Category: General

When one of my best friends told me last summer he was getting married in Costa Rica I asked jokingly if he had any room for a small-framed fisherman in his luggage somewhere. Turns out he extended an invitation and I thought, Costa Rica eh? Why not! After all I’d heard a lot of great things about the place and people who visit call it El Paradiso. A few google searches about the area we were staying in, Playas del Coco, Guanacaste in the Northwestern part of the country revealed a renowned sportfishing area famous for it’s Sailfish, Dorado, Roosterfish, Tuna and many more. It was enough to convince me. After a few days of acclimatizing to the searing heat of 36C and a relentless equatorial sun I started asking around about fishing. I met a local named Elmund at a place called Coco Palms who specializes in adventure tours in the area. He took us out to Rio Tempisque in a national park of Costa Rica called Pallo Verde. This is a freshwater river straight out of a crocodile dundee movie. The river was absolutely overflowing with crocodiles, iguanas, jesus lizards and countless bird species. On the shores of this muddy hub of life howler and cappucino monkeys rested in trees and stared at us curiously as we floated by. Some of the monkeys however weren’t content with only watching and they got close, real close.

On the way back from the trip I asked Elmund if he liked fishing. He said he did some fishing but that it wasn’t his specialty. He did however tell me he could set me up for something the next morning. He told me he knew two guides who have been doing very well in the area lately. I was to meet them “next to the big tree at the beach in front of town” at 8am the next morning. The date was set. I was about to head out fishing on the open tropical Pacific.

When I made my way to the big tree the next morning (gotta love addresses in Costa Rica) I was reeling with excitement. I had never been on the Pacific Ocean before let alone for a fishing trip. The two guides who only spoke very limited English showed up right on time with a cooler full of melons, pineapple and of course, beer. After a few handshakes and awkward moments of attempting conversation in my very limited Spanish we were off and soon beyond the northern tip of Playa del Coco into open water looking for pelagic giants. The ocean was calm that day, at least when we got started. As I savoured the moment and snapped pictures the 20foot boat came to a stop near a rocky island off a point. One of the guys started throwing a quarter ounce jig at the swell around the island and soon handed me the medium action baitcaster. I reeled in a silver fish that fought like a 3lbs smallmouth but probably weighed in at around a tenth of that. Fish in saltwater are like freshwater fish on meth. They are absolutely insane and never, ever stop fighting. When I pulled in this fish and the guy said “bait” I thought to myself I’m not really sure I want to see what eats these. When the livewell was nice a full of these little guys we headed off once again further north.

The guys had 3 rods setup for trolling. One on a makeshift downrigger right behind the boat and two more stretched out to the sides trolled high in the water column. We were fishing open water in about 100feet of water for the most part. I am really not sure how deep he was running the deep rod because of my lack of ability to ask that in Spanish but it looked to me like he was setting it up around 30-40 feet deep. All three were rigged the same way, 50lbs test mono tied to a wire leader and one large treble hook.

Before I could get comfortable one of the guides signaled for me to grab one of the rods and I was fighting my first ever saltwater fish. He took me for a good ride. It took one run towards the bottom and then turned back the other way and headed for the boat. Not long after that it’s beautiful green back and silver sides flashed in the crystal clear water and I had my first ocean fish, a very respectable Mahi-Mahi and my first saltwater fish.

As I was taking in the moment and enjoying the beautiful tropical Pacific scenery, our two guides quickly set the rods back up and we were trolling again almost immediately. It didn’t take long until the reel started screaming again. This time, the fish moved faster and darted left and right like a silver missile. A few minutes later, I was holding a Tuna Mackerel.

A few minutes later, another fish hit. This fish however had a little more weight to it. It was my friend’s turn to grab the rod. This fish fought hard. It’s really not comparable to anything I’ve caught in freshwater. After a good struggle and two or three reel screeching dives, JP was proudly holding a beautiful yellow-fin tuna, who eventually became our BBQ dinner on the beach that evening.

