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This seems to be the year for having to reschedule guests for the show but so far it is working out great. I hit the water today with my friend and neighbor Bill White and Luisa Seftel who is here from Berlin, Germany , on a six week internship with Rogers TV. Bill is an accomplished angler and Luisa is a novice angler whose only prior try at fishing occurred when she was five years old on vacation in France.

The air temperature this morning is at 10 degrees with a forecast high of 26 to 28. Light winds out of the north are forecast to switch to the west by midday. The lake temperature was a nice balmy 21 degrees. Luisa was impressed with both the size of the lake and the lack of boats. Being from Berlin the waterways are always busy and the lakes run on the small side...

Lake Utopia is without a doubt the toughest tournament lake
 that we fish every year and this one was no exception. The closer I got to the
 lake the heavier the fog was and we ended up with a half hour fog delay. Even
 at take-off it was a bit dicey on the open water and we slowed right down and
 followed the plot line on the Lowrance to get to our first spot. It is a decent
 area and we were pleasantly surprised to have it to ourselves.
 
I started off with a Zoom Toad and my son tied on a Chug Bug
 as we worked around some pads and weeds. He hit the open stuff and I went right
 over the top of it. I finally got to try out the new Super8Slick Power Pro on
 the Cumara and was not disappointed. Nice easy casting and an instant hookup
 even if you got hit right when the bait hit th...

Last year we went in to Miramichi Lake with a group of tournament anglers to try and assist the Department of Natural Resources assess the Smallmouth population after an illegal introduction into the lake. It was a bit early when we went in and none of the anglers caught a fish with the exception of a 14? fish caught by one of the biologists. The following weekend I went back in by myself to have another look after a week of warm weather brought the water temperatures up. I teamed up with Shane who is a third year biology student who is working on this project for the summer. We hooked six bass and landed four of them. None were really big but they were all old enough to spawn. As it turns out, we had caught forty percent of the spawning age fish that were captured last year.

Fast forwar...

I just got the word from Rogers TV that our first show of the 2012 season is now on air. Now if I could only get Rogers Cable TV out here I could see the finished product. Hope you enjoy the show, Terry and I had a lot of fun filming it.

Rick Greene

Late spring Smallmouth Bass

My Canadian Fishing Tour partner, Terry Curtis, made the trip to New Brunswick from Ontario to have a crack at some early season smallmouth. This was a treat for him because the season in Ontario doesn’t open until the last Saturday in June.

As lady luck would have it the four days that he and his wife spent here were less than ideal with a mix of cloud, showers and wind but that’s why we have rain gear. The forecast is 20 to 30 kilometer an hour winds out of the North East which wasn’t a problem because we were fishing the East side of the lake. This gave us some protection from the worst of it...

Terry and I are filming the first show of the season tomorrow so we wanted to get out and get the rust off. The wind is howling at about 30k so we are going to head up to Woodstock and hope the wind doesn’t bang us around to much in the river. We launched the boat and headed upriver to fish just below the Hartland covered bridge. This is the longest covered bridge in the world at 1282 feet in length and it has been in use since July 1901.

The fishing can be phenonmenal at times just below the bridge but with the crazy weather we have been experiencing this week we had to settle for just good fishing. I started off by rigging a Blue Fox in line spinner on a 6’6″ Crucial medium action rod and a 2500 Stadic reel spooled with 8lb Seige green mono...

The time has come to get the cobwebs out, put some fresh line on the Stradics and go fishing. It always seem that the spring is when all the problems surface and I just had a great customer service experience with the folks at Minn Kota and all is well.

My first guest this year is my old friend and CFT tournament partner Terry Curtis. Terry is going to make the trip to New Brunswick to have a crack at some early season smallmouth fishing on one of my favourite lakes. The fish are normally in a prespawn mode this time of the year but with the crazy weather we have had its hard to say what they will be doing. Between us it shouldn’t take too long to figure it out. It has been a long winter and I am really looking forward to getting out again and it is always good to go fishing with friends...

If the folks remain stable I will be heading to the Moncton Boat and Fishing show next weekend to do a few seminars. Drop by and say hello and maybe bring a question or two to the seminar stage. I will be helping out with Phil’s and New Brunswick Sportfishing throughout the weekend as well.

Farm 13 that is, just outside of Fellesmere, Florida. Chrissie started us off this morning with the Chug Bug again and had three fish to the boat to our nothing. Not being real slow my thoughts turned to topwater for her boyfriend. I rigged up a 6’6″ Shimano Compre with a Stadic reel and 15 pound Power Pro without a leader this time. I tied on a Zoom Horny Toad for him and showed him the way to fish it and how to get the speed right. About ten minutes later we turned parallel to a stump flat and he sailed a cast out over it. About three turns of the handle and the bait disappeared into a big surface boil and Todd leaned back into the rod. The fish surged towards the nearest stump but he managed to turn it and got her headed out towards the boat...

I took my daughter and her boyfriend out on Stick Marsh just prior to a front coming through and thought the fishing would be outstanding. Turned out not to be the case and we worked hard for the bites we got. Chrissie started us off with the gar pictured above that smashed a Chug Bug about ten feet from the boat. I destroyed the hooks trying to get them out but the bait will be good to go again after I rerig some new ones. We only caught 15 bass in about six hours of fishing but with the warm weather in the forecast and a full moon on the way it is going to fish really well in a couple more days.

I never get tired of the wildlife down here and big gators are a great part of the scenery. The one we took the picture of was a big un’.

Rick Greene