6/24 upper river

[John Pensyl]

Fished with my usual partner in crime Cullen Veiders today. Decided to give up on the east river spots that produced for us last summer and fall for the time being, and pound un1, un2 and un13 today.  Put the bucktails and stickbaits away and assembled an all star line up of jigs vowing to stick with what we know is working at the moment and stop playing with all the flashy toys in the box. (It was hard, I just love snapping stickbaits at warpspeed :). Fish were active for us all am, hit a 34 on a brown monster tube right at daybreak and had another mid 30s fish chasing a black ninja tube boatside shortly after.  Between 8-9 we both had solid hookups on GOOD fish in un13, his on a black ninja and mine on a pumpkin on white twisted tube.  Big head shakes, the type that throw your body back and forth violently with a rod that normally barely bends, bent to the cork, 10 seconds of bulldogging straight down..... and off... heartbreakers.  Nothing I would of changed, sharp hooks, solid hookset, good pressure, just happens I guess.  That twisted tube had two fish crack it, three fish follow it up, and just that 1 solid hookup today.  The teeth marks were all over the sides of the front of the tube. Is there something about a twisted tube that makes them hit it head on?  On a good note after having a mid 30s fish chase it all over the outside of the boat for what seemed like eternity we finally thought to toss in something else it may find less fun to chase and more fun to eat.  The 10in black big n grub Cullen had on was the answer and we put another fish in the net.

  After losing 2 fish over 45 last weekend (including one absolute goliath) and 2 more solid fish this weekend, we are definitely starting the season with the dropsies on the big girls. I'm just hoping we've gotten that out of the way early and they still want to play with us. 

Back at em Wednesday and Thursday, hopefully they still want that tube now that it's about 50% mend it.

And if anybody else is new to fishing the Canadian side, make sure you print out your lic. and have the outdoors card.  I figured the card covered everything, I figured wrong.  Thankfully the Canadian CO was a good guy, let us continue fishing and spared us what could be a $125 fine just for not carrying the lic.

[Scott McKee]

Good tip John.  Thanks.

[Josh Ketry]

Hey John did you call Can-Pass?  Did they even ask or bother you about that?

Thanks

Josh

[John Pensyl]

Yea I've called every day I've been out.  The CO did not ask about nor mention the whole can-pass thing at all.  Would it be conservations job to enforce that?

  The officer was a cool guy, he gave us the paper copy of the ontario regulations summary, checked out a couple musky pics on my cell phone and let us get back to business.

  Each day they ask less questions and seem less enthusiastic about the whole process.  Today it was, "Registration Number?  Name?  Here's your number".   Beginning of the week it was a series of 15 or more questions.  Can't really blame them, that job would be brutal at 4am.

[Stephen Glassic]

Once the CAN PASS has your info, if you go out with the same person again, I think it comes up on their database and they only ask about booze weapons etc.