The action slowed a little after that fish. Our guides decided to switch location and move North up the Pacific coast a few miles. Fishing in the ocean is vastly different than fishing a river or lake back home. When fishing the st-Lawrence for example, I’m always on the lookout for structure, cover, current and focus is on bottom content. On the open ocean, guides are looking for surface activity, birds and baitfish shools. As we were making our way towards this new area, one of the guides told me he spotted a sailfish. He pointed in the direction where he had seen it as the boat simultaneous made a 180 degree turn and headed in that direction. To this day I can testify that I didn’t see the fish or anything different on the water for that matter. Let’s just say these guys had very well trained eyes. After a few minutes going over that area with the bait, it seemed our sailfish had eluded us. Just as they were about to give up, the reel started to tick and then….pandemonium. Everything happened very quickly, but before I knew it, I was handed the rod and almost at the same time I watched a sailfish tail-dancing on the surface about 200 feet behind the boat. I couldn’t believe what was happening, that this monster fish was actually hooked and I was holding the rod. It was surreal. I tried my best to gather my senses and stop shaking. As instinct kicked in, I checked my drag was perfect and did absolutely everything in my power to make sure I didn’t lose this fish. The fight lasted a good 30 minutes. I could feel the lactic acid building in my forearms but I wasn’t about to give up. The fish took drag, jumped completely out of the water at least 5 times and gave me the thrill of a lifetime.

If you’re looking for something different and you have a case of cabin fever this winter, I would strongly suggest considering a trip to Costa Rica. It’s relatively inexpensive, the folks there are as friendly as they come, and if you’re a nature nut you simply put will not run out of things to keep you busy.

Until next time, stay Outside!

Jigger.

As any fisherman or outdoor enthusiast knows, weather can define a fishing day, weekend or trip. Weather is fickle. It can be beautiful one moment and brutal the next. It can be heavenly, spontaneous, unpredictable or downright cruel. As Mark Twain wrote if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes. The contrast in conditions between last weekend and this Thanksgiving weekend certainly gives his words true meaning.

Last week a friend of mine sent me a last minute invite and despite the pelting rain, 20-30K East wind and cold I felt a little onset of cabin fever and decided to accept the offer. I threw on my rain-gear over thermal underwear and a warm hoodie and made my way to our meeting spot at the ramp. We found areas to fish in tucked in behind the shelter of islands (fishing the open water would have been downright dangerous) and did very well all things considered. However after a few hours of constant rain, wind, waves and frozen fingers I was definitely happy to head home to a warm shower. I suppose there is a sense of satisfaction to be gained from battling it out in fierce conditions, but I’d trade it in for 26C and sunny any day of the week.

Fast forward to this past Thanksgiving weekend and you would think you travelled in time back to July. Donning shorts and t-shirts, we were now looking at relatively calm waters and a warm breeze. I jokingly asked my guests if they’d rather fish or water-ski. It was absolute heaven. The only hints revealing the true time of year were the short days, colourful foliage and flocks of geese. Now, let’s not confuse things here. Nice weather doesn’t necessarily mean good fishing; far from it. However, there are times when the stars align; when you do get to have your cake and eat it too and when you do get the best of both worlds. Two of my guests found this out over the weekend with their personal best walleyes and steady action amidst a setting fit for the gods.

I’ve been off the water for a few weeks with a bad back so I started working areas that produced fish for me last time I was out, which was about 3 weeks ago. My eagerness dissipated when I realized spots that produced so well mere days ago were bone dry. I had some catching up to do. I spent the first few hours of the weekend searching for fish. Walleyes are a strange bunch (not sure what that says bout walleye fishermen), one minute you can’t keep your lure away from them and they seem to be everywhere you expect them to be. The next, it’s like you’re fishing the Dead Sea. Staying on the fish requires a lot of time and persistence and if you’re a weekend angler like me, this can get tricky. Even though it can be discouraging when the fishless hours pile up you have to keep going. Walleyes can’t just leave the lake. They are always somewhere and they have to eat at some point. After fishing 2-3 spots without as much as a hint of a fish, I stopped, looked around and asked myself what had changed since the last time I was out.

