jamie

I have a friend who did this trip for a dozen years before he could pay for it outright. Here's how he did it. Get a credit card with a 4 grand limit. Buy the trip. Rip up the card and pay it off that year. Repeat as needed. It's a pretty good system because there's not alot of guys who can actually save that kind of money without going out and blowing it at christmas buying the GI Joe with the Kung Fu Grip. For me personally I don't want to spend XXXX in Ontario and then another 4 grand every year on Great Slave. I'd love to, but I find it hard to be away from family that long every single year. Heck..I don't even like going out fishing locally more than a couple hours a week now. Gotta draw the line. Family first. Fishing is a distant second. But..all that being said, if you have the means to do it sometime DO IT. And do it with a group of guys who are seasoned veterans on that trip. Think about it...an average of 1 pike every 13 minutes. The average size is 16 pounds! The bigger ones hit 50" and 40pounds. It's something that Hemmingway himself would have wanted to do. Before ya die...do it. Somehow. Just do it. I plan on going on a peacock trip one day too. We(CF) did a bunch of advertising work for Amazon Fishing Adventures and since then I've really wanted to go. Hey...when you are doing a layout with a few dozen huge peacock bass, it sorta gets to ya. Same reason I'm fishing Great Slave now.

Yes. Very nasty fight, as you probably saw by the video on there of John being surgucally repaired by yours truly in the lodge. We had 2 guys take 5/0 hooks thru the hand. I think there's another video on there of John having his muskie rod jacked under the boat all the way down to the reel. That was pretty common. Different from a muskie....If you can get thru the first 10 seconds of a muskie fight, you got her boated. With a 41-50" pike it aint like that. The fight doesn't even start til they see the boat. Then all hell breaks loose. 1,043 pike with an average size of 38"/16#. With the biggest ones coming in at 50". We probably missed another couple hundred. 5 guys averaging 1 pike every 13 minutes. It's an expensive trip (3 grand to be there. 1 grand to get there). But it's the best monster pike trip available until someone opens up Siberia to fishing (there's lakes in Siberia where 60"+ pike aren't a rarity). The trip will ruin ya. I've fished a grand total of about 1 hour since I got back about a month ago. It's hard to go from fighting dozens of pike a day that will crack a muskie rod in half (we bring 2-4 extra muskie rods per person and 2-4 extra Calcutta or Abu 6500 reels per person) to fishing here. It's just a different mindset to get back into. If my wife and son would have wanted to move to Yellowknife I would have gotten my Ice Road Trucker license while I was there and stayed. I'll be back in June of '09 where that 1,043 number is doubled and there's more pesky mid-high 20's walleyes than you care to catch (like dink smallies in front of a discharge ). Wanna go?

Nick, Ya know what I'd say? "Go. Call back tomorrow."

Heh heh. Nope. But I can tell you that you were wrong on most of 'em last week. Ok.. listen. You're obsessed. There's a meeting at the local church tonight for S.A. (Spotted Anonymous). I'll be your sponsor.

Tim, You gotta stop. Back away from the computer. This is brodering on some sort of Fatal Attraction with spotted bass kinda thing.

Joseph, Congradulations! You are the first person to get past the chick on the pier!

You're not just a nerd in waders. You're a death defying madman. Read

"I know we are ready to roll up our sleeves for some enhancement work as soon as the Thorium is dredged out." The enhancement work is being handled by the FP,the government because it's a superfund site, private land owners ( man, was THAT a bad idea...lawns to the bank!), and Tronox( another bad idea). Most of it is already done. The smallies are nowhere to be found...but they'll find there way to that area in the next few years. But it looks nice though, for what that's worth. I tried for 2 years to get an answer about restocking the 7 mile stretch. And the trout opener being moved? Um..yeah...that'd be global warming hard at work. It's the same reason why horticulturalists can now grow native plants from Missouri in Minnesota. I defy anyone to argue against global warming at this point. I'll be happy to march them right down to the sign at the entrance to the lake. BUT......it is nice that summer now starts in late April and goes right up to the first week of November. I haven't even started to think about fall tactics yet. Heck, we were burning bucktails on Great Slave (2,000 miles north of here) in friggin September this year. 20 years ago you ran the risk of hitting ice up there in September (just south of the Arctic Circle).

