3rd Annual Hamilton Spring Fishing Swap Meet

The Hamilton Bassmasters present:

 Sign up for the event on:  https://www.facebook.com/events/348260858626868/

Catch up post. Part 1

Sorry I haven't posted in 5 months.
Procrastination is a terrible affliction...lol.

Let's recap the summer of fishing.
Tournament results since my last post on July 1st.
Hamilton Bassmasters - Long Point Bay = 3rd with my boater/partner Rob Campbell.
Hamilton Bassmasters - Hamilton Harbour evening club event individual = 4th.
Hamilton Bassmasters - Binbrook Conservation evening club event individual = 4th
Hamilton Bassmasters - Hamilton Harbour Fall Brawl = 4th with my boater/partner Rob Campbell.
Niagara Bassmasters - Make-A-Child-Smile Open = 23rd ish with my boater/partner Stan Pilarczyk
Niagara Outdoor Open with Joe Kubina......let's say 4th from LAST but at least we got to see a 8.91 lb smallmouth at the weigh-in as part of a 29.71 lb bag.....almost worth the entry fee...almost.

Part of joining the Hamilton Bassmasters was to meet other people to go fishing with and find some new water that I either didn't know about or wasn't comfortable hitting with my little beater tinney.

I finally fished Chippawa Creek after driving over it 300 plus times i the past 9 years with Rob Campbell and Kirs Wiita from the club. Lots and lots of fish but no real monsters.

I managed to get out for a day on the Upper Niagara river on both sides of the dotted line with Joe Kubina.
Had a great day. Caught 40 plus fish and fished some water I had never taken my small tinney on.

Did some fun fishing with my long time friend Marc Visser who just picked a rod up this year.

We got invited to ride shotgun in Rob Campbell's boat on the Upper River and Erie one fall day.

It started off well with a near 6 lb smallmouth on the first drift 3 or 4 minutes in.

We did the mouth of the river drift and went out to Waverly Shoal for a bit.

Grand total of 45 fish in the boat with 2 triple headers on one drift.

An awesome day of fishing I won't soon forget.

Niagara Bassmasters "Make-A-Child_Smile" Open

Entered in to the open with  a buddy from Hamilton Bassmasters - Stan Pilarczyk

Beautiful view from blast off with the rumble and mist of Niagara Falls not too far away.

We had a tough early bit with a cold front for the morning in the main river but when we moved out in to the mouth at Lake Erie we quickly bagged a limit in the shallower, rocky areas were the sun had warmed the water up several degrees. No monsters to right home about and a 20 something place finish.

We did however clean house at the raffle table. Stainless Steel microwave, Craftsman gas leaf-blower, $170 rod/reel combo, tackle package, Fishbum gear.

Another great day of fishing and shooting the breeze with another great guy I met through the Hamilton Bassmasters club.

On to the single best fishing day I've had in the past 20 years.

Hamilton Bassmasters fall Hamilton Harbour joint event.

I fished with my good buddy Rob Campbell in his Stratos. We watched everybody blast off and head to the far reaches of the harbour while we puttered through the wakes to the second point just out side the boat launch channel.

I knew we could get a limit off of it in the wind. 

First pass was a bust and Rob looked at me like "dude, I thought you said this was THE spot?!?"

I adjusted the pattern and went right up on the rocks on the shore and slowly bounced my Strike King Sexy Shad 5 series off the rock and down the ledge between weed clumps....bam! 15 fish in less than an hour with a 4+ as the anchor for the bag.

We tried a few spots Rob had seen on Google maps and I managed a decent 3lbr off of LaSalle Parks break-wall.

We ended up with over 30+ largemouth for the day and a 14.62 lb bag for 4th but only 0.2 lbs out of second.

Twin 5.21 lb fish tied and split big fish for the day.

I'll stop here and do a second part to the catch up posting on the weekend.

Thanks for taking the time for to stop by and read of my ramblings.

Tough afternoon on the River.

Hit the Upper Niagara River on friday afternoon.

It was super windy so it made it the only place to get out unless you wanted to be in white caps elsewhere.
Tried several marked spots of the gps with no luck on the drop shot, spinnerbaits, crankbaits or jerk baits.
Quinten caught a 12" smallmouth on a LiveTarget perch crankbait but not what we'd hoped for 2 hours in.
Wind picked up even more and we were going to bail then we saw a spot where the shore line out to about 75 feet was protected by a rise and a line of trees so we decided to give it a couple of drifts before packing it in.
Good idea!
First drift I popped my biggest smallmouth this season (well that got in the boat anyway) on the Xzone mini slammer #309.

A couple of more drifts produced 2 more and a 3rd spit the hook with a big time aerial show.

Quinten couldn't get them to hit his drop shot even though we were fishing 4 feet apart on either side of the boat.

Tried the deep diving SKL shad crankbaits with a ton of followers and dropped the slammer on top of them but they all of a sudden had lock jaw.

All in all a decent afternoon with my buddy out fishing on a sunny friday afternoon.

Cheers,

Scotty

Ontario Bass opener 2012

That 4th Saturday in June always seems to take forever to arrive here in Ontario for the bass open season to start.

It has now replaced the childhood anticipation of Christmas eve to now as an adult Bass Opener eve.

Hit the Upper Niagara river with my buddy Marc first thing Saturday.
Beauty day, light breeze with a few clouds and not too hot.

