The Art of Multi-Species Fishing

In this high-energy episode, Jesse and Andrew sit down with full-time Georgian Bay fishing guide Matt Martin for a deep dive into the wild world of multi-species angling. From the explosive strikes of northern pike to the prehistoric thrill of sight-fishing for gar, Matt shares his expert strategies, hilarious guiding experiences, and hard-earned tips for targeting some of Ontario’s most underrated species.

You’ll learn:

•  How to locate and target big pike based on water temps, seasonal patterns, and lure selection
•  Why gar fishing is a must-try — and how to sight-cast to these ancient, toothy missiles
•  How fly fishing for carp is the ultimate freshwater challenge (think bonefish… but in your backyard)

Whether you're a seasoned angler or just looking to expand your fishing game, this episode is packed with expert insights, real talk, and a few laughs along the way.

Mentioned in Episode: 

• Composite Angling - https://www.instagram.com/composite_angling/?api=postMessagehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fp%2FC6ik27WJvMP%2F%3Fapi%3DpostMessage
• Matt Martin Steelhead Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2141377/episodes/16575954-steelhead-get-dialed-in

Find Matt Martin: 

• Website: https://www.smoothriver.ca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smooth.river.guiding/?hl=en

Chapters

• 0:31 Meet Matt Martin
• 2:25 Interesting Fishing Fact
• 4:53 Environmental DNA
• 14:11 Matt's Fishing Journey and Guiding Experience
• 17:59 Pike Fishing Experiences
• 18:47 Understanding Pike Fishing Conditions
• 28:46 Strategies for Successful Pike Fishing
• 33:21 Essential Lures for Pike Fishing
• 46:25 The Fascinating World of Gar Fishing
• 50:39 Techniques for Catching Gar
• 58:04 The Thrill of the Catch
• 1:00:18 Understanding Gar Behavior
• 1:07:07 The Art of Fly Fishing for Carp
• 1:10:37 Understanding Carp Behavior and Techniques
• 1:14:29 Gear and Tactics for Carp Fishing
• 1:26:09 Wrapping Up: Insights and Future Fishing Adventures

Transcript

Speaker 3 (00:00.174)
When you touch them, you realize they're a weird fish.

Speaker 2 (00:20.494)
Welcome everyone to episode number 102 of the Average Ontario anglers fishing podcast. This is a super cool episode. know I say that every single time, but we have an awesome guest. have Matt Martin, who is a full-time fishing guide based out of Georgian Bay. How's it going, Matt?

It's great. Springtime on G bay is pretty awesome. Lots of fish to fish for. I mean, it's great, but I'm extremely tired. It's only been like a couple of weeks and I'm like, my God, this is a lot of work.

When I said full time, he's full time.

Yeah, I haven't had a day off in a bit. But yeah, no, absolutely awesome. Fishing's been good. It's been up and down. We've had an actual spring. Water's still so frigid that I often wonder when it's a slow day, like, is it over? Like, pike bite over? Or has it even started yet? You know, like, there's no cabbage anywhere. We're fishing last year's weeds. It's like kind of strange. Like, is the water pump going to bump up a couple degrees and then, holy crap, they're there? You know, or is it, have they already moved out some days? The next day you go out and you catch fish, so you just kind of...

Forget about it.

Speaker 2 (01:20.43)
You know what they say fishing was easy. It wouldn't be fun, right? So anyway, this episode, I know if you are a podcast listener, you've probably listened to our episode that we had earlier in the year where we had Matt Martin on. He does a lot of steelhead fishing. So we did an episode all about our late winter, early spring steelhead fishing. So if you haven't listened to that one, definitely check it out. But today we're actually going to do an episode. It's kind of a mixed bag. We're calling it Matt's mixed bag. Now I'll think of something better than that.

I wish it was sometimes easier, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:49.294)
Well, we're going to cover a few different species today, not just focus on one in particular. And today we're going to talk a little bit about some of the fish that Matt guides for. And we're going to talk a little bit about fly fishing, not completely, but a little bit. We're going to be talking about carp, pike, and Andrew's favorite, gar. So it's going to be an interesting episode and we're going to, we're going to throw in some of our own personal experiences as we go as well. But before we start this episode, we actually have for the first time in average Ontario anglers history, we have an interesting fishing fact.

handled by a guest. And it's not Matt Martin. It is a listener guest. So listen to this. Thank you, Future Self, for being able to have this awesome introduction into our interesting fishing fact, which for the first time is going to be handled by a very special guest, someone who has been listening to us drone on and on about fishing for what is now years. We have our friend Kyle, who has so kindly offered his services to do part of our job for us. It's not that we're getting lazy.

We love doing an interesting fishing fact, but today we're lazy, so that's okay.

I'm happy to pull a bit of the weight for you guys and I'm happy to be here. I've been a fan of the shows since episode one so it's nice to finally get a chance to chat with you guys. My name is Kyle Davis. I work in the field of natural resources as an ecologist. It was more a recent career change for me. My main interests are in fisheries biology so that's where I tend to kind of focus my work towards but I've been working about the last

Alright, blow our minds.