It's only a matter of time before some tries to surf the east break of the Batavia Dam. I'm seeing "Flight of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner being blasted out of mine and Kauchak's boats as we take the dam. _____________________ Cool videos Joz. Check out these lunatics though. ( * warning * language)

Castaway The Blue Lagoon.

Hmmmm.. Donnnnnnn...almost looks like a Wisconsin River fish. It's got the tell tale tanic coloration.

I've got a bunch of fishing movies on Youtube. Does that count??????

Deliverance, The Godfather, Grumpy old men (ofcourse), Indiana Jones, Jaws...

I bought Budd's hanzo sword and had Madsen sign it. I keep it in my car and use it on carp. Ok..ok..so the second part isn't true. But the first part is. Here's a good site to check out all the stats on what you're looking for: http://autos.msn.com/research/category/def...category=wagons I highlighted wagons for you. The ultimate being one of the BMW sleds. I'd love to have one of those.

Yes. Antenea comes off. For what it's worth, I'm a car freak. I've had vehicles from a 69 charger 440 R/T to 3 suped up civics , a mustang or two, a chevelle, an S10, a toyota truck, etc etc etc etc. I've totally switched over (from hondas, which were the best of the bunch for this racer) to Mazdas. I have the 6 and the 3 and just traded in a protege5 (I should have just stored that one for weekends. Ugh). It's all personal preference but for me I had to go with Mazda. From a big guy/ sportsman point of view it's an awesome fit. If I wasn't in that I'd go Subaru. But with Subarau you gotta go full-bore turbo. I suggest the WRX so you can do your own rally race to your favorite fishing spot. Oh..and Mark, do you remember when we were looking at those swords at the fishing show a couple years ago?

Mazda 6 sportwagon. + + = Mine is outfitted with the Jim Jozwiak rod holders (best damn thing I've ever seen Joz!!) There's all your room. Bikes inside or out. Kayak on top. plenty long enough for 9' one piece rods. 29mpg with a K&N. 250 hp. Comes with the retractable dog net that seperates the rear fold down seats from the cargo area, which works awesome (my dog is 100lbs and spins around back there with room to spare.) Plus you wont look like you're driving a grocery-getter. The only other cool lookin' wagon on the market is the Magnum...which has some bad reviews out there and isn't really worth it unless you get it with a HEMI....at which point you just took your 29 MPG and cut it in half because no one drives a HEMI like a normal car.

Oh...don't even get me started on a Cubs rant. Joz...should I copy and paste? You make that call.

Gotta support the local shops. They might be a little more expensive but the Big Box fishing stores are lacking in 1) knowledge and 2) what we use. If they were trolling the local websites they'd stock what we use. How many times do we have to go into these stores and ask for Charlie Brewer Slider Head Jigs, Tals packs, Exude Hellgies. Salmo Bullheads. Lunker City Salad Spoons. Swimmin' Charlies. Storm Subwarts. Go in the Big Box stores and asking for that stuff is like Ben Stein asking "Buehler?.....Buehler?....Buehler?......" Kolar B&T has the stuff. GAT has 'em. Waterwerks II has 'em. Plus they have everyting else all of us use. I wasted gallons of gas going to the Bass Pro Cave in Bolingbrook and walked out empty handed. They had nothing and knew less. Meanwhile I've made a call to Ken at GAT, Walt at Waterwerks II and Rob at Kolar and had stuff waiting for me when I got there....and if they didn't have it they ordered it. Donations are great. But unless they're donating some Charlie Brewer jigs....oh wait. Nevermind. They don't have those.

I'll attach them anywhere I have to to get another one of these! I'd like to thank my new sponsors, Exide and Champion.

