Last week I did an interview with Bryn Weese (left) of the Toronto Sun about TTC accessible fishing spots around Toronto. Turns out that Bryn is an avid fisherman himself and we ended up talking about much more than could fit in the article.
Jonathan Marshall [sic] and Clive Mathias, creators of the website fishingfury.com, are both experienced anglers who make it their business to fish in the city and tell people where — and how — to do it.
If their website is any indication, not only are there huge fish, particularly pike, to be caught around Toronto, but there is also a thriving angling community here.
Like many Torontonians, Marshall doesn’t own a car and uses the TTC to get to his fishing spots.
“I’m pretty much stuck in the area, but that’s okay,” he said, noting he heads over to Toronto Islands for pike fishing after work.
“The pike opportunities on Toronto Islands during the last week of May is probably the best fishing in Toronto I’ve ever had,” he said, noting the evening hours from 5 to 9 are probably the best times.
His secret? Large inline spinners, like a Mepps Black Fury 5, casted in and around weedbeds with a medium or medium-heavy spinning rod.
“Pretty much anywhere you see a weed bed is the perfect place to go,” he said, noting the centre channel on Centre Island is probably the best spot of all.
Also try the water near the amphitheatre on Centre Island if the boat traffic isn’t too busy.
In addition to pike and bass, anglers can also catch panfish, carp, trout and salmon (seasonally) from the shores of the islands. Marshall said he even once caught a walleye there.
It’s a great article and I’m very happy that I was interviewed! Don’t forget that next weekend is the National Fishing Week, which means you do not need a license to fish that weekend but you must follow the conservation license rules. There are also family fishing activities all over the GTA and across Canada.
Bryn if you’re ever in need of a fishing partner let me know, I’m more than willing to meet you some where on the TTC or even split those extremely high gas prices!
At Fishing Fury, we love shiny things as much as fish do - especially shiny reels. As odd as it may sound, it’s not only important that our reels function well, but that they look great too. Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder when it comes to reels though. Personally I prefer the appearance of a round baitcast reel, where as Jon prefers low profile. One thing with both agree on though, is that if we had the money, we would have a serious collection of pimped out reels. Here’s a list of the reels we wish we had, but probably never will.
Click the image below to read our latest feature article, Dream Reels!
I’ve been very busy these past few weeks traveling and working, but I’ve got some great content coming from my brief stay in Maui, and as soon as I can find the time I’ll get it all posted here. Meanwhile Adam Guy and I were chatting, he’s a great source for all things Japanese, and he told me that he had another food article ready to go. So back again, another installment in the growing “From The Table of Adam Guy” series, another mouth-watering meal.
And be sure to check out some of the other great contributions from Adam like, Japanese Cuttlefish, Japanese Flounder, and Fugu.
Adam writes:
Summer for Tokyo fishermen means octopus fishing by day, and night-fishing for Japanese conger eel. The octopus known in Japanese as “madako” (Octopus vulgaris, Common octopus) is cherished as a delicacy, eaten commonly as sashimi or served boiled as a celebratory dish for New Year’s.
To catch such octopus, one employs a special tackle comprising a hooked, weighted wooden board about eight inches in length, to which a crab is tied, upside-down. Octopi apparently have a great weakness for crab, particularly those with their vulnerable underbelly exposed to attack. The baited device is lowered into the water using a thick nylon/polyester line, and then jigged up-and-down by hand on the seafloor. Octopus usually feel the bait with their tentacles before launching themselves onto it, and this can be felt in one’s hands as a sort of ’sticking’ feeling. On feeling the ’stickiness’ on the line becoming much heavier, signalling the octopus actually attaching itself to the bait and starting to feed, a violent and large yank upwards on the line with both one’s hands sets the hooks into the creature and then it is a slow process of hauling in the line by hand to the surface.
Read more…
Reporting live from the great north at Little Vermilion Lake. We are half way through our trip and currently sitting outside in the cold using the wireless connection here to make a quick update. The weather has not been the greatest but we have still been putting fish in the boat. Click the image below to view the pictures and report.
UPDATE! Instead of having a part two to this article, it has been rewritten and republished as a single mega article! You can still click the image below to take you there. Enjoy!
Congratulations to Craig Thomasian on being the first new contributor to Fishing Fury for 2007. After reading about Craig’s adventures in Japan, specifically shopping at various tackle shops, something I have always dreamed of doing, I asked if he would like to write a short experience for us and he did! Craig also contributed an amazing set of unboxing photos of his high-end gear, behold the EverGreen Opus-1.