I figured the most dramatic difference was water temperature. In the spring, the shallow bays, creeks and small rivers warm first. In the fall, the reverse process occurs. When the longer, cooler nights prevail in late September going into October the water starts to cool off in the shallows and the deeper basin maintains warmer temperatures longer. Water takes more time than air to change temps, and the more of it you have, the longer it will take to cool down or warm up. Picture your typical creek or large shallow bay or small river mouth for example. These areas are usually good congregating places for baitfish and in turn predators in the spring because they warm faster. In the fall, the opposite happens. The weeds die off, the water in the shallows cools faster than the main lake, so logically the fish move deeper. This doesn’t mean you won’t find fish shallow, but you are more likely to find schools of fish in or near deeper water. Find good structure nearby where they can come up and feed are you’re likely closing in on walters. Another way to picture this phenomenon is to imagine a shallow bowl filled with warm water. If you put it in the freezer the water in the middle stays warmer longer as the edges cool off and freeze up first. If you take the same bowl, fill it with ice cold water and put it in the oven the deeper water in the middle will remain cold longer and the water on the edges will warm faster. The same thing happens in every lake, every year, but obviously on a much smaller scale.

This doesn’t mean you can only find fish in deep water, but it does mean fish tend to school up in areas where deep water is readily accessible. As soon as I started focusing on structure adjacent to deep water the fishing picked up in a big way. The first spot I checked out, basically a large deep basin with a rock pile topping at 25 feet in the middle of it, I immediately found walleyes. They were schooled up very tightly around the edges and they were on the feed. Once I scattered the fish on that rock pile I looked at my map and tried to find other spots that offered the same type of characteristics (deep water and nearby structure). I started getting fish on every spot I tried all at about the same depth. Once this happened, it became a matter of fine tuning the right presentation and enjoying the action. I had the blueprint for a pattern.

Now that we’d found the fish, it was time to worry about the business end of things. The key to getting fish to bite this time of year is to slow it down. Whether you opt for a horizontal or vertical presentation you can’t be moving slow enough. I remember reading about a “do nothing” jigging technique in a magazine a while back. The author used 3” tubes on ¼oz jigs in the fall for bass and literally let his jig sit there on the bottom and waited for the fish to bite; kind of like fishing with live bait. I’ve had great success using this technique for bass in the past and I now know it works with my Percidaed friends too. Basically you need to treat your jig like it’s a live worm or minnow. This is what I tell my guests. The “do nothing” technique is really easy for anyone to master. As long as you feel contact with the bottom the rest is simple. You do nothing. I use the current and my trolling motor to ensure my line remains as vertical as possible and stay on top of the fish. Choose a jig that allows you to maintain bottom contact and work the area very slowly. If you have a transom mount sonar it’s a huge help. I have a sonar unit mounted in the front of my boat specifically for jig fishing and I couldn’t do without it. By the way, don’t worry about using jigs up to 1/2 or 3/4 even 1oz if the conditions dictate a need for it. Walleyes will suck ’em up like candy despite the fact that they look heavy enough to be used as anchors.

When people ask me what time of year I like best my answer is quick and easy; fall. As cottagers slowly but surely store away their boats, the air cools and the leaves change, fall consistently provides some of the year’s most memorable moments at the lake. Not only are the fish putting on a feed for the winter, but the air is invigorating, the colours breathtaking and the overall experience well worth the effort. The weather isn’t always in the record breaking range we had this weekend, but with the right clothing you can always be comfortable. Many people reject the idea of a weekend at the lake after the first few strong frosts and that means quieter times in a beautiful setting for those of us who don’t. So invite your friends and family and head out to the lake this fall. Make sure you bring plenty of firewood, warm clothes, a camera and more importantly your sense of adventure. I promise you won’t be disappointed. Oh and don’t forget to wet a line, you may even be rewarded with a personal best walleye.

