Rod Building Equipment

So, I have put together my rod building equipment.  Since our marriage, Musky and I havebeen living in her 1 bedroom condo.  Needless to say, it is very tight and space is at a premium.  As such, I could not take my buildng jig from my parents' home, and needed to make one for this space. 

My rod building jig consists of a wrapper, an epoxy mixer, and a rod dryer.  All of this was built from 2 6' pieces of lumber, wood screws, 1/4" wooden dowel, coat hangers, epoxy, some electrical cord, switches and plugs, a couple pipe end caps, and some leftover foam from my custom poker table build.

Here are some pictures of the wrapper

And the epoxy mixer

And finally, my rod dryer - which is designed to hang below a shelf via coat hanger clamps.

Here are a couple pics of Sk8r Boi's custom

I apologize for the blurriness.  I need a tripod.  But I would have to convince Musky of that... Good luck there...

Lake Toho Trophy

So, I have given my report for Lake Toho.  I could only describe my experience on the lake, and how we fished.  When we got back to the dock, my brother - Sir, Duk and my brother's old workmate, whom we shall call Dalton - the pacifist philosopher who will kick ass if needed, were waiting for us...


Dalton - Leave the pigeons ALONE!!!

When Spam and I got back to shore, we heard stories of their trolling of live bait to mimic a school of shiners in order to stimulate bass activity.  We also found that they had used the same live bait tactics that we did. 

While it worked for Sir, Duk's white bucket was almost completely empty, landing 1 little dink that was not worth taking the camera out for!  However, Dalton used these tactics to great effect, as we were told about Dalton's bonafide Florida giant!

Approximately 9.5lbs!

Relying on his pacifist approach to fishing, and unwillingnesss to hurt the fish by actually setting a hook with enough force to puncture the fish' mouth (perhaps he is from San Francisco as well), Dalton coaxed this monster into the boat.  Despite taunts from Captain Dean proclaiming that his daughter sets the hook harder than he, Dalton persevered, and has caught something none of the other BASStards have.

This alone, made the trip worth it!  I will post a video that Sir captured of the giant once I get my hands on it!  Stay tuned, and be forewarned, there are a lot of expletives in it...

Lake Tohopekaliga February 17, 2011 Fishing Log

While I wait for SIr to upload his pictures, I will start with my fishing log.

On the morning of February17, 2011, we fished Lake Tohopekaliga (Lake Toho) for 4 hours prior to boarding our cruise to the Bahamas.

The morning started out extremely foggy with limited visibility.  The temperatures were around 15 degrees Celsius with no wind.  The week before, the temperatures had dropped due to a cold front, resulting in difficult fishing.

We started out fishing a weedbedand emergent grass in about 8 ft of water.  While our guide set Spam up with golden shiners under floats, I decided to start out with artificials.

I started out fishing a Gambler Flappin Shad in clear/white with blue fleck, retrieved at a fast enough speed for the tail to churn on the surface like a buzzbait.  I was hoping that the fish would be active enough, to chase topwaters, but no luck.  Our guide stated that the fish were not very active at the moment.  I switched to a Spro Aruku Shad rattling lipless crankbait in golden shiner, and fan casted to no avail. 

After about 45 minutes, Spam had one on, but could not set the hook due to weak hooksets (likely the result of soft wrists San Francisco boy).  Interestingly, you could tell when a fish was around the bait due to the action of the fish struggling against the floater.  It was rather captivating.  But, by that evidence, you could see that the bass were not aggressive, and were almost toying with their prey.  They would agitate the shiners for some time before taking the bait.  This would be an indicator of the fish' attitude.  After Spam's second missed fish, I got an opportunity to use the live bait and it paid off with this fish.

which was a very nice crappie by Canadian standards, but nothing compared to the 4 lber our guide told us about!  The shiners we were using were 6-8 inches long.  When you think about the size of the bait, it was amazing that a crappie took that bait!
Shortly thereafter, I got another on live bait.  But after a few more missed by Spam, we decided to move.  Our guide took us to a spot that ended up being occupied by another guide.  It was over an incline with sparse weed growth.  The other boat was catching fish, while ours had no action.  By this time, the fog had burned off, revealing blue, cloudless skies.  I switched to an emerald shiner swimbait, swimmed slowly just off of bottom.  I got one strike and had a fish on with this bait, but lost the fish on a jump.  I did not have another bite.  In retrospoect, I should have stayed with this bait since the sunny, clear skies called for realistic, slow moving baits.

We moved again, this time to emergent grass.  Again, the action was slow, but this location did produce some action.  I tried pitching jigs to the grass line and was rewarded with a lost jig.  Meanwhile, Spam continued to miss fish lol.  Our guide had set up another rod next to me with live bait, which hooked a few fish.  Some were right into the weedline while others were about 10 feet from the weedline.