Speaker 1 (03:13.262)
Six or seven years or so in the field and it's been an awesome experience. I was born and raised in Ontario, been fishing since a young age and only recently relocated out west and have been enjoying exploring some of the fishery or fishing opportunities out here on Canada's west coast.

I'm kind of jealous I've never been out there.

Guys, we'll have some fun doing some fishing for white stersia here, for sure. It is.

Is that an invitation? Okay, we're coming tomorrow. Would you consider yourself to be an Ontario angler but living in BC still though?

It's true. Yeah. mean, Ontario is home. So I do fish when I come back. I do consider myself an average Ontario angler at heart.

Speaker 2 (03:46.796)
I'll tell you, that is false because I've looked through your Instagram account, which I'm going to put below in the show notes, and there is more than a few pictures of you holding Sturgeon that way more than Andrew. So I don't know if you can call yourself average at that point, but okay.

Believe it or not, those are small ones. Like some of the truly colossal ones can go 10 feet long and be in excess of a thousand pounds. It's quite incredible how large they are.

me feel better. Thank you. Andrew's tiny.

You guys want to wrestle some real monsters come out and come out the West Coast. We'll point in right direction.

Sounds good. We should do a test of why I hang on to the end of line and Kyle has to try and reel me in and see if I'm stronger than a sturgeon. You're not believe me. I'll also die in the frigid waters. All right, so we'll have Kyle go ahead with, I've been told I have to introduce this as this is going to be very high brow from what I've gathered so far. And again, Jesse and I are going into this blind. We don't know exactly what he's going to say, but this we heard kind of a clip of what or not a clip, a hint as to what he's going to talk about.

Speaker 2 (04:43.756)
and I couldn't understand it. So hopefully this is gonna be a nice high brow. We're gonna learn something all together today and we'll pass it back to Kyle.

Well, we've seen in recent years, about the last decade, some real cool developments in some of the ways we monitor and observe our fisheries. Anyone who's seen an episode of CSI is probably familiar with how we use DNA in the fields of forensics. But did you know that it is also a powerful tool in fisheries, research, and conservation biology? All living creatures, us, we contain DNA with parts that are unique to our species. These parts are like a genetic fingerprint, and they can tell us what species that DNA belongs to. So eDNA, or environmental DNA,

is released from organisms into the environment through things like secreted mucus, gametes, shed skin, hair, excrement, and carcasses. And we're actually able to sample this stuff and determine what species that this material belongs to. EDNA, it can be found and sampled in the air, soils, sediments, water, snow, and ice, and it can persist in the environment for days, weeks, or even years when found in the right conditions. And this can help us to determine which species are present within a sample area.

or at least have been present within a reasonable amount of time of those samples being taken. In aquatic environments specifically, the eDNA becomes diluted and can be distributed by things like currents and rivers or other hydrological processes such as lake mixing. And it can last in these environments between seven to 21 days, depending on environmental conditions. Things like UV radiation, water chemistry and temperature can all affect the lifespan of the eDNA within the environment. So how do we sample this stuff? What we can do for aquatic purposes, if we want to monitor fisheries,

What we do is we can attain water samples using such things as a peristaltic pump and we would pump water from a source and then put that through a filter and that filter is collected and preserved and then sent to a laboratory for DNA analysis. There's several universities and organizations across Canada and the world now that are starting to build catalogs of these DNA samples so we can take samples and refer back to these catalogs and determine which species are present in certain areas. There's more modern ways to do it now they develop like backpack units if you guys have ever seen

Speaker 1 (06:43.886)
backpack electrofishing unit. It's got the big backpack on the back and you have a wand. There's a similar kind of unit they use now in DNA sampling where you have a backpack with a pump and battery into it and a wand with a vial for sampling on the end. You basically draw water up through the system, it goes through filters, you obtain the filters, preserve them and send them to the lab for sampling. So how does this all pertain to fisheries? Why do we care about this stuff? Well, for one, it can help us determine the areas of occupancy for endangered species and species at risk.

So if we determine that a species of risk occupies a certain stretch of river, or it's using a certain area's habitat, we can designate these areas for protection and hopefully help with the recovery of these species of risk. It also helps us develop a catalog and inventory of species presence in different bottles of water. So as the sampling is being done, it can be added to an overall database and this information can be collected and referred to for other studies and stuff too. So we're building a huge information inventory by consistently sampling these things. We can target specific species. So say for example, you wanted to determine

what extent brook trout occupy in a certain river in southern Ontario. You can do a series of samples and you get positives and negatives say, okay, they occupy this section, they don't occupy this section. And if you want to further investigate that can narrow down your scope of investigation to a certain region of that river with a relatively cost effective method.

That's pretty interesting. Gone are the days of swimming in there, scuba diving, looking and counting each individual fish. Now you can just get a fancy vacuum and suck up some poop and you're good.