Until next time…Stay outside.

Jigger.

This walter had a face that looked like it could swallow a bass whole. It was one of many fish caught in a very quick afternoon of fishing, mid-day, sunny September. Definitely my best outing this year by far. If this doesn’t get your blood pumping as a walleye angler, you’re in the wrong business. Looks like I have my work cut out for me before ice up to better this catch. Stay tuned…

Until next time, Stay Outside, Jigger.

It’s no secret that when it comes to successful walleye fishing, location is one of, if not the most important factor. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I’m asked about where the walleyes are. Those who know me know I’m not overly secretive about spots, though all of us do keep a few honey-holes to ourselves and I’m no different. If there is anything I’ve learned it’s that good fishermen don’t fixate on spots. What I mean by this is that rather than just being content with knowing there are fish in a given area, good anglers ask themselves what that area offers to walleyes, and extrapolate this knowledge to help find many more suitable locations for walleyes. A spot fisherman instead is more likely to hit dead ends when the bite subsides in known spots. Anyone who has spent time chasing walleyes will tell you this is bound to happen at some point. You hit the nail on the head one day, but if the fish move it’s easy to quickly lose confidence and come home empty-handed or just assume “they weren’t biting today”. A good fisherman adapts, tries a variety of techniques and presentations, always looks for new locations and most importantly, establishes patterns. Ask yourself, “what does this spot offer” and more importantly, “where can I find other spots like this”. In our local waters there are literally hundreds of places that hold walleyes. This has helped me stay on fish, and often big fish, all year. This is also what really gets my blood pumping and a huge part of why I love to catch walleyes so much. I get a kick out of putting a pattern together and catching ‘eyes in new places regularly. It is as they say, the thrill of the chase that keeps me coming back. Now, I am not claiming to be the authority on walleye fishing around here, far from it, but what I can tell you is this approach has almost doubled my catches and all but eliminated those dreaded proverbial goose egg days. If there are no fish in a spot, I’m gone. If I find fish in another spot, I break out the map and find other similar spots until I find a pattern.

Speaking of patterns, I have been working on something different lately thanks to a tip from my a friend and local angler. I have been finding fish off of typical structure wandering open water. This certainly goes against the grain of what is commonly said about walleyes. Indeed the vast majority most of fish I catch are bottom and structure oriented. It’s no secret that in places like large northern, deep reservoirs or the great lakes walleye do suspend. However in the shallows of the St-Lawrence surely this can’t be right? Well, I remember one time, as a kid, a friend and I accidentally spotted a huge school of walleyes suspended in the main channel in 10 feet of water over 40 feet. I could not believe my eyes. There were dozens of them just sitting there on a sunny day, in plain sight, in the middle of the channel. I was amazed at what turned out to be a lasting image for me. However, it wasn’t until very recently when this same friend confirmed he was onto suspended fish that I decided to try and find some of my own. I really wasn’t sure where to start and was warned to stay away from my friend’s spot 🙂 so I began working gradually off my usual structures towards open water while paying close attention to sonar. It took a while to adjust to fishing what seems like featureless water, but then I started noticing a few promising signs. Fist off there was a lot of activity on the surface. Baitfish were breaking surface over deep water and I headed towards them. I then began to find nice arches on the sonar 10-15 feet above bottom and also seeing larger fish break surface (which I assume were not walleyes though). I quickly gained confidence and worked the area thoroughly trying different depths and presentations. Before long, I had my first suspended fish in the net.

