My Big Question

Is there anywhere on this earth--anywhere--where we've got more fishing opportunities, than right here, in central Ontario? And not just the volume of water. I'm talking about the number of species. Some days I look around inside my boat and the amount of rods and tackle is a little nuts! Ultralights with tiny braided and monofilament lines. Ten foot trolling rods. Downriger rods and downriggers. Spinning rods, baitcast rods, muskie outfits. Giant trolling baits. Finesse plastics. Hair jigs, flutterspoons and inline spinners with marabou skirts as long as my forearm.

I carry it all for one reason: on any given day, I'll be able to use every single bit of it.   

I've never made the mistake of bypassing any and all possible species. That may well be because I'm such a sonar junky. I love watching my electronics and underwater cameras. You won't believe what's down there. We ran into huge numbers of sunfish on Lake Simcoe the other day down on bottom, in 29 feet of water. Down went the baby plastics on drop shot rigs. Up through light, braided line and long, whippy rods, those little sucker pulled! Bullheads, gobies, smallmouth and some really nice perch also came up, off that spot.  

Now, think about this for a second. Half an hour after playing down there with those panfish, we were out on a good lake trout hump, scratching along the bottom with spoons. Trout are typically eating well this time of year, on a bunch of different baitfish species. Every ten minutes a downrigger would pop and we'd have one on. That kind of variety really is what makes our area so much fun to fish. Catching sunfish and lake trout within 500 yards of each other? I think stuff like that is pretty incredible.   

And why not cap things off with a walleye? With the boat tied up at the dock, I had the needlenose pliers out, tuning up a badly beaten stickbait for the evening's walleye trolling. After getting the bait running, I made a little cast with it and wouldn't you know it, a nice walleye spanks it about half way back.

So I'm sticking to my original fishing question: where else? I can't think of anywhere on earth I'd rather guide fishermen.