Lake Chemong, Ontario – July 19 2006

Rather than facing the weekend boat traffic, we decided to take a midweek fishing trip for my birthday to a lake we had never fished before. Jon, Gillian and I packed up the car shortly after midnight and started our drive to Lake Chemong, located in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario. Much like other Kawartha lakes, Chemong offers great bass, walleye and musky fishing.

The drive took less than two hours from Toronto, and we drove around the lake looking for a boat rental in the dark. We spotted several fishermen night-fishing along the causeway that splits the lake in two. We slept a few hours in the car and and rented a boat from a very friendly woman in the small town of Bridgenorth shortly after six.

We started the day using plastic baits to cover shallow water and structure near shore and around several islands to the south of the lake. After a couple hours of fishing, it was clear that we were not going to find any bass in the shallow water. The sun was beating down pretty hard and despite being in the tail end of major heatwave, the bass were still not feeding. We began making drifts through deeper water hoping to locate isolated fish. Jon used jigs, trying to pull fish off the bottom, Gillian used live worms drifting them behind the boat, and I decided to cast my own musky lures hoping for a big one.

Gillian began catching several pan fish including crappie, sunfish, perch and then she landed a good sized largemouth bass which proved to be the biggest fish of the day. We fished a total of six hours and we each got a few small bass before we called it a day.

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…

Cabela’s Versus Bass Pro Shops

When Ontario got its first Bass Pro Shop I was very excited. I had never visited a Bass Pro in the America and was excited to see the selection of fishing tackle. As far as tackle shops go in Ontario, there is nothing that compares to the selection that Bass Pro has, but in America there is more competition from other huge tackle stores.

While on a recent road trip I had the chance to stop at a Cabela’s and I was extremely impressed with the store. The amount of fishing equipment at Cabela’s was far greater then that of the Ontario Bass Pro. There was so much gear that the store was quite overwhelming. Besides the fishing equipment, there was several impressive aquariums filled with several fish that I have not seen in the Bass Pro aquarium.

The biggest difference is that Cabela’s had a big selection of saltwater equipment, and Bass Pro Shop in Ontario has none. In defense of Bass Pro, the Ontario location is nowhere near the ocean.

Here are a few photos from my visit to Cabela’s in Hamburg Pennsylvania.

New World Record Bass “Caught”- But Not Recorded

The current Largemouth Bass World Record caught by George Perry (more), has held it’s place for the past 73 years. Withstanding an enormous and growing sportfishing industry, from professionals to amateurs alike. Even a few possible, but not official, contenders to that record have come out in the past 20 years.

But now, we have proof of a record breaking Largemouth Bass topping the scales at 25 pounds.

Mac Weakley of Carlsbad caught what could be the world-record largemouth bass early Monday at Dixon Lake in Escondido.

The bass weighed 25 pounds, 1 ounce on a hand-held scale, which – if approved – would shatter the world record, the 22-pound, 4-ounce bass caught by George W. Perry at Montgomery Lake in Georgia in 1932.

Read more; World-record bass – maybe – pulled from Lake Dixon

However, things aren’t as simple as that day George Perry cast out his one and only lure. Turns out that Mac Weakly didn’t exactly catch the fish. In the previous article Mac does admit the fish was foul-hooked and might not be eligable for the record. The very next day Max retracted his entry.

Late last night, the man better known as Mac Weakley decided he’d had enough of the controversy behind his potential world-record catch, that 25-pound, 1-ounce Queen Kong of a bass he foul-hooked at Dixon Lake on Monday. He decided not to submit the catch to the International Game Fish Association for approval as the all-tackle, world-record largemouth bass.

“It’s a great day, but it’s a bad day,” Weakley said at his home in Carlsbad. “It was a valiant effort. We’ve been trying and trying to catch this fish for years. It’s the world-record bass. Unfortunately, it was foul-hooked.”

Weakley’s monster bass, caught on a Bob Sangster handmade white rattlesnake jig (on 15-pound P-Line monofilament) from Angler’s Arsenal, was weighed on a Berkley BogaGrip, a hand-held scale, but no measurements were taken of the biggest bucketmouth landed in the history of black bass fishing.

Read more; Bass fisherman decides not to submit papers for record, & Record* bass caught at Dixon

Mac’s gonna feel horrible if someone else officially catches this fish before he does. Good luck “Budda”.

Sunday Reading

• Cheap Advertising – Most of you have probably heard of the MillionDollarHomepage, now for ten cents a pixel, you can help a paraplegic angler closer to his dream by advertising on fishingpixels.com.
• After the storm – NBC2 News reports, only three months after hurricane Wilma tore through the town of Clewiston, a professional bass fishing tournament generates a cool three million dollars in four days.
• Sturgeon Recovery Plan – The Boonville Daily News reports that efforts are underway to help prevent the extinction of the “dinosaur of the Missouri and Mississippi River.”
• Echizen kurage – CNN reports that a slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan’s fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.
• Mystery Fish – An unusual fish has washed up on the shore of Cayman Brac and Cayman Net News needs your help identifying it.
• Fish extinction – Times Online reports a shortage of cod and tuna is forcing trawlermen to plumb the oceans to the cost of rare species
• A sharks tale – DiverNet.com reports that a fifty two year old spear fisherman has beat the odds and survived an attack from a great white shark in Australia.
• Record Stands – The NFWFHF has ruled that Luis Spray’s world record muskie will not be overturned despite efforts to prove its size was exaggerated.

Dia De Los Muertos

My appologies for not being around much the past few days, but work has had 110% of my time tied up in various projects. Late last night however, I was able to get out with a few friends and enjoy the nightlife here in La Paz. Something I haven’t had very much time to do since moving here in December ’04. And you can’t beat two for one beers at the price of $2.50 USD! Of course if you haven’t got a buddy system you’ll end up drinking two at a time, much like I did most of the night.

Today is Dia De Los Muertos, day of the dead, across Mexico. Im hoping that I can get out again tonight and get some pictures, perhaps even video to mix into a video for 2005.

Speaking of videos, I have brought back our videos from 2004 and I highly recommend you check them out. If you’re interested in seeing a bit of footage from fishing here in La Paz, our good friends at Fishermen’s Fleet put together a video a few weeks back that included some video that Clive and I shot and donated.

Of course you can always check the video section for posts that have contained links to other awesome, and not always fishing related, videos. Like flaming puck hockey on unicycles!