I wanted to make sure that fish wasn’t a fluke, so we worked that area pretty thoroughly and much to my surprise before you know it we were putting gold in the boat using sonar to find suspended fish. It seems a lot of the open water walters were fairly large; no monsters but all slightly above average. Once we scattered that spot we began studying the map and quickly found another area very close by which seemed to offer the same characteristics. Our instincts proved correct and we were rewarded with two more open water walleyes. The best part about the last two fish is that they came out of an area I had never fished before. In fact, I had never really noticed it until it caught my eye on the map that day because of the similarities between the two areas. This to me is what walleye fishing is all about.

I only found these fish late in the weekend and with hockey started my fishing time is greatly reduced, but I am looking forward to getting back out there looking for these rogue walters.

On the beautiful boat ride back to the dock on a dead calm warm September night I thought to myself, this is definitely a good place to be. Anytime you’re fishing in a tee-shirt near mid-September after sunset you have to think life is pretty good. And anytime you’re not fishing your usual spots, trying to discover something new and the plan comes together, there is no better feeling.

Until next time, stay outside.

Jigger.

When local guide and absolute walleye and musky nut Mike Rousseau extended an invitation to join him for a day of trolling the elusive St-Lawrence River Musky there was no way I was going to pass it up. He is quickly building a reputation for finding fish and boating some of the larger beasts in our challenging local waters with regularity. With his advice I purchased a quality rod and reel combo and I was really looking forward to trying it out.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different plan this weekend. Not very much will keep me from the water especially around the last few weekends when fishing without having to layer on the clothing is still an option. After feasting on a few Jigger-style Lancaster Walleye Rolls last night I checked the weather network and realized Hurricane Irerene’s remnants were about to wreak havoc on our plans. I texted Mike and said “looking pretty nasty tomorrow”, to which he replied “really nasty”. With that said, we decided to salvage the few hours we had left and headed out on our impromptu Franny predator chase. Today’s high of 18C, relentless 40km NE winds and 30 millilitres of rain tell me we made the right decision.

I met up with Mike at Wimpy’s marina and after a few handshakes and a “fun” boat launch we were on the water. The first thing that struck me is how well equipped Mike is. As he says quite often for musky fishing there is no substitute for the right gear. You don’t want to get caught ill-equipped when going toe-to-toe with these toothy fish. Excellent hook cutters, a large basket net, extra hooks, split ring pliers, strong rod holders for trolling, quality rods that can handle heavy fishing are only a few pieces of equipment that are a must to keep you and the fish safe.

We started working pieces of structure that aren’t quite what I’m used to fishing for walleye but yet are similar in many aspects. We were looking for smaller transition areas on larger features. For example, an area where weeds meet rocks, or sand. Anything that would hold smaller baitfish. Also, seeing as muskies will attack prey up to a third of their size at times it is no secret they feed on walleyes on a regular basis, on lakes where that forage is readily available. Once you do find walters, you can determine that muskies are around lurking somewhere near that structure.

After hitting a few spots with no luck, and with me begining to think it was probably not going to happen on this night, Mike’s constant experimenting with bait size, colour and retrieve speed paid off. The rod’s ticker screamed and I was handed the St-Croix with an impressive looking fish breaking surface a few feet behind the boat. This wasn’t one of the legendary man-eaters (ok maybe not man-eaters) of the mighty St. Lawrence but pound per pound; it certainly lived up to its reputation.

With that epic fight out of the way, it was time for a few pictures, a quick release to minimize handling and a celebratory hand-shake. This personal-best fish for me (and my first musky not caught accidentally while walleye fishing :)) was back home safely where it can grow into a trophy. If you’re ever in the area and want very good odds in hooking up with one of these silver beauties I’d strongly recommend getting in touch with Mike. Not only does he put you on fish, he makes the entire experience fun, instructive and memorable. The one thing that struck me the most about Mike however is his undying passion for fishing and his ability to share it. That, in my mind is something you can’t fake.

If you’d like to book a trip with Musky Mike you can call him @: 613-363-6453.

Until Next time, Stay Outside…Jigger