That's one of the traditional snorkeling is a traditional moment, right? So yeah, you just hoover up some poop and away you go.

Speaker 2 (08:12.826)
man, you guys are taking all the fun out of everything. I was going to say it's like me going in Jesse's house and just taking like vacuuming his apartment and then looking at the HEPA filter in the the Dyson vacuuming like, yes, he's a white male.

Maybe get one of your beard hairs back. yes, Andrew's been here.

Yes, it's like this long. I'm like, what the heck is this? My wife's like, who have you been seeing? She pulls a big hair off me. I'm like, oh, that's just Andrew's beard hair. Disgusting. This is actually an interesting fishing fact. Congratulations.

I was hoping it would be. There's other uses for this as well, not just determining which fish species are present in an area. It's also being used to monitor invasive species. In the Trent-Syverm Waterway, there's a common invasive plant called water soldier. So EDNA is being used to monitor its spread and distribution. And it can be used to monitor areas for introduction of invasive species to those areas as well. So if we want to constantly monitor, say like the Hamilton Harbor or something like that to determine whether there's been new introductions, things can be done to that effect by different agencies to keep up to date with.

what's occurring in their areas and hopefully detect these things early so measures can be taken to hopefully remove them from that system before they have a chance to become established and cause further damage to the ecosystems there.

Speaker 2 (09:25.55)
cool. Is this able to, not just kind putting on the spot, but like the grass carp and stuff like that, could this be used to see like how much numbers of something would have to already be in the water for it to kind of show up? Does it have to be like a substantial amount of these species?

As I mentioned before, like it doesn't persist in the environment overly long, like given our climate in southern Ontario. So they'd have to be relatively recent visitors to that area. But yes, you definitely can do targeted sampling for invasive species like grass carp. It depends on you can't necessarily determine the abundance. I couldn't tell you or they couldn't tell you, the with the testing, they can't tell you exactly how many are there. They can determine the relative abundance. So they could say we've got a lot of genetic material from this area. So it could be several small fish. It could be one large fish.

You can't get specific numbers. So the power of a cDNA is it can give you these positive test results and help to determine what things are where, but it's best used in conjunction with other monitoring methods. So say you were to determine, okay, there's grass carp in this specific tributary of Lake Erie. Okay, now let's go target that area with say electrofishing or say netting or trap netting or any snorkeling or any other methods of traditional monitoring that we may use. And you could actually, you know, focus in your efforts and say, okay, we believe they're here. Let's focus on this area and try and determine how many you'll remove.

necessary in the case of invasive species.

So eDNA then is kind of like a great first step to see if there's need for more investigation,

Speaker 1 (10:49.058)
Right, yeah, it's essentially a quick and cheap way to do some kind of...

You're not like herding any fish or netting any fish in that process to know if it's even worthwhile to start putting those other measures in place. That is cool. Yeah, is very cool. Big time saver for sure. You know what? I just had a thought. No, I'm not going to patent this or anything, but they have to market this for anglers. So we need like, you know, like the cameras that you know, the photo. No, no, the stupid photos that you take the camera and the photo comes out and it develops almost instantly. So we need to create some kind of EDNA thing that

almost instant like it needs to take like 60 seconds. So you get these little things, you whip them in the water, you want to know if that area is good for fishing, you pull it out, you look at it, you're like, yeah, there's a musky here. I just needs to take 60 seconds, not like six weeks in a lab. I can see Jesse, like you would use it kind of like a blood tester for like a diabetic person, right? Like, Oh, test the water like tells you

what biologic material from different species just picked up instantly. It's going to be the worst musky levels are dangerously low at 7%.

I don't think we're quite there with the technology, but I mean, the way things are moving, uh, and we're getting better and better at it all the time. You know, I, something that that could be in the future. It could be as simple as taking a water sample and placing it in some sort of scanning device. It would probably be pretty costly, but they might be available. I know they've been, uh, evolving some citizen science where you can submit water samples and help collect stuff too. there's opportunity for, uh, anglers to get involved hopefully in the future. Um, if I find anything, uh, those avenues make all forward want you guys, but, I know that's something that we're working towards is citizen science is a big thing.

Speaker 1 (12:22.398)
Without feedback from anglers and people like yourselves and me, these agencies, you they don't have the full picture. A lot of times they lean on anglers to get more of that information and that helps kind of paint a broader scope of what's actually occurring in the fisheries.

Absolutely. That was very interesting. That's cool. You know what? I think every once in a while we're going to have to take on one of these crazy people to do the interesting fishing fact for us because we've had a bunch of people ask and you know, guys, like there is going to be some kind of a system where we have to decide. Not everyone's going to get picked. Only cool people like Kyle. So don't be offended. But we do appreciate you coming on. You made history today from the seven people that listened to this podcast. All I can picture as soon as you said right from the get go, it's like CSI, like a TV show.

I just picture, you oh, this is a spot we should do testing. And then Horatio Kane kneels down in a creek, whips off his glasses. It looks like the right environment. Wow. Hilarious. All right, that was awesome. And now we got to, you know, talk to Matt again. That's OK.

Appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to me. It was really nice to finally meet you guys, even though it is digitally. So I appreciate you guys having me on and best of luck in the future. I look forward to following along with you guys and I forward to seeing the podcast continue to grow and you guys have constantly bigger and better guests, hopefully more qualified than me.

Thank you. And we look forward to let us know what it's like to hear your voice in the podcast for the first time, because I know for us, it was weird. So anyway, that was pretty cool. Again, we're going to be pretty picky with who we pick to do these sent in interesting fishing facts. But if you have something very interesting, let me and Andrew know and we'll we'll screen you. Right, Andrew? I can't even hear Andrew. He's laughing his head off, but.

Speaker 3 (14:06.786)
He's gone.

Anyway, so we're going to get into a little bit about Matt first. Now, as we mentioned, he is a full-time guide fishing the Georgian Bay area. And if someone hasn't listened to the Stealhead episode, like we mentioned, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, how you started guiding and some of the fish that you target with your clients throughout the year.

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm based up here in Midland, Ontario on the Southern, South Eastern shore, Georgian Bay. I guide for a ton of species at somewhere around 14 or 15 different species that we can go for and on over 20 lakes and a ton of rivers. So it's awesome. There's always options. You know, I guide from Mississauga on the Credit River in the spring all the way up North of Muskoka, you know, depending on where people want me to go. Even dabble a little bit in the coerthas for musky. So it's awesome.

range. We live in an awesome province where there's just tons of fishing opportunities. I've been doing this now full-time four years, or I guess this is my fourth season, but cumulatively part-time for pushing eight years. You know, it's amazing. I used to have a corporate job, absolutely loved my work, but I started to burn out as a lot of people did over the COVID years. And my wife was actually the one that told me to quit. And she's like, give it a shot. Like what's the worst thing that can happen? And I did. And it was the best decision she ever made for me.

Nice.

Speaker 2 (15:27.95)
The first one was she married Matt the second one she told him to go fishing every day That's a wife I tell you

I hope she's listening to this.

Speaker 3 (15:35.022)
that

It's awesome. I love it. I'm out every day. And today I just got off a day of trout fishing on the river. Tomorrow I'm out chasing pike and gar. The next day I'm back on the trout rivers and then we're out for carp actually, end of the week. So all over the place. It's, you never get bored up here. Lots of fish to fish.

Definitely. And you truly encapsulate being a multi species angler for sure. A lot of people they fish for one particular thing. They're like, I'm a bass guy, like bass fishing or like musky fishing. But Matt truly fishes for everything. If you look through his Instagram account, which I will link below, I definitely recommend checking that out. You can see just the random fish that he's catching through the year. It's just like I'm looking through and it's like walleye, smallmouth, giant gar, carp on the fly, just and it's cool stuff too. I have a little bit experienced fly fishing, not a lot as Matt will tell you because

He was watching me trying to cast some pike flies. I didn't catch one on it. But Matt does you do a lot of fly fishing, don't you?

See you next time.

Speaker 3 (16:29.688)
Yeah, I mean, my business was probably developed around me being a fly fishing guide, but it's transitioned. know, when I was living further south, we were originally living in the Aurora area. I was guiding more rivers, predominantly just fly fishing, but we moved north and you know, the lakes just kind of called you. You just want to get out there and get away from some of the crowds on the rivers and hit the water. For the first year, I think I had conventional gear in the boat, but it was just for backups.

But this will be the third season where I've really been starting to push it. So I would say my trips are now still probably 60 % to 70 % fly focused, but that other 30, 40 % is growing.

And it was cool. We actually fished with Matt. Why don't you talk a little bit about that, Andrew? So, well, I just wanted to say, if you've heard the fact that I haven't been talking, it's because my computer is sick. And that's a great segue into the fact that we've been fishing with Matt and I was sick. I don't get seasick, but I had some food poisoning or something. So I was chumming the waters as it were. no, was fantastic. I learned so much like fishing with Matt. It was a pretty slow day. was one of those days.

You're a tough bugger.

Speaker 2 (17:33.806)
I mean, even Matt, someone who is super knowledgeable and literally fishes, I think as a cool guy say, G bay. You're even saying that that day, like it was sturdily slow. Like it was odd. And we were seeing some, saw Pike larger than I've ever dreamed of in my life. Giants. You got us onto the fish. There was nothing wrong with your knowledge of the area and all that stuff. It just was a grind of a day. And we didn't skunk, which is good.

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:45.336)
grind.

Speaker 3 (18:02.691)
fish.

There's cool fish in that water. That was insane. Seeing those seeing those fish getting those follows was absolutely awesome. had the biggest pike it would have been my PB 100 % I had this giant 40 plus inch northern follow my glide bait to the boat three times and it was just like looking at it. It was like 10 inches away from the bait. it's spooked. I cast out again. It followed it back to the boat cast again followed it back to the boat.

