Adam Eibling caught this 5.11 pound, 20 1/4 inch Pacu in the Sandusky River while fishing for carp! (via Toledo Blade)

Wow folks, just joined this site recently and already have an epic fishing story to tell… Man, Fishing Fury musta given me some good luck, maybe in the fine print it says “if you join the forum you may experience a substantial increase in bigger and more interesting catches!”… lol

So this past Monday evening, 8/31/09… I decide to go fishing at my parents house who reside on the Sandusky River near Fremont, Ohio. I’ve been in a recent fishing slump so I decide to use dough balls for carp – you know just want to fight a bigger fish regardless of species… was in dire need to hear my drag, been way too long. Who would have ever guessed I wouldn end up bring in a PACU?! I’m still in shock, excited, speechless yet can’t quit talking about it…. hard to describe what it’s like to catch something like this – so off the wall and unexpected.

Read the more in the Fishing Fury Community Forums..

It wasn’t long until we starting hooking into them, first I hooked into a small pike that completely missed my lure and ended up getting his mouth wrapped up in a fluorocarbon leader and just refused to let go. Once I got him close enough to the boat and notice my xrap was swimming care free about an inch away from the fish I quickly grabbed him behind the head and pulled him out of the water.

Unfortunately that would be the first and last fish I boated for the evening, though the follows continued all day long frustrating Martin until he finally landed his first Toronto Islands Pike, and then his second, and finally the largest one caught the trip!

It was a pretty awesome opener, and the fishing is only going to get better as the season progresses! To see all the photos from this trip please visit our gallery for the Toronto Islands 2009 Fishing Fury photo album.

If you plan to fish Toronto Harbour by boat, be sure to get a Harbour Permit first or you may find yourself paying some serious fines! Find out more at www.torontoport.com

What about you? How was your pike opener? Send us your photos and stories or comment below, we’d love to hear them!

I was privileged enough to draw 2 time angler of the year Don Mahar of York Bassmasters. We started the day heading out to a well known rocky shoal on Sturgeon, while most of the rest stuck to the river leading out to Sturgeon from Lindsay. We landed our limit within the first 20 minutes, a nice hand full of smallies, but nothing large. We kept fishing those rock piles, landing and culling our catches still in search of a few big boys. Eventually, Don had a nice 2.5 lbs largemouth which meant we were in business. Soon after we headed across to the other side of the bay and Don comes up big with a 4 lbs smallie. We had a few more culls along that end and we had ourselves a pretty good bag for the day. There was heavy heavy rain all morning , we were absolutely soaked from the rain. On our way back to the weigh in , we made one last stop along the river, 2 casts in Don lands yet another big largemouth around 3.5 and we headed in for weigh in. We turned out to have 14 lbs and big fish at around 4lbs which gave us 1st place and big fish award.

Second place was 11.5 , with a 3.25 lbs largemouth.

Congratulations on the win Martin, those are beautiful bass.

Apparently though, the fishing has been off due to the extremely bizarre weather conditions we’ve been having in this region. Twice now in the past week there have been hail storms, lightning that can blow you away, even reports photos of funnel clouds forming in Toronto’s east end (more).

Since I was so caught up with work in May, I missed all opportunities to go fishing on Toronto Islands for some of the hottest pike fishing in the GTA: this would be my first fishing trip of the year.

We started the morning bright and early, got the boat launched and headed out. It wasn’t long before Martin had a hit and nice 25″ or so Scugog musky. I thought for sure the day was going to be awesome, and not soon after I had a massive strike from a musky of my own, definitely larger than the first. A huge jump, splash, and suddenly my lure was catapulted back to the boat and my musky was gone.

For the rest of the day, we fished with little success, even with my Lakemaid Miss Musky t-shirt for good luck, it couldn’t stop the weather from turning on us. Another storm front was on its way and we decided to head back up the lake closer to the boat launch in case the storm crossed paths with us. Not soon after we had a failure of our trolling motor and decided to head in to try and fix it. We spent a few hours going around Port Perry trying to find some spare parts or figure out what the problem was, but once 7pm started to roll around we knew the day was pretty much shot. We packed it all in and headed home.

Martin will be fishing in the B.A.S.S. opener tournament on Scugog Sturgeon, so wish him luck! If I had known sooner I would have loved to get “Fishing Fury” on his shirt or something as a sponsor but maybe we can pull that together for the next one.

Adam Guy writes:

One of my fishing buddies volunteered to drive, so we decided to go fishing for a flatfish known locally as ‘ishigarei’ (Stone flounder; Kareius bicoloratus) from the port of Kashima, which is on the Pacific coast of Japan, in Ibaragi Prefecture. My mate and I took three each, including one good-sized fish each; since this was the first attempt at this kind of fishing for both of us, we did quite well.

