2nd Annual Hamilton Bassmasters Spring Swap Meet

What a great day!
The turn out was great, 38 vendors/table and well over 230+ visitors.
There was a substantial line up waiting for the doors to open at 9am sharp.
Soon as the door's opened, it was ON!

The bargains were flying, haggling abounded and almost everybody left happy with either cash in their pockets (vendors) or a bag of good deals (visitors).

Everybody did a great job from organising the event to advertising and promoting and setup and breakdown and everything in between.

The club raised some good money towards our conservation efforts and especially for the kids/youth derby planned for Christie Lake Conservation Area in July.

I managed to sell 70% of what I took and only spent 10 bucks....it was hard but my will power held.
My table was pretty empty by the time Jason got around to taking pictures:

Thank you to everybody who participated in making this such a great event.

See you next year!

1st Annual Hamilton Bassmasters Conservation Raffle

Who wants a ticket?!?
Only $3.00 per ticket with 500 total tickets available....great odds!

Tickets will be available at the door of the 2nd Annual Hamilton Spring Fishing Tackle Swap, April 21st at the Sherwood Centre on Fennel from 9am - 1pm. (refer to blog post of March 24th for details)

Erie Perchin'

Hit Erie on Friday with my buddy Quinten for some early April perch fishing.
Launched out of Crystal Beach and headed for the "flotilla" of boats on the horizon.
We'd heard it was "ON" all week and hoped the blue bird sky's and fairly choppy conditions weren't going to turn them off the day we can get out.
After watching every boat around us yank up perch cast after cast and not getting anything we asked a fellow fisher what the heck we were doing wrong.
He showed us how small a minnow they were biting on and realising that 75% of the minnows we had were too big.
We decided to go about 250 yards further west to the second big flotilla of boats and start fresh.
We down sized minnows and I cut some Berkley power baits down to size to try and conserve minnows.
5 minutes in the new spot and I had the first 2 in the boat, double header on my line!

We landed about 16 including some jumbos with the biggest at 13-1/2".

Quinten had an absolute brute on and in the excitement horsed it up from 63' of water too hard and straightened out the fine wire hook on his pickerel ring losing it just deep enough that we couldn't see how big it really was....damn.
We learned quite a bit talking with other boaters in the crowded area.
-go with 6-8lb braid (we were running floruo).
-super light action rods are a must for the light bite.
-come with at least 150 minnows between 1" and 2" with some larger just in case the bite changes.

All in all a decent day, first "raccoon" tan of the year courtesy of the bright sun and SKL sunglasses.

The 16 fish actually filleted up in to a nice fish fry when we got back.

Hoping the winds stay down and we get another shot at them next weekend.