Blood Knot Magazine – The Blue Collar Issue

The latest issue of Blood Knot Magazine is hot off the press and is as impressive as ever. A photo of my tattoo even appears within its sacred pages! Check it out!

Springwood Cottages

A few friends and I spent a weekend at Springwood Cottages in the Land O’ Lakes region of Ontario, about 4 hours from Toronto. This beautiful collection of cottages sit on the shores of Kennebec Lake, and deep and rocky lake home to Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass, Walleye, Northern Pike, and Sunfish. Springwood offers affordable cottage resort getaways with something for the whole family, read my review for more information.

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Stubby Steve’s Artificial Fish Food Lure: First Impressions

Stubby Steve’s Artificial Fish Food Lure is the first ever, that I know of, lure designed to be an exact replica of a fish food pellet. You might think that sounds a little silly given all the different kinds of lures out there with photo realistic patterns, holographic eyes, and laser etched fins on modern lures. But Steve’s quick to point out that each year billions of fish are grown and distributed across the United States alone, and the vast majority of these fish are raised on fish food pellets. Think of Stubby Steve’s Artificial Fish Food like you would mom’s famous meat loaf, or whatever your favorite meal might be, and you haven’t had any for years. The next fish that passes your bait could be a short chum line away from your photo album!

These Stubby Steve’s look promising, they’re 100% biodegradable which I know we all love and appreciate in a lure. I’ve got about 10 packages which should make for quite a few rounds of testing, and hopefully some leftovers to giveaway to you. I think they’ll be a great bait here in Ontario for salmon, trout, panfish, carp, catfish, even bass. I especially like the idea that it can be combined with traditional lures to make them more effective. I’ll be putting them to the test in the next week or two and will report back with a full review!

Toronto Islands Report – May 2010

In 2004 -even before Fishing Fury started- the Toronto Islands were the first location that Clive and I really put our heads together on. The coordination of our thoughts and efforts combined and together we landed well over a dozen pike in only a few days fishing, it was here on these shores that we developed our own shore fishing tactics, and here that Fishing Fury was born.

Now six years later, Clive is flying in all the way from Halifax on Porter Airlines and will only be in town for two nights. Though we only have a short time together we intend to spend as much of it fishing as humanly possible. Clive arrived on Monday morning to the Toronto Islands Airport and we wasted no time getting to the ferry docks, where we met up with Pete from the OFN forums. Once on the islands we walked straight off the ferry to the Center Island channel where we set up our gear and started casting.

Continue reading “Toronto Islands Report – May 2010″…

World Record Sunfish (Redear)

We don’t talk much about panfish on Fishing Fury and I’m not sure why. We have definitely been caught up in the excitement of pike and musky fishing in the last four years, but we began fishing as most did, catching little sunfish and bluegil. When finding fish in new locations is slow, I know I can fall back on catching the usually overlooked panfish.

Usually the lures we use are bigger then most panfish, but then again, I had never caught a five pound sunfish before!

The all-tackle world record redear sunfish was caught by Amos M. Gayfrom in 1998. The massive panfish was caught in the Santee Cooper Diversional Canal, South Carolina USA, and weighed 5 pounds, 7.5 ounces.

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.