Unusually the ishigarei does not have scales, but instead a few bony protrusions (the Japanese refer to them as ‘stones’ hence the name) on the skin on its dorsal surface, that produce copious amounts of a rather foul-smelling fish slime. However, if one removes these the fillet of the fish possesses a firm, white yet oily flesh that is quite delicious. Also, unlike most flatfish, they grow quite large and can prove quite amusing to catch; the largest one I took was 47cm long and put up a tremendous fight. To ensure their anglers enjoy the eating of their catch as much as the fishing, most boathouses will kill, bleed and de-stone the fish that you catch for you when you get back to port, and give you salt to rub into their skin to reduce the slime, before packing the fish in ice and going home.

When it came to eating my catch, first I made sashimi. It was quite delicious, without a hint of the smelliness of the live fish, with just the right balance of texture and oiliness. Each fillet is quite long, and preparing sashimi leaves one with a strip of skin that is a shame to waste, so I deep-fried these till crisp, to make an excellent accompaniment to a cold beer. I left the skin on another fillet, and simply chopped it into chunks, dusted these with flour and deep-fried them, and then smothered them with a Thai-style hot-and-sour chilli sauce, with lots of ginger and garlic, and topped with shredded spring onions. The rich flavours of the sauce go well with the white fish, which is sealed in neat crispy parcels…you couldn’t eat better anywhere in Tokyo!

Cheers,
Adam Guy

As always thanks for your contribution Adam!

You can also check out Adam’s other “From the Table” contributions like Japanese Cuttlefish and Japanese Flounder (different variety of Flounder).

Mike Sturna writes:

I want to thank the guys at fishingfury.com for putting up such a great web site. It’s the best site around for the everyday angler. You posted pictures of muskie caught on Lake Scugog, and found it helpful since you can see what area of Scugog the muskie were caught. I never caught a muskie before last year and have been fishing all of my life, but this would probably be due to being intimidated by all the jargon that’s around on the web as well as magazines. It always seemed to me that the allusive muskie was a fish extremely hard to catch, but after these past few summers, have come to the conclusion that it seems to be all in the anglers head. It wasn’t until this summer, that I really put in a lot of work to find the holding locations for the fish as well as the proper techniques to land them. I have had the privileged of taking many people out this summer, and seen the many smiles on their faces when they hook into their first ever muskie, but like we know, it won’t be their last.

For some reason, it’s very addictive, and have not pursued any other species of game fish since landing my first decent sized one. On average, I have been lucky to land approximately 3-4 muskie a day when out fishing, with some larger bass taking the bait as well. I wish that the popular magazines out there dealing with the angling world, would take the time to let the readers know that this game species is not as hard to find and catch as is led to believe. It’s more about the angler getting over the intimidation, than it is finding ways to bring them into the boat. I hope that someday I will see fishing fury on TV and wish your team the best of luck getting there. Keep up the good work. I have also sent some pictures along with this email, because I know, your team having a love of fishing, can appreciate the excitement and beauty of landing muskie.

As you can see, Mike definitely knows where to find the musky on Lake Scugog, but I think he’s still working on his holding technique..

Thank you very much for the email and photos Mike, I will get in touch with you soon and maybe we can head out for a day on Scugog in search of muskie. I have yet to catch a musky on Scugog in fact, so you’d be doing me a great favor, hah!

Armed with a Quantum 20 PTi and an UglyStik (a combo I refer to as beauty and the beast) she was caught off guard when line started peeling off the reel. The drag screamed as the fish headed down stream. I quickly realized her drag was set really light since I had last used it for walleye up at LV. After a huge run, I looked down at her reel and could see that the bottom of the spool was fast approaching, Gillian was a step ahead of me though and was already starting to head down the shore in chase.

She was quickly running out of room and needed to scale down a 6 foot wall to get to the shore in order resume her chase. Being nearly 7 months pregnant, this was not an option – she handed me the rod, and I jumped down the wall as the last few strands of line were about to unravel. I grabbed the line and pulled, turning the carp. I quickly adjusted the drag by this time Gillian had found her way down the wall, so I handed her back the rod. The fish was now in the current and despite a legendary effort, Gillian could not get him to move. After several minutes he charged back up stream and Gillian was able to gain back some line. Finally we had a good look at the fish, a solid 7-8lbs – A very nice sized carp for this area of the river. She slipped on a glove and held the fish for a quick photo and a release as a small crowd watched from the top of the wall.

Thirty minutes later it was my turn. I watched a small carp moving straight toward my bait and I held on tight expecting another epic battle. I was using my ultralight rod (5’2 UglyStik) with 10lb powerpro. I set the hook and….nothing . The carp flipped and flopped a couple times and I was able to grab it within a minute. Quite a disappointment after seeing how hard Gillian’s carp fought. We called it a day shortly after, but we were both very pleased that both of us landed a fish. The carp pupulatiosn are healthy and strong here in London, unlike the fish in Lake Scugog.

The first in-utero fish!! My baby boy has got an early start!

Continue reading “Little Vermilion Lake 2007″

John Marshe works with MeegsOnline, “Ontario’s Most Favorite Jig”, and a is frequent contributor to OFN.

Thanks again for taking me out on your boat and sharing with me some of your secret fishing spots and tactics.