Didn't set the world on fire by any means with only 9 fish in the boat but I've had worse days.

I hit the first 2 of the day on a Xzone mini slammer 309 and a Strike King series 5 sexy shad
crankbait.

Once we found the right drift location we had a lot of short strikes grabbing only the tail.

It took about an hour or so and Marc finally broke his skunk streak of a couple of outings without a fish.

Smallmouth in that current on light tackle are absolutely the funnest fishing there is.

Hit a few more on the Mini Slammer and one more on the crankbait.

Just after noon the pleasure boat traffic picked up big time and some of them didn't give a crap we were fishing and only in a 14' 6" tinny and blasted by with big wakes.

We stuck it out for a while but after a couple of bigger wakes splashing in the boat we decided to call it a day.

Hope the weather and wind co-operate from here on in so we can get out 1 or 2 evenings after work local and either Saturday or Sunday to a destination spot.

Cheers!

Scotty

1st tournament under my belt.

So my first tournament is in the books.

7 Teams from the Hamilton Bassmasters and Niagara.
8 Teams from the CBAF Golden Horseshoe Anglers.

Friendly joint tournament with bragging rights on the line between B.A.S.S. and CBAF.

The blast off was awesome, 15 boats putting the pedal to the wood.
I had a big ole shit eatin' grin on as John matted his 150hp Merc and we hit 50mph in no time.
That was the fastest I'd ever been in a boat and the guys with the big 250's were pulling away in no time.

Met a great guy, John Scholl from the Niagara Bassmasters was my boater partner.
Beauty Triton boat, super knowledgeable, patient with a rookie noob in his boat.
Thanks for showing me the ropes and having me on your boat John!!!

Boated a quick limit of 5 on the tube (John) and dropshot (me) in the first hour and a half.

Rookie mistake #1: make sure you leave the bail open if you're leaving your drop-shot down while netting your partners fish.....big smallie hit it and it flew off the back deck to the bottom.
One Quantum rod/Shimano reel combo joins so many others at the bottom of Erie...or at least that's what John told me to make me don't feel like an idiot.

Moved around looking for some quality to cull out our smaller fish.

Hit a massive shore line of boulders and rock and 3 rd cast in burning a Strike King spinnerbait slammed the kicker we needed to put us in contention.
It whacked it about 50 yards back and I got a little too excited and leaned on it a bit, first big jump and the spinnerbait came flying back at us.
John figured I'd just lost a 5+ lb'r......I felt sick.

We moved out deeper to some weight points John had, landed a few more that culled out the smallest in the live-well.

Wind changed and started to blow on shore, we headed back in to work the transition between the sand and rock.
John stuck with the tube on the drop off and I was covering the huge rock flat towards shore.

I saw a chocolate brown smallie close to the boat and yelled for John to throw the tube behind the boat, bang it smoked it. Good fish over 3 lbs, culled out the smallest 2.8 lb'r.

We hit 6 or 7 over a 200 yard line but not the big one we needed to replace the one I lost.

2:29pm hit, time to blast back to the weigh in for 3pm.

We weighed in 15.69 lbs for a 6th place finish in club points.

Congrats to Gary Sanderson and Ron Covington on an awesome bag of Smallies and big fish.

Also congrats to Lori Knight and her boater partner Rob Campbell for cashing a cheque in Lori's first tournament, way to go!

Here are the results:

1 Gary Sanderson and Ron Covington 22.19 bf 5.36
2 Rob Campbell and Lori Knight 18.80 bf 4.18
3 Joe Kubina and Patrick Zajdel 17.64
4 Jamie Lang and Robin Gaspardy 16.25
5 Stan Spilarczyk and Jason Barnucz 15.75 bf 5.00
6 John Scholl and Scott Biggs 15.59
7 Dave Distephano and Lorenzo D'Altorio 12.12


As for the friendly wager between the B.A.S.S. and CBAF anglers.

Top seven BASS weighs totalled 118lbs versus the CBAF top seven at 109 lbs.

Bragging rights until next year go to the Hamilton Bassmasters.
I'm sure the CBAF Golden Horseshoe Anglers will be gunning for us next year!

Opening weekend in Ontario is only 6 days away!

Next tournament for me is Long Point bay, July 7th. 
Have the big, heavy flippin' sticks ready to do battle in the heavy cover.

Cheers,
Scotty

Entered my 1st tournament.

Well I jumped in with both feet, entered my first tournament taking place on the NY state side of Lake Erie tomorrow.
With their bass season opening a week earlier than ours we will be looking for that winning sack a week before I originally planned.

I will be a co-angler in John Scholl's boat out of the Niagara area.

This will the second 2012 scheduled tourney for the Hamilton Bassmasters club with a bonus attached...we square off against the CBAF Golden Horseshoe Anglers for bragging rights.

I have 6 rods already rigged, I've tried to condense my tackle down to a respectable size but that is not as easy as I thought.
You never know what the bite will be so you have to be prepared.
-2 drop shot / tube rods.
-1 crank bait rod.
-1 spinner bait rod.
-1 jerk bait / top water rod.
-1 flipping stick.

The weather will determine a lot and with the Upper Niagara available if it's too rough/windy on the lake then we'd better be ready for some largemouth on the river too.

I hope to be posting pictures of our winning sack of hawgs tomorrow, boasting of our team winning the bragging rights until next year....we'll see what happens on the water tomorrow.

Cheers
Scotty

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!