By: Gord Pyzer pushed close to seven pounds. We’ve simply caught too many 17- to 24-pound northern pike to remember them all. So, I was excited to jump to the front of the boat when we arrived, drop down the electric trolling motor and grab a nearby rod that I’d rigged with a Ned head. I pitched the jig up perfectly, so that it landed as quietly as a wind-blown sigh beside a boulder that I could see was ringed with lush green vegetation. I let the soft plastic fall to the bottom, lifted it up gently, shook it a time or two, and do you know what happened next? t is often said that we learn best when we experience something Nothing. firsthand. The observation and awareness is so much stronger than simply being told how to do something. Well, let me tell you, So I reeled in quickly and I had my eyes opened up recently when my grandson Liam and I made another pitch to arrived at one of our favourite fishing locations. another rock a few feet away and went through the It is a gorgeous, finger-like underwater point, sprinkled with same procedure. Only this brown basketball-size boulders and lush green cabbage, that time, I stiffened up like a snakes out from the tip of a stunning spruce- and pine-studded dog on point, once the jig island on a modest size lake in the heart of Northwestern Ontario’s hit the water, fully prepared Sunset Country. But, while the lake may be unassuming in size, to set the hook and cross the walleye, smallmouth bass and northern pike that prowl its the eyes on a big bruiser margins are huge. Our stoutest walleye, for example, nudged a bass as soon as I felt it dozen pounds in weight, while the biggest bass over the years intercept the falling jig. But again, I felt nothing.
I I
So, I dropped the Ned rod and picked up its buddy, adorned with a hand-tied black marabou jig that never fails, flicked it up onto the point, swam it back to the boat and... did I say it never fails? While all of this was going on, Liam was at the back of the boat rigging up a couple of crankbait rods. He tied a gaudy, Bad Lipstick coloured Rapala Rippin’ Rap on one, and a Helsinki Shad coloured OG Slim 6 crankbait – that features a circuit-bill lip – to the other. We swapped positions, he made a long cast with the OG Slim first, turned the handle on his reel maybe three times and set the hooks into a bronze coloured smallmouth that bowed his rod dangerously and leaped at least three feet out the water, re-entering with a belly flop that would have earned it a terribly low score at the Olympics. (Continued on page 20.)
Just Fishing . 18
Fall 2023
