Episode 224: Northern Ontario Walleye Fishing Gets Serious

Outdoor Journal Radio hits the road to Timmins, Ontario for the Timmins Walleye Championship and the NOWT finals. Ang, Nik, and Dean break down the tournament, the Princecraft boat prizes, the difference between the championship and sportsman divisions, and what makes J&B Cycle and Marine such a hub for Northern Ontario anglers.

The crew also talks about their latest Fish’n Canada shoot, Nik’s brand-new iPhone taking a 13-foot swim, invasive grass carp, lone star ticks in Ontario, and why the guys don’t always measure every fish they catch.

Topics include: Timmins Walleye Championship, NOWT finals, Princecraft boats, J&B Cycle and Marine, invasive grass carp, lone star ticks, fishing tournaments, and behind-the-scenes Fish’n Canada stories.

Transcript

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This episode of Outdoor Journal Radio is brought to you in part by the Invasive Species Center, protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species. Freedom Cruise Canada, rent the boat, own the memories, and JMB Cycle a Marine, your home for all things power sports, boats, and equipment. There they are. There they are. Hi everybody, welcome to the program. I love that on the road again. It's a great, I like the little version we made. It makes me feel good. As you can see, a little different setup uh for this episode. Nikki V will be joining me today. Couldn't get rid of him. I tried, but hey, you can keep me in the corner for so long. Uh Dean Taylor on the board as per usual. You'll be uh joining us uh in and out of the program. We're coming to you from uh Timmins, Ontario, because we're covering a rather uh interesting event. It's the Timmins Walleye Championship, which is a local event here that's been going on for a number of years. And uh for the next two days, the um the champions who have kind of this is all leading up all summer long. They've been competing in events, I think 20 or 25 events. Uh, I think the North Ontario Walleye Trail, I think it is, the NOWT. And so they um they compete to uh to see who can get the most points. So that the final events, which is the one that we're gonna be covering here this week, uh, we're gonna get a championship. And the reason we the reason we have the boat behind is a Princecraft boat because one of the lucky winners is going to take a Princecraft boat home. So it's not just a small little uh local tournament we're talking about. I think they're giving away two boats. Two boats. Two boats. Well, we're gonna talk about that in uh the segment later on in the program. First of all, let's get down to some business. Some business. Uh the business is uh these goodies that Nikki's got. The store. The adjunct store manager is come is coming to you now live from JB. And I gotta say, you guys have been just great. These, I think this might be the last one left. So that bad. I might be out of all truckers, all my whites, all the sandwich bills. I got my flex fits. You guys are loving, you're gonna really like what we have going for the new species hoodies because you just saw the final versions. I just got the final versions as recording three days ago. And um, if you like this, you're gonna love the next one. So stay tuned for that. The store shop.fishandcanada.com or fishandcanada.com, up at the top of the page, you'll see up to 50% off. Click there. That's your gateway, your portal to your next fishing sweater. Oh, did you like that? Spin on my new spin. Come on now. Uh the fish and can show now airing in its 40th season on Global Television Network, Coast to Coast to Coast, uh Sportsman's Channel and uh World Fishing Network WFN in the U.S. Uh 40 seasons. We're actually here a bit twofold. First of all, we're covering this event uh that I just spoke about, and we're gonna be uh getting into more detail here shortly. But we are also on the tail end of another shoot that we just finished in the area, and uh the two young guns of the company did their first uh solo. That was cool without parental guidance, may I add. Dean and I, if you guys remember last season, this season now, yeah. I guess season 40, uh the pipes to enforce some where I had a segment and Dean had a segment, and my granddad had a segment and Pete had a segment, but me and Dean never had a segment together, and now instead of a segment, we got a whole episode. Uh, I think you guys are really gonna like it. We just have some fish that I have never seen before, and I got to see them in quantity. So I think uh I think the audience is really gonna like that. Dino, how how did you find the experience? I thought it was good. I mean, Nick and I have done that um on other shoots. I think we aired part of it at Snoggy before. Um, so Nick and I have been on the boat a lot together, so it didn't feel um as new as I guess you'd expect for that to be like our first time on. Anyways, it was great. I was fortunate enough to be the lone audience member watching it all live unfold. So um it was great. All right, Lisa listener feedback in response to a podcast, uh the Northlander podcast. Oh, that's with uh Minister Vic Fidelli. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Uh Frontier Fishing with Ryan MACD. What's he say? He says, uh, we took the polar bear express to Moussany back in the 1990s, and that trip resonates with me to this very day. I can uh absolutely agree with him because I did the same trip in the 80s, so uh I know what he's talking about. It was a while ago. Uh when we got off the train, it was like uh we took a step back in time in the Wild West. It absolutely is. Uh, it was a pretty wild place back in the 1990s and would absolutely love to go back someday uh to see how much it has changed. Well, you know what, that whole area has not changed a whole lot. Um it might not be exactly the way you left it, but it's not too far off from it. The the nice thing is that you can now access that train, uh the Polar Bear Express, um, by using this new Northlander Northlander, which which was uh off rails, if you will, for about 14 years. Yeah, give or take. So it's back. Uh I think it'd be a fun trip to take. Oh, it's great. But I don't know whether you could deal with it because you're kind of totally off-grid. Once you hit that that stretch going north on the polar bear, I think in the last few days I've been doing just five with being off. Either way, you know what? I'm gonna give you guys a little story time. You're gonna like this because I didn't. So we uh day one, Monday of that shoot we were just talking about. I go to help dock the boat, and I need to bend down to grab the boat. And my phone is sitting in this little pack I got on my chest, and I forgot to zip it. And my brand new iPhone 17 just went boop and I missed it by maybe a quarter inch and it fell 13 feet deep. I hunted it with a magnet. We tried with an Aqua View, it's gone. And you know, I'm gonna do a little rant on Apple because I paid for Apple Care and they won't cover it. Uh, the moral of the story? Zip your pants. No, the moral of the story. Zip your mercy? No. You don't need your phone. You don't need your phone out on the boat. That's the moral of the story. I know, but you know what? I did because if I didn't have that phone, we wouldn't have fixed the Garmin. We'd never been able to talk to Pete to find that the remote in the rod locker, Peter. True. And yeah, no, you know, I think my connectivity helps us out every now and then. All right. Um that was conservation corner time. That's right. That's right. You want to do it? I don't have it memorized, but I can give the listeners a gist. What's the gist of it? The gist of it is we need to be worried because Armadet Armageddon is coming in the form of a grass carp. And if you see one, get it out of the water. Call the MNR, report it to invasivecarp.ca. Get on this because they eat what? It's like six times their body weight or sixty times of their body weight. 40% of their body weight daily in aquatic vegetation, and all the little fishies that you don't like, they live in those. And the fishies that you do like hunt in those, and if they're gone, there's no more fishies. So we need to be on this active conservation, get rid of these things. Unfortunately, the folks here in Timmins don't have to even worry about that. No. But the folks back home gotta worry about it. I gotta worry about it. Absolutely. You gotta worry about it. It's something to worry about. Hey Anglers, want to turn your next catch into a competition? Well, check out Anglers Leaderboard, the new fishing platform that lets you track your catches, join friendly competitions, enter tournaments, and see how you rank against others in your region. Use your phone and the photo measure board to automatically detect length and species. No more guesswork. Whether you're fishing for pleasure or to compete, ALB makes every catch count. What's your ALB score? Well, get Anglers Leaderboard today and start climbing the ranks. Visit Anglersleaderboard.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Sale. Sale is proudly Canadian and stocked with over a hundred Canadian brands you know and love. From rods and reels to sonars to kayaks and every last lure you've seen on the Fishing Canada show, Sale has all the gear to get you on the water. Drop into one of 12 stores across Ontario and Quebec and talk to the real fishing specialist or gear up online anytime at Sale.ca. Sale, the ultimate destination for your outdoor adventures. The news brought to you by, uh incidentally, uh JB, uh your outdoor superstore. Uh I've been saying the world's largest Princecraft Mercury dealer. And nobody's challenged. No, nobody's challenged me for it, so I'm going to stick with that. Although uh the folks here at JB say they are the largest in Ontario and possibly Canada. And by extension, because Ontario is bigger than most countries, well, no, I won't argue that you know, biggest in the world, landmass GPS. My argument is Princecraft, a Canadian built product. They're I'm not I'm not even gonna guess at this one. I'm gonna tell you that they sell more boats in Canada than they do any place else in the world. So that being said, they're the biggest Princecraft dealer in the world because the most Prince Crafts are sold here. So that's simple math. That's how I'm thinking about it. I like that. I like that math. All right. Uh, in the news, uh, lone star ticks found in Ontario. For those of you who are into uh following the whole tick scenario, just to set this straight, the Lone Star uh tick is not the one that we've been talking about for years that carries Lyme disease. That's a black-legged tick. This is different, and you know, I'm not gonna say it's not as dangerous, it might be worse, in my opinion. Really? Yeah, but I'll go into it and then I'll give you why. So if you are bitten by one of these, what happens is that you become basic, and I don't want to simplify it, but you you become allergic to red meat. Yeah, because Alpha Gal syndrome. I know an awful lot of vegetarians that would high-five themselves listening to that. I think, I think the Lone Star Tick is a vegan agenda and a plot, a bio-engineered vegan plot to get me to stop eating steak. But I'll tell you this, I would rather be sick every time I eat than forgo that. I can't do it. It's not happening. Dean, how should how worried should we be about this uh critter? I don't, I