It's all about having a game plan BEFORE you go out. That includes having the camera pre-set, tools at the ready, and practice with both items BEFORE you go fishing. On my last trip we timed ourselves and had it down to 1 minute or less. Now here's something to consider when I say 1 minute or less. We caught 1,043 pike that averaged 38" and 16#. 124 of those were between 41-50". If you can get a 41"+ pike off in a minute then you should have no problem with a smallie no matter how bad it's hooked. And all those fish on that last trip were hand landed. No nets. No craddles. No Boga grips. I'm big about photographing fish. Duh....because it's our business. That being said here's some tips from our site that might help to quicken the process and get fish back in the water a little faster: http://customfish.com/info.html#1%20photo Now, back to the tools/landing. You should have the right tools for the job. Trying to unhook a treble hook from between gill rakers with a short pair of pliers is just asking for trouble. And dont be afraid to go out the back of the gills and cut the line. So ya gotta re-tie. So what... ya just saved a fish and a whole bunch of time. I like the barbless hook idea but not for all situations. On that last trip..um..yeah..we cut em all off. Plus we took trebles off of baits if they were just overkill. A Bulldawg only needs ONE bottom treble and the dorsal hook. I've even taken off the front trebles on some of my smallie cranks and put an Excalibur Rotating Treble on the back. It's a no-miss system because the Rotating Trebles just dont miss. In fact they sometimes overhook. But again..it's all about a game plan. Know the moves. Know the tools. Know the camera. And practice before you go after a trophy smallie. I suggest trying out your camera settings while fishing for panfish. You can always erase digital blunders.

Agreed. I recommend looking at Consumer Reports pr archived articles in Macworld magazine. They have some great write-ups on cameras. As for the experience thing....Heh...yeah. All day, all night. 24/7/365 Whether I like it or not.

I was talking about the kind of camera that someone is going to carry around in their waders. We have SLR's as well as Canon A-95's, but we leave the SLR's at home when we're out on the water unless we're in a boat. A higher megapixel rating doesn't always mean a better picture, true. But in my line of work it's the easiest guideline to give to someone unless they're shooting a full page spread for a magazine (again..that's where the SLR's and specialty lenses come into play). Technology has come so far that a higher meg Canon Powershot series shoots as well or better than the highest end $1,000 cameras of a meer 5 years ago. Some of the stuff we see and shoot on a $200 camera lately is just mind blowing. Ofcourse, I'm speaking about all this from a professional side. I gotta deal with the 4 megapixel shots taken on a riverbank as well as shots where companies dump in a million dollars to take a single picture of a bacon double cheeseburger. I was going more for the average fisherman angle here.

Get a camera with a flip out screen. Practice, practice, practice before you go out. Know the settings and have them ready before you start fishing. Use the highest resolution. Don't use anything less than a 4Meg. Always use a flash. Get a 2 GB card. Try some videos. Buy a Mac and get photoshop or use the newest version of Iphoto (has the basic tools of photoshop). Know how to hold the fish. Don't hold the fish out. Kneel down and get small (unless the fish is a longer species). Save the original file. Use photobucket. .... ugh..man, there's alot of rules to this gig. I'm gonna quit taking pictures. Yeah...right.

Very interesting subject. In doing our own research over here we have found at least 2 species of smallmouth(northern & Neosho) and 1 hybrid mix (meanmouth). It's very interesting to see that these may indeed branch out further to specific waters subspecies. I'd like to say I caught a Batavia Fox Northern Neosho with a touch of Geneva Dam Strain mixed in. Ahhh the possibilities.

http://www.wbbm780.com/pages/849554.php?co...ontentId=832984 This was a nice surprise before I embark on a trip to NWT tomorrow. Thank you to anyone who read my recent post regarding BP's previous plans to dump addition waste into lake Michigan. And a huge thanks to anyone who signed the petition. You can feel proud that what you did mattered. In a world where big oil companies rule the planet, the common man finally won a battle for the good of all. That's just awesome. Have a great week everyone!