I recently took a much needed vacation to Tokyo, Japan. Being an angler and import tackle enthusiast in the land of the rising sun turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. The blessing: an inside look at Japanese tackle that we don’t see stateside and the wonderful stores that sell it. The curse: my uncontrollable spending on some very cool but expensive tackle items.
The first tackle shop I hit was Sansui. This is a small chain of stores in Tokyo. They deal in nice high-end tackle for all fishing disciplines. I went to the Shibuya location which was a little strange. They’re essentially 2 locations not far from one another, each with 2 stores. They have a saltwater store, fly fishing store, shore saltwater/main store, and a largemouth bass store. I went to them all and of course made a few purchases including an EverGreen Opus-1 spinning reel. This reel is very hard to get here in the US since there is no EverGreen presence in the States. In Japan they are one of the top, if not the top, bass fishing rod manufacturer. You can check out the unboxing photos in the galleries.
Read more about Japanese Tackle Shops by Craig Thomasian.
There is also the case of the mysterious long spoons, one I’m sure Adam can solve for us.
Craig also recently visited the Bass Pro Shops in Las Vegas and snapped some great photos. Craig’s blog is a great place to keep track of his latest adventures and see some cool ass cars.
I’m very happy to say that even though we don’t get many comments here, there is a growing number of readers out there that really enjoy the site and want to help it grow. We’ve posted before saying how much we love it when you contribute your fishing pictures and stories, and to show our appreciation we even printed out some stickers to send out to contributors. I’ve even heard a rumour about more t-shirts..
Good job Craig!
While the fishing seasons here in Canada are giving way to the cold and soon ice, our good friend Adam Guy, has brought us another great featured article all the way from Japan. Again, Adam does a great job of taking us from the past, to the present, to the dinner table in exploration of theFugu.
Eating Fugu is certainly not something you hear about everyday in North America, but surely everyone should recall the fish that almost killed Homer Simpson (One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish), a great pop-culture tidbit that cannot escape even Adams article.
Nearly a year has passed since my last article for Fishing Fury, entitled ‘A Different Kind of Fishing’, where I described fishing for gobies in Tokyo Bay. Here I would like to introduce another traditional Japanese fishing technique, quite unrelated but probably as obscure to most Western anglers, known in Japanese as kattō, which is a method, or rather a specific type of tackle, for catching Fugu (the fish known variously in English as pufferfish, globefish or blowfish) for human consumption.
“To be poisoned by Fugu is to be shot with a musket: both are deadly”.
So goes the old Japanese saying, revealing how even in the age of black powder the potency of the poison of the Fugu was known to the natives of these shores. In the West too, Fugu poison has been known for many years; Captain Cook documented its effects (and those of Ciguatera poisoning) in his second voyage of discovery in the 1770s. However, the flesh of the Fugu is not poisonous and is a highly prized and very expensive delicacy in Japan. In purely culinary terms, Fugu is quite a versatile ingredient that possesses a unique texture, lending it to a number of different methods of preparation. The very high prices paid for Fugu meals give it a rather hallowed status and is considered quite the indulgence, whilst the apparent danger associated with such a poisonous fish imbues the diner with a sense of daring or adventure. In fact, the gourmand’s name for raw Fugu, tessa, is an ironic term derived from the phrase teppō sashimi, or ‘musket sashimi’. However, with the correct preparation Fugu can be enjoyed quite safely and here in Japan, especially in the eastern Kantō region, the hungry fisherman can indulge himself in Fugu dishes that normally command prohibitively high prices in exclusive restaurants.
Continue reading Fugu by Adam Guy
As it turns out another of Adams great contributions, the best photos I’ve seen of the tounge eating fish parasite, was recently linked from the Science Made Cool blog.
Great job Adam!
This week I will be (trying my best to) add at least one article or fishing log a day as I go through all of our features from the old site and adding them to the current site. Today’s addition is the first article ever written for Fishing Fury, back in 2004, about the very simple and effective shore fishing tactics Clive and I used on Toronto Island.
Every fisherman has been shore bound at one time. After all it is the oldest and most common method. You don’t have a boat, the body of water you’re fishing doesn’t support them, or it’s just not feasible to get your boat in or to the water. Many people think that you cant land big fish from shore, let alone a lot of them. But by using these tactics you will find the best structure and locations quickly getting you one step closer to hooking the big one.
The tactics discussed here are most important when fishing new water and there is only one rule: “cover everything”. You must be very thorough and meticulous in your approach the first few days. Think of it as a reconnaissance mission, you may not be catching fish your first day, but you’re gathering information that will lead to lots of fish later.
Continue reading…