mean, at this point, I don't think it's I don't know. Like they found them in in small pockets of southern Ontario as of this recording. Um, I still don't think they're the most prominent, like uh they're not gonna spread like deer ticks, I don't think. Um it's just another kind of wrinkle in this whole thing. That's pretty much all it is right now. But and if I'm not mistaken to identify this one, they're more of a red burnt orange rust colored tick, if memory serves. Yeah. But um what do we got here? Climate change. Oh, climate change is why they're coming up. We're getting warmer. Well, they're moving from the whole yeah, we're getting warmer, so they're able to live here. That's not good. Uh they um are repel the you can still use your deep products that you would use for for just about any other uh insect to repel them. Um but once again I want to stress this this is not a Lyme disease carrying tick. And I don't think that this tick can lead to the public health uh crisis that Lyme disease can lead to the black legged tick. Yeah, because that obviously could you get more ill. Yep. Quality of life. I'm just wondering, the permethrin, would that work on keeping these guys at bay as well? Permethrin is God's gift to mankind. I'm currently covered in it. I know you every article in my clothing. Thank you, Pico Source Supply. Uh, if you are bitten by a tick, by the way, whether it's the black-legged tick or the lone star tick, uh, it's important that when you're removing it, that you're very careful. Use a use a pair of tweezers if you have them handy. Try and keep as much of the tick that you removed in a bag so that you can send it off for analysis to find out if in fact it is carrying one of these uh bacterias. Um because without it, it was when we got bit, it was only third, we had to do three tests at 33% success rate of its right. So if you have the tick, you keep it. You'll be way more reassured that you don't or unfortunately may do have Lyme. Yeah. Uh, if you don't have the tick, you gotta get jabbed a whole bunch, go in a whole it's not fun. Uh great story, Dean. Thank you. That's all available at fish and can.com, by the way. Uh, in the what do we got? Fan fan question. The fan question, uh Nick. Submitted by JMG1910 via YouTube. YouTube. It's gonna be contender. Is it isn't the YouTube? It's just contender, yeah. Contender it is. So let's see. JMG. Now, do I uh did I get uh the information right? Somebody was pissed at me because you were very dismissive. Well, I was he felt possibly dissed, not at the denial of the I believe it's Nigel. No, not Nigel, Nigel was a winner. I can't remember. Oh, Jesus Up Northman. That's it. That was it, M58 or something. If I recall, all I did was I said that it was uh You just went no you you you there you didn't give him a fair thought process and it was short, so I feel like you know he wasn't offended per se, but he just didn't like the way that it wasn't handled with the right your regular plum. Uh, I see. So maybe I could I could I could fix that now or or or make it a public apologize. No. Well, that's okay then leave it a no. Sorry about that. Whoever that back to JMG, because I haven't even read his question yet via the YouTube. Oh, he said This is interesting. Why don't you guys ever measure fish? It would be nice to know how big the fish are. Mr. Viola? Well, the floor is yours. I I gotta be honest with you. Uh earlier in our careers, Pete and I used to kind of weigh uh big fish or measure long fish on a regular basis. And um and that's cool. There's there's nothing wrong with that. Uh just we found now that there's really no need anymore, certainly for us. Not to say that there isn't for you or you or you, but for us, it's I think we've measured enough fish and weighed enough fish that we don't need to do it anymore. Not that we don't enjoy it, uh catching big fish, but but it's just not the same. No, you can pretty much eyeball it with we're pretty good at that. And you know what? We're also we did a whole episode with measuring fish with Anglers Leaderboard. Yes, right? Like, you know, but measuring fish is is great for when you really need to know or want to know. But I think a lot of the time when we're out on the water and we're we're we're filming and we're trying to produce the most utmost of content, the the size doesn't matter necessarily to us. If it looks good, it looks good. If it don't, it don't. I did matter to you guys shooting that episode. That was special. That was special, and they're gonna see why because that was a cool fish. Uh it was tell them, Dean. You want to tell them what it was? Give them a little hint. Well, we're gonna do a whole episode on that. Okay, all right. We'll we'll get to that then. That'll be next. So um, yeah, so we we we just don't do it anymore. But I guess we could you could if you so let us know in the comments. Let us know. Do you want us to measure or do you just I think most people I think most people are probably more prone to say, well, just eyeball it. Yeah, just eyeball it. I like that math better too. Alrighty. Uh so this uh this tournament we're here, the tournament itself, uh, the NOWT North Ontario Walleye Trail. Um coming it's all coming to a head, baby. It's coming to a head over the next two days. We'll find out. We'll be crowning two champions, actually. One one in each division. Um championship class right and the uh sportsman's class. And what is the difference? So the difference is the championship class is what I believe, as Rob explained it to me, that would be considered your pro-angler. So these are the people who qualified. Yeah, this is like you know, you had to go through a couple different tournaments, you had to