I for

Speaker 2 (18:27.47)
We couldn't trigger it. couldn't go fast enough. We couldn't go slow enough. We couldn't figure it out. And man, that fish, I looked down just from the boat and it had shoulders. It was so big. I was like, Matt, what the heck? How do you like live on a lake that has fish this big in it?

Yeah, it drove me crazy. mean, that's the, that's the toughest part about being a guide. Sometimes the fish just don't want to cooperate. I mean, I wish I should, you know, mention that it was a slow day, right? But we still like hooked 12 pike. It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't the worst day of fishing ever. we always have like decent action. Even when I'm saying it's slow, it's like there's still fish to be caught. And when we actually went into that bay, we saw eight to 10 pike in that 40 inch caliber.

that would just Sunday and even the one that that followed me on the fly like I was twitching in in its face for what 20 seconds like it was followed as the boat was just drifting it was still following it and that was a 40 inch fish you know like it was there's even a video you guys took of me like slap in my waist I was so angry that I didn't know you were filming but it's an epic video it's like I think fly

you

Speaker 2 (19:32.076)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's awesome. I had a lot of good comments on that.

very bad luck when it comes to booking trips or going out fishing with guys. We'll have a bunch of guys be like, Hey, you want to go fishing with us? Like, absolutely. Let's do it. We'll some stuff every single time it happens. It's bluebird skies. Hold friends like the last three years. It's been like, is that with you? Was that with Brian when we wally fishing last year? It's just like one day. Fish gods will shine upon us and give us a good day.

That's what it was.

Speaker 3 (19:56.76)
The

Speaker 3 (20:00.942)
I'm still convinced one of you brought bananas on the boat or something, but...

I swear it wasn't me. It was crazy because I've never seen Pike be so fickle. I've always said for every time we talk about Pike it's like, are fun, you know why? They're stupid and they bite anything. Yeah. And these things are like actively avoiding anything that came their way. It was so bizarre. They were acting like Muskie. Like they were so finicky. Actually Muskie would have been easier to catch than those.

And they were like, one in there too that's like legit musky size. I've seen it every day I've gone back. It's, think it might've been the one that followed you. It's between 43 and 45. Like it is just enormous. We caught a couple of really nice ones this week, a 39 and a 41 in the same bay. Unfortunately, after you guys were here. But we also saw that giant and it dwarfs them. Like the 39 was caught on a fluke right at the end of the boat. Like it followed right in and then.

know, it showed no interest and you pulled the lure out of the water and it rushed the surface and it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, just put it back in the water and put it back in the water. the 45 was right there next to it. And this 39 ate it. We hooked it, we landed it, we celebrated and then we measured it. And I'm like, if that's almost a 40, like how big was that other one? Like I thought it was going to be 35, 36 and it's almost a 40.

just had to say, like Jesse said, this Pike had shoulders. I don't know if you're imagining the right thing. I want you to picture greatest hits, best of boss gags CD album cover with like the giant zoot suit shoulder. That's the shoulders this Pike has. Absurdly large. Speaking of Pike, if you are wanting to get on your PB Northern, book a trip with Matt. Like the fish that we saw that day, blew my mind. And it wasn't just like one or two. It was like

Speaker 3 (21:34.764)
Yeah, absurdly large.

Speaker 3 (21:49.614)
Today's what, the 12th right or something like that. So the season's been open for almost two weeks and every day we've seen and interacted, hooked, lost fish in that 40-inch range this year. It's been accumulation of years, in especially the last four years of really trying to figure out Georgian Bay and I'll tell you, they're not in every bay. They're in very specific spots and they group up. So it's great to go out there and it's fun to catch, you know, 27, 28-inch fish. But when you find one of those special spots that has nothing but fish over 36 inches, you do not tell a soul.

You keep that quiet.

Yep, exactly. Another reason to book a trip with Matt, because he knows the spots. We were like shooting around the lake and he knew all these spots. So yeah, it was a fun day. Hopefully next year I can catch a giant.

I hope so. We'll do it again, for sure.

So speaking of Pike, I thought we could maybe cover Pike first, because we're talking about it right now. Our Pike episodes every single year, have of our top five episodes, I have the most downloads over the last three years. The top three are Pike episodes, one, two, and three, Pike, Pike, Pike. And we always say this, everyone disses Pike, but it must be like the Nickelback of fish because everyone says they hate it, but legit, they sell out every concert. like.

Speaker 2 (23:02.13)
People like the pike. I don't know why maybe just some guys just don't want to admit it, but everyone likes the pike just from our our knowledge of like the downloads on episodes, right? So speaking of pike everyone, you know, maybe you don't like them, but we know you do. So listen up. So when this podcast comes out, we're going to be in about mid May and going from say mid May. I know this year's kind of like we mentioned, you said we're like two weeks behind on temps. Would you say?

Yeah, I mean it's 47 in the main lake still yesterday. Like that's cold water. If I don't see 52 to 54 in a bay, I just turn around and go out. Like I don't even bother even if I know there's I've caught fish there in the past.

