canada, it hold a surprisingly high number of musky, most of which average 30-35 inches in length.

Each of our visits to Scugog fell on inconsistent weather patterns. We found ourselves in the middle severe cold fronts on our first two visits, and ideal weather on our third visit. Despite the good weather we were only able to coax one small musky to follow our bait. The fourth visit again had ideal weather. This time I set out with our friend Bill who had put me on numerous musky last summer. I felt good about the weather conditions and I knew Bill’s wealth of knowledge chasing Scugog muskies would make the trip a success.

We headed out at 1am in grand Fury style and got to the launch well before sunrise. Since we were early we decided to get a couple hours sleep before we launched the boat at sunrise. We awoke a few hours later, missing the sunrise all together. We quickly got the boat in the water, hoping to make up for lost time. There were already several boats on the water, which was expected since this was the first day of bass season in the region. While the bass fishermen hugged the shallow shorelines looking for largemouth bass, we drifted in deeper water throwing baits for musky.

There wasn’t much excitement for the first hour or two and then I finally hooked into my first musky of the year, a 30 incher caught on one of my baits I had made the week before. Not long after I set the hook into something with some weight on it, and hauled in my first legal sized fish of the year which measure just under 37 inches in length. With two musky in the boat, Bill figured it was now his turn to get some action and pulled in a beautiful 19 inch largemouth bass.

Continue reading…

Tongue Eating Fish Parasite Photos

Our good friend Adam Guy, all the way from the waters of Japan, sent me these amazing photos. We’ve talked about this tongue eating fish parasite before, but these may be some of the best photos to date that I have seen of this particular parasite. Good job Adam!

On Sunday fishing near Yokosuka I caught a fine example of Japanese horse mackerel (Trachurus japonicus) and when I was preparing the fish that evening, it turned out to be harboring a parasite known here in Japan as ‘uonoe’ (Rhexanella verrucosa). Apparently these creatures affix themselves to the tongue and help themselves to whatever the host fish eats. As you can see in the photos I have attached, with their multiple legs like hooks, they seem well adapted to their niche; I had to behead the mackerel to remove the parasite from its tongue. According to the literature here, these parasites are common in red sea bream and yellowtail amberjack (kingfish), but the two examples I have come across personally have both been in horse mackerel. In both cases, the fish appeared outwardly healthy and did not seem emaciated or unwell at all. The parasitic infection did not appear to affect their flesh either, as they were quite delicious.

All the best,
Adam Guy

Lots of Updates

First, I appologize for the lack of updates recently. Clive and I have both been working furiously to generate some great new content for everyone. We took a few trips to “The Bog”, Lake Scugog, and had one hell of a time both on the lake and at the only bar in Port Perry the night before. Unfortunatly, we weren’t able to land any Musky on either trip, but we did find the occasional out-of-season Largemouth Bass and lots of Panfish and Rock Bass. The guy in the middle is Martin, a friend of a friend that happened to come along last minute. It couldn’t have worked out better because we had a crazy-ass time at the bar. He definitely knows what fishing fury is all about.

You may not have even noticed, but our site was moved to a new server a few days ago which will allow for the higher capacity of hits the photo gallery will no doubt generate, and further expansion into some new and exciting sites. This site may go down briefly tonight as I try, again, to update Wordpress to version 2.

The Fishing Fury photo gallery is coming along nicely and I’m expecting to launch the first version very soon. This would be my first project in Ruby on Rails and I wan’t to make sure it’s a bit more polished before I release it. Though I haven’t worked with RoR for very long I really like the environment they’ve set up, I just wish (like many newbies, I’m sure) their online documentation was a bit more complete.

I’ve even got another review coming soon!

JVC Everio First Impressions – I bought this camera because it sounded like everything I wanted and needed (other than High Definition), and it would hopefully save me from hours of capturing footage from DV tapes. This camcorder is able to record over 7 hours of DVD quality footage, to it’s internal 30GB hard drive. Will it be everything I hoped for, or another great idea built on crippled hardware or software. (model: GZ-MG77U)

More Monster Northern Pike from Ontario

For the last few years, I have looked forward to early June and hearing reports from our friend Connie Inman. Connie drives thousands of miles each year to experience some of the best northern pike fishing Canada has to offer. Last year Jon and I were fortunate enough to fish side by side with Connie and learn from his tremendous knowledge of pike fishing. This year we couldn’t make the trip to Sportsman’s Lodge, but Connie did and he sent us a couple photos of some of the beautiful pike he caught this spring. Connie claims that the pike were not as heavy as they have been in previous years, (probably because of the unusual weather this year) but he managed to catch a pike over forty inches long almost everyday he fished.

Fishing Near Chicago, Illinois

Check out these submissions from one of my favorite tattooed fishermen, David Pavin, or perhaps more well known as Kivaka, one of the best piercers around.

PS – For those of you I contacted about your tattoos, don’t worry the post should be up later this week.