win, you had to, you really had to put the work in for it. Not to say you didn't have a sportsman's class, but you really did for the championship class, and that's why the prize is what it is. And the sportsman's class? The sportsman's class is from what I can understand a little more, you just want to be in a wallet. It's a wallet tournament. It was open entry. It was open entry. Limited to 30 boats, but you could enter the draft. You could actually enter for it, whereas the other guys had to qualify. Exactly. So you still gotta, you know, pay your entry fee and get in and get your bow and get your team or the or partner, I should say. But the sportsman's class, you really had to be the best. And so the uh uh NOWT champions, which are the more elite level, if they're gonna be. They're the ones who will be winning the Princecraft Hudson, yes, with uh the boat armor on it on the trailer, all supplied by J and B Cyclo Marine. Nice. I know it's a beautiful looking boat. We got to go take a sneak peek at it yesterday. Nice, and it looks good. Okay. Um, the sport and the sports class they get. Do we have here? I don't have it here. I got to see it. It's a tenner, Princecraft. Oh, nice black, all supplied again by J and B cycle marine. Nice. It's a nice, just it's a great boat. You know, communities like this, Timmins, I'm talking about now, uh, and they all have them. They all have their J and B cycles. Because these the operations like the one that we're sitting in today, they're like they are the hub for outdoors people in that in the in whatever community they live in, they are the hub. This store that we're sitting in right now, approximately uh, I believe it's almost 16,000 square feet. You could airlift this store and put it in any community, any urban center, you know, places that have got millions of people living in, and it would have the same, the same because it is their magic. I just was supposed to say this place is magical. It reminds me a lot of the old pictures of Barclays. Yes, right? The office I learned to walk in. Yes. Um you know, make it a little more take away the cabin feel and put in some red, and there you go. Like we're we're here. It's the place fantastic store. Folks in Timmins are lucky to have one. I walked around this place for a good hour before recording, just smiling, looking at things, going, wow, wow, wow, because there's just a lot of stuff here. It's really cool. And what's nice too, and not to knock this new world that we live in where everything's online and you can order anything you want. You can buy anything you want online. The nice thing about places like this, J and B, is that it's here. Everything is here. You can walk in and touch and feel, touch, feel, try out. Now back the back of the property is overwhelming. I've never seen so many boats and motors and it looks like a uh a military base full of side-by-sides, boats, everything. There's a fleet, there's an entire fleet of vehicles behind us. Uh if you're ever going through bear uh through uh Timmins or Sudbury, where they have another operation like this in Sudbury, uh, it's worth uh getting off the main uh path and stopping in for for a bit because it's it's a destination, it's not just a retail store. It's a place to go just if you just want to go. It's it's cool. It's really cool. Speaking of going, my friend, we got some uh fishermen to go record. No kidding, that's gonna be fun. That's gonna be really fun. The way in is starting uh in about an hour and a half, yeah, even sooner than that. Yeah, so we want to get down to the way in and make sure we uh talk to all the guys. They must have had a rough day out there because it was. Well, the weather change is weird. This morning it was overcast, looks like it was about a poor rain, blown a gale, could barely even get the bird up, and now it's sunny and beautiful. All right, that are it. Uh coming to you uh, we'll call it live. Why not? I like it live. We can do that. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Uh from JB Cycle and Marine in Timmins, Ontario. Headquarters to your outdoor adventures uh for the entire crew. Uh, and by the way, I I would be remiss if I didn't mention we had some additional help on the crew today, along with uh Nikki V and Mr. Dean Taylor on the board. Um Renee is helping us, and she is a uh she's just gone through for this type of work. Film film and studies at uh Film School Toronto, I believe that is. Yeah. Uh she was a great help here. She, if you want to come and meet her here at the store, you can come to JMB Cycle. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to tell you about her experiences uh in the outdoors and also here in the production business. Uh so that are it, folks. I want to thank everybody for joining us once again. Don't forget fishingcanada.com, the gateway, the portal to your next fishing adventure, and also where you can get all the goodies in this wagon. Buy more sweaters. Talk to you next time, folks. This episode of Outdoor Journal Radio has been brought to you in part by the Invasive Species Center, protecting Canada's land and water from invasive species. Freedom Cruise Canada, rent the boat, own the memories. And JMB Cycle a Marine, your home for all things power sports, boats, and equipment. We interrupt this program to bring you a message from Anglers Leaderboard, an AI-powered platform built for today's anglers. Use your phone and the photo measure board to automatically detect length and species, log catches, and track your stats over time. Whether you're fishing solo or joining a regional tournament, ALB helps you stay organized and competitive. Head over to Anglersleaderboard.com to learn more and start using ALB today.