It's a bit of an odd year compared to where you think fish would normally be. It's a little bit odd.

I think it's off, but maybe just in comparison to the last like five or six, like it feels like maybe what the springs were like when I was a kid and fishing, you know, like. Last few years have been like pike seasons feel short. It's like, wow, it opened. crap. We're a weekend and there's no fish left. Like they're gone. You know, now we've got to go dredge deep and troll crankbaits and fish one ounce spinner baits to get down to them. You know, this year, I mean, I think they're just going to be creeping up in the shallows probably till close to June.

good old days.

Speaker 3 (24:13.518)
wouldn't surprise me. Like we're even by now, usually the gar have littered the shallows and we're just starting to see the gar. We're still a long way out, which is great. Long season.

Which is a great thing, like it sounds a bit sketchy, but hey, it's stretching the season out a little bit more. So, you know, maybe Matt has some extra spaces you can squeeze into a guy.

I think May 27th's left, that's it. Jump on it if hear that.

So anyway, when it comes to pike fishing, I know you're up in Georgian Bay, but I do know that you also fish in the core. There's a bunch of other areas and I know they're vastly different. Yeah, I was just fishing pike fishing yesterday in a local area to me and there was very little weed and the water was still pretty cold and I did. I did catch two. They weren't. They didn't go 30. They were like, you know, 27, 28 inch maybe, but it was pretty slow. It was an area where I normally catch like five or six easily.

and we spent like five hours and we caught two. So it was like, okay, it's a little bit slow still. But if you're someone going out pike fishing this time of year, say from like right now, mid May to like June, either Georgian Bay or Corthas or anywhere in general, what are things you're going to look for?

Speaker 3 (25:19.854)
Yeah, it's great. mean, it's piker creatures a habit, you know, let's give them a little bit of a background You know, they spawn at ice out or just before or just after really cold water You know They find those those bays that are full of full rushes and reeds in the summer and they go back almost in the shore Like we were seeing is that with you guys we saw those spawning fish. No Yeah, so we saw them like swimming around together. So there was there was fish still spawning when they which I never see

We'll pair it up.

Speaker 3 (25:46.35)
That's usually done like our pike season on Georgian Bay closes earlier than anywhere else for ice fishing. It closes February 28th. So because they start spawning so early, so to think that they were still spawning in May, like what a spawning season for them. It's so delayed. But yeah, so they're pretty straightforward. I mean, they spawn up in the shallows that ice out and as the water temperature climbs, they progress out the bay. They work their way out the bay. So once pike season rolls around, the first thing you really want to do is

Note your main lake temperatures. It doesn't really matter what they are, but just be cognizant of what they are. You need to know like, okay, main lake's 47. If I can find a back bay that's eight to 10 degrees warmer, probably a good spot to start, regardless of cover. Some of the biggest things are, I always try to tell people is, if you want to find pike, you just want to find pike. don't care about size. You want to go catch numbers. Think of that first spot we fished. We're fishing a giant bay. Like this bay is 80 to 100 acres. We're fishing one corner of that bay.

We're literally finding the bay within the bay, wherever that warmest water is. So the main lake was in the upper 40s, the bay itself was 52. We got into that back corner, it was 56, 57. And you can pretty much guarantee majority of the fish, as long as you're not size conscious, you just want to go catch fish, that's where they're going to be. And that's been proven year after year for me. Like the days following our trips, we would go back into that bay and start the day with 15 to 20 pike. Real easy, get the skunk off the boat and then go chase big fish.

So you've got temperatures and that's the number one thing. And temperatures will vary according to a few things. The big one would be the aspect of the bay, which way it's facing. So a bay that's like north and south facing will often, specifically a south facing bay will get the most sun on it. But if it's like a north-south orientation and it's big enough, it'll get a lot of sun on it all day. And east-west skinny bay is going to be in the shade quite a bit. A bay with sand bottom will be cooler than a bay with mud bottom, dark bottom versus light bottom, more absorbent.

And then those bays are going to be the first ones to, those warmer bays are going to be the first bays to start weed growth and basically start the food chain. One thing I tried to think of is fish where the life is. So if you're seeing weeds, you know, there's life, it's probably a good start. There's going to be bait fish. There's going to be small pike. There's going to be big pike. Like those small males you're catching, those 24, 26 inches, there's going to be 35, 36 is around that are the females that they're responding with. It's just sometimes a matter of weeding through them.

Speaker 3 (28:08.046)
That's the great thing about pike fishing. Generally speaking, where I guide, you get lots of chances and you can mess up a few hook sets and you know, you can kind of shake the rust off before we get into a big fish spot. But yeah, basically, I guess if I had to summarize, come into the bay, find the bay within the bay, find the warmest water and then work your way out. Start shallow, work your way out, all the way out to the main lake. And if you're seeing temps that aren't quite 52, I don't even bother. If it's 50, 51, I go to another bay. I just don't think those fish are active. 52 seems to be a bit of a magic number for me. Fahrenheit, obviously.