We finally moved one last time to a weedbed about 50 yards from emergent grass.  Here, Spam finally landed a fish.  In fact, he got a couple, avoiding the big skunk.  I switched to a texas rigged creature bait, but again, to no avail.

Overall, the conditions called for realistic, slow moving bait for the lethargic bass.  As a result, live bait close to cover was the ticket on this day.

Bay of QUinte September 2010

I know all 4 of you are waiting on a report from Florida and Sir's bachelor party, but I am awaiting a few more pictures before I can do that report justice.

In the meanwhile, here is a report on a weekend trip Musky and I made last year to the Bay of Quinte.

We stayed at Merland Park, who have an awesome logo which looks like Jurassic Park.

We stayed in a 2 person cottage, which had full facilities and was within view of the dock.

Merland Park is located in Picton on the world famous Bay of Quinte in Ontario!  Having never really fished the Big Bay, I did what anyone these days does, and did some research on the internet.  The thing is, the entire bay is know to be able to produce fish.  The problem lies with this being a big body of water (let's be honest, it's huge!), and actually finding a good place to start fishing.

Musky and I fished all the way from Picton to Hay Bay - which the handy dandy internets told me was a great place for pike.  Because of the vastness of this body of water, and my lack of experience really fishing deep water structure, we headed for shallower weedlines in the various smaller bays and points.  For all of the talk of how replete with fish the Bay is, I could have caught just as many in my toilet.  The problem was fisihing in spots that, although they loked good, were holding no fish.  We had to fish other spots until we found what was working.

We eventually did just that.
On a relatively steep shoreline with fast moving water and green weeds, we fished spinnerbaits just above the weeds, which finally paid off for us.

And this nice one.

We did not have a working scale with us, so there was no way to tell how big she was.

Musky was not having the same success.  On one particular drift, we drifted into the weeds, and which point, I coached her; told her where to cast and what speed to retrieve at.  This was her first weekend using her baitcaster, and perhaps her confidence was not there initially.  But after this fish, we found it.

Again, we did not know just how big this girl was, but she was a very nice bass for Musky.

We didn't catch anything else after that, but it was a great way to end the fishing.

Sir Fusses' Bachelor Party Prologue

Tomorrow, we leave for  Port Canaveral, Florida, from where we will get onto a large cruise ship, and set sail for the Bahamas - Nassau, specifically, for Sir Fusses' bachelor party.  No, we are not going deep sea fishing.  So why is this on my blog you ask?  Well, just because we aren't deep sea fishing, it doesn't meanwe will not be fishing at all.  In fact, we will be arriving in Orlando on Wednesday night (if everything goes according to plan), where we will stay overnight before boarding the cruise ship the next afternoon.  That leaves all of Thursday morning for something... what to do in the Orlando area for 4 morning hours?
....
...
How about giving my old friend Captain Dean Puller of Gators Big Bass Guide Service to show us what we can do for 4 hours.  If you recall, Musky and I hired Captain Dean to show us around Lake Conway, and he put us on some good bass.  So, with his proven record with me, we decided to hook it up again.  This time, we will be arriving during the pre-spawn/spawn/post-spawn period(s), which should be a new fishing experience for all of us since bass season is closed during the majority of this period of the year.

Captain Dean took Musky and I to Lake Conway in December.  Although the clear waters of Lake Conway produced some good bass for Musky and I, Sir is hoping that Captain will take us to Lake Toho.  From Wikipedia:

Lake Tohopekaliga Tohopeka [fr
om tohopke /(i)to-hó:pk-i/ fence, fort]}; Tohopekaliga [from tohopke /(i)to-hó:pk-i/ fence, fort + likv /léyk-a/ site] Lake Toho, West Lake, or simply Toho for short), native name meaning "we will gather together here", is a lake in Osceola County, Florida, United States. It is the primary inflow of Shingle Creek, which rises in Orlando. It covers 22,700 acres (91.86 km2), and spans 42 miles (68 km) in circumference. It is linked to East Lake Tohopekaliga by Canal 31 (St. Cloud Canal). The canal is 3 miles (5 km) long and runs through western St. Cloud. South Port canal is located at the southern tip of the lake and links it to Cypress Lake. It is 4 miles (6 km) long. Three places surround the lake, Kissimmee on the northwestern shore, Kissimmee Park on the eastern shore, and South Port at the southern shore. Lake Tohopekaliga is the largest lake in Osceola County and is known for its bass fishing.

Lake Toho is so well known for its bass fishing that it hasbeen host to many tournaments.  Let us hope that Lake Toho gives us one of its giant bass when we fish there Thursday morning.  You will know one way or the other.