The New Brunswick Sport Fishing Assoc. tournament season third event of the season was yesterday after a six week layoff to allow the bass to get through their spawning season. Phil and I managed to put together a bag weighing 14.30 lbs for a first place finish. Phil is a topwater nut and usually puts some really big fish in the boat with it but not this weekend. His topwater bite was only good for some two pounders this time around. He wasn’t long switching around and going to the bottom with his favourite soft stickbait. He was using a mix of Shimano rods with Stella reels spooled with Power Pro and a fluorocarbon leader. I was mixing it up a bit with soft plastics, a 3/8 ounce Strike King spinnerbait and soft plastics...

I had a request to take some folks fishing on the Miramichi yesterday which I did. I only had a fair day when I was up there last week and was hoping for better. From some of the stories I heard we had been off the bulk of the fish by a quarter mile last time. We launched at the Enclosure and checked the area around Strawberry Marsh and Beaubear Island with no success. I fired up the Rude and headed straight up the river. After running the boat up on a sandbar last year I paid attention to the saved trail on the Lowrance Live this time. My intent was to start above where I was last week but as it turned out we didn’t have to go quite that far as we could see the fish breaking the surface and stopped. I dropped the Talon and we never moved the boat for the next five hours...

Phil and I are off to a good start on the New Brunswick Sport Fishing ” Triton / Evinrude Bass tour. We took a third place on the season opener on Harvey Lake and this past weekend we reeled in a first place finish. Points are important and two low ones like this to start the year off is fantastic.
The Harvey tournament was one of those cold wet days that just grinds at you and the bite was very slow in the cold conditions. We only had eight bites all day which turned out to be more than most teams had caught. It was just enough to get us to third.
The Victoria Day weekend saw us in beautiful Nackawic for the annual Nackawic Big Axe challenge. The Lions Club opened up their facilities for us and put on great breakfasts both mornings and a nice hot BBQ in the afternoon on Sunday...

Four to six mile an hour south winds they said. Off to Stick Marsh I go because a south wind is great on the marsh. The reality was over ten miles an hour north east winds with a foot and a half chop when I got there. I was late putting the boat in but not many trailers in the parking lot. I drove down to the back and three out of the five boats that were there left and headed back towards the ramp. That is never a good sign that early in the day. The water is still dirty from all of the north winds we have been getting so I start slow with a black worm working the edges of the eel grass. I missed one fish in an hour and the second last boat leaves as well so I pretty much have it all to myself now.
I moved over to the west side and the water is slightly cleaner for some reason so I switch...

The weather has been a challenge this week with most days very windy. The north wind really dirtied up the Stick Marsh so Jeff and I headed back to the intra coastal waterway but closer to the inlet at Fort Pierce this time. We wanted to see if being closer to the inlet would produce more fish and it did not disappoint. We caught half a dozen small Bluefish and so many Ladyfish we lost count. We actually called the house and got some more soft plastics brought down to the dock. Most of the locals seem to look on the Ladyfish as a nuisance but they are loads of fun to catch on Bass tackle. They are very acrobatic and can take some blistering runs. The one I am holding here hit at the end of the cast and easily peeled off another fifty or sixty feet of line before she turned...

We had a really good Lowrance seminar yesterday at Bass Pro Shops in Dieppe, New Brunswick. There was a good crowd and I answered questions for forty five minutes after the presentation was over. I used a mix of the presentation sent out by Lowrance and some of my own screen shots. I think a lot of folks don’t really understand what they are seeing when they first get a unit so I showed a few examples. First was a bait ball on the bottom, then one on split screen 2D and Structure Scan with bait, a thermocline in deep water, split screen 2D and Downscan with a school of Striped Bass under the boat,...

I got to spend some time in the boat today with my friends Rob and Melissa who were escaping some of that cold Canadian weather. The fish were not where I expected them to be and it started off really slow but we eventually figured it out. Although we didn’t catch a bunch of fish we did get some good ones. We were watching the Lowrance Live and took note of what the first fish was on, then when we got the second one we knew what what they were setting up on. Melissa had her personal best largemouth early on and then beat it around lunchtime. Not bad to hit two personal bests on one half day trip to the Farm. Rob got into the act as well and as you may notice someone else didn’t get his picture taken. Nuff said about that...

I managed to get a couple of days out on the Stick Marsh / Farm thirteen impoundment with Chrissie this week. The first day we caught twenty or so fish and some of them were good ones. The day started off with a fish on my first cast and I figured this was going to be good day on the water but the next couple of hours were a grind and we only put five in the boat. Chrissie had one of them and it was pushing six pounds. I continued working different sections that I knew could hold some fish and one of them was the deal. We hit about ten fish in one area about 100 yards long and they were all nice fat fish. We were off the water by two.

Yesterday I had some errands in the morning so we didn’t even get on the water until 10 am...

Backwater Casting season finale.
It sure is tough to book a show around the weather this time of year but we got this one right. We travelled up to Woodstock yesterday with our guest Ray McFarlane for some late season Smallmouth Bass fishing. A bit on the cold side, some light rain and a little bit of wind were the order of the day.
Our first stop started off a bit on the slow side with me throwing a tube and Ray fishing a Shakey Head. It was probably a good ten minutes before we got a fish and Ray struck first and brought a chunky 2.5lber to the boat. Another cast at the same general spot produced another one and while I was watching to see how big the second fish was going to be I felt that old familiar tick on the line and we were into our first double header of the day...

This is a screen shot from my HDS 9 Carbon showing a school of Striped Bass passing under the boat while we were filming on the Miramichi River this year.