All right.

I like boiling pike.

We're not finishing with August.

When you find the pike, when you find the good bay and you start, let's say you catch a couple of hammer handles, like how concentrated are they? Like should you, should you stick with those fish then? Sure. Like you said, there's going to be some around, but like how, like if you get a bay that's maybe a half acre big, this is where you finally found some pike. How concentrated could they be in there from Georgian Bay versus like the core?

Speaker 3 (29:06.958)
Yeah, it's a good point. in lakes like Canal Lake, for instance, like it's quite polluted with pike, right? I don't know, sorry. Tiny little lake. It's polluted with them, you know, there's tons of them in there. Good luck getting many over 30 inches, but that's where the invasiveness of pike kind of comes into play, right? They can take over pretty quick in musky body of water. So yeah, so in the coorthas, there's smaller fish, often smaller fish will group up more. You're not going to have like loners usually.

That's my leg.

Speaker 3 (29:35.982)
You find one, you're going to find a few. I would say if I came into a bay that was a half acre, I wouldn't expect, even the hammer handles, I probably wouldn't expect more than like five or six shots on a pressured body of water. Half acres, not that big. It's 250 feet or something, right? It's not long. It's not that huge. So that would be pretty decent. But when the bays are bigger, there's more biomass to sustain those fish and you can get large groupings. Like we've had...

trips in the past where start the morning off with 40 fish in one bay, you know, just like we're talking big bays though. We're talking, you know, multiple acres. These things are huge that have their own basins within the bay and weed lines and close to deep water and rocky points has all the structure. It's like a lake within the lake almost, right? Cause I'm big body of water on Georgian Bay for instance. Or, you know, you could talk about any of the big Muskoka lakes is the same way or anything like that. I'm confident if we're finding fish that we stay there until we stop catching them. Really. Here's an example.

Just two days ago, were running around. It was one of those tough days, kind like we had with you guys. We had about a dozen fish in the boat. It wasn't horrible, but it was not easy. And I just...

After a while, I just told my guys like, we're going to run and gun and we would hit a spot for five, 10 minutes. If we don't catch one, we're moving. And the benefit of going out with a full-time guide or even just maybe a friend that's really learned a lake extremely well is they don't just have like five or six spots. Like I'll opt in like without letting them screenshot it. I'll take a, I'll show them my, you know, my GPS and be like, look at all these waypoints, right? Every one of these is a proven spot. So you pick a section of the lake and you just go and we would fish as an example, this day we fished must have fished eight bays or so.

within a 10 minute ride from where we started. None of them were firing. You'd pick up one or two here or there. So then I said, screw this. And we made a run, right? We made like a 30 minute run to a completely different area of the lake. Went into a bay that I fished last week with zero success, but it was like south facing, larger bay. The water temps were like, know, creeping up. saw 59 degrees. They gotta be in here. This is how grouped up they can be. We fished this entire bay. It's gotta be five or six acres big. And they were literally...

Speaker 3 (31:39.266)
we caught like 18 pike between two docks. There was just two docks and there was a little bit of cloudy water. And I don't know, usually cloudy water means there's some sort of spring or inflowing stream. I didn't see an inflowing stream. I've never noticed one there. Or maybe it was just a crap ton of pike feeding on food, feeding on bait fish, right? Stirring up the water. Because we've pulled up into these docks and instantly we had a double header. And I was like, well, that's cool. And then it was just nonstop. We caught like 18 to 20 pike in the matter of...

maybe an hour and a half in this spot between three guys. And some of them were like 32 to 35. Like they weren't giants, but they were like lots of small 26, 27s. And then some nice like eight to 12 pound pike. And then just like it started, it shut off. We covered the bay, went around twice, no other bites, we took off. And that was the only bite that we really found that day that was really good. It was enough. It really made for a great day, but they will get very tightly compacted in these bays. So it's good idea to work.

work a bait like that's kind of aggressive with like a jerk bait or something that you can work quickly, cover water, and then maybe on your next pass through, switch to a soft plastic jerk bait like a fluke or sluggo or something like that. Even just like honestly, like a white Senko, it's wicked. know, put that thing on a weighted belly hook and you can walk the dog with it. It just doesn't last very long with Pike, but you know, start aggressive, then go slower and eventually you'll suck them all up, I guess, and move on to the next spot.

Speaking of lures, I always love picking guides brains on lures because I find it interesting. was fishing with a musky guide last year. He took me out for the day and I was just, he's like, yeah, look through my box. I was just looking through his tackle box. Cause I find it very interesting what they use because guides have to use lures that actually work. And you generally, they don't waste a lot of money on things that are gimmicky. They use stuff that's proven. So I was like looking at what, know, what they like to use, what colors they use, stuff like that. So when it comes to pike fishing,

you do this a lot and you have to get clients on fish. know you kind of already talked about jerk baits and soft plastic but like why don't you discuss maybe just a handful of baits maybe like half a dozen baits that every pike fisherman in Ontario or southern Ontario should have in their box. Lures that are proven.

Speaker 3 (33:38.862)
I mean, that's gonna be tough because there's a lot of options. But first off, I want to say if it's white, I'm probably gonna fish it. I love white baits. Two reasons. The most, probably least obvious one is that every fish out there has some sort of a white belly, right? So think suckers, think perch, think walleye, think crappie, think... They all got some white on them, And pike feed from the bottom up. So they're never really going to attack down, like a smallmouth pinning a goby or a crayfish to the bottom. The pike are coming from underneath and pouncing, right?

you

Speaker 3 (34:08.77)
So as long as it's got a white belly or if it's a white fluke or whatever, like perfect, that's a good way to start. The second reason I like them so much is for me as a guide, the amount of times I see hits before my guests feel them. You know with pike as good as anybody that they often will push a bait from behind and create slack. And they're like, I didn't feel that. No, you got to watch your bait. Like the amount of times I've heard people say, I didn't even feel the hit. No, that fish clocked it at 20 miles an hour from straight behind and gave you three feet of slack. And you didn't even see your line go slack. So.

I'm yelling set set set. they're like, what? Who? Who? Me? Like they're also all confused. And I got to get better remembering everybody's names in the pressure of the moment. Buddy set! Hitting them in the shoulder. Exactly.

This is like-

Beardy Baldo. Andrew's like, hey, you should assign each guest a number at beginning of the day and be like, you are one. You are like, I'm wearing their jacket and be like, I'll refer you as such.

But it's true though, like I, not only am I just putting you on the spot and giving you looters that work, I'm standing there with you and I'm helping you fish them. So I'll be like, if you haven't worked a jerk bait before, I'm going to try to teach you how to slack line jerk a jerk bait, not just pulling it through and reeling up the slack. Like, I want that bait to barely move forward while moving or so erratically side to side. That bait should only move forward six inches to a foot, but dodge a foot each time you rip it. So yeah, jerk baits are probably one of my most popular. They're easy enough to work.

Speaker 3 (35:28.662)
You know, you can even slow steady wind them on a cold front day without adding too much action and they will work kind of a cast and retrieve bait. So jerk baits always probably rigged up something like a four inch. What is it? The is it the Rapala? Is it the shadow rap? That's like the minnow shape kind of deep bodied shallow diving, like two, three foot diver. Suspending bait works great or it can't be next rap. Honestly, like those things are just pretty much indestructible. They're great. So yeah, jerk baits rigged up a soft plastic swim bait.

favorite.

Speaker 3 (35:57.966)
for sure, like a four-inch, five-inch soft plastic paddle tail with belly-weighted EWG probably, like the Z-Man Diesel or something like that. Those are wicked. Those Z-Man baits are a pain in butt to rig sometimes, but like I can literally use one for like five guide trips. Like it's little bit crazy. You just keep crazy gluing it back onto the hook keeper and it's just like, okay, it works. And then a Fluke for sure. I'm a little bit partial to the Powerbait Jerk Chad. Yeah, Jerk Chad, that's what it's called, the five-inch Jerk Chad.

I don't know why, but that one isn't very durable, but it's always worked so well for me. Again, all white. So that's three. Those are pretty straightforward ones. I like them because most people can learn them really quick. Cast, retrieve a swimbait, cast, you know, lift your rod tip with a soft plastic jerk. It's going to rise, it's going to fall. And then a jerk bait takes a little bit more work. I'd be dumb to not mention a spinnerbait, you know, half ounce spinnerbait. Doesn't have to be big. I do prefer them if they've got titanium wire. They just last longer. You know, you're not having to true them every time. That one you can, I do play with colors like fire tiger.

You know, I play with whites, I play with white and chartreuse. Can it be one without mentioning a Williams wobbler? you you have to a spoon. You know, it's one that I can give to anybody and I just tell them to slowly retrieve it. And half the time they end up reeling it so slow that the trolling motor is trolling the spoon for them. it picks up fish where others won't. What is that? Five? That's That's five.

Ha!

Speaker 2 (37:16.258)
You want the wobbler, as we always say, Jesse. You don't want it to spin, you want it to suck.

Yeah, I got you. You shouldn't need to swivel on your leader for it. you just slow enough, it should wobble. That's what it's called, the wobbler. And then six, it would be a good idea to bring along some smaller musky bucktails, like a single eight blade, like a French bluted blade. I like those. Chartreuse and black, gold or silver and pink, funny enough. That's a good color.

But small, like we're talking, you know, a number eight blade, six inch like showgirl size. You could probably get a showgirl, but if you're throwing a showgirl in the core, if this is before muskie opener, you're probably going to get some looks. So I don't really recommend that. But on Georgian Bay, like when you're targeting big fish, like you were throwing a eight inch glide bait, like in those pike are right on it, right? Like, you know, so.

Yeah, it's always nice to have a bunch of stuff. But when you look when you look at it and you're like, OK.

What am I going to throw when I go into a bay? It's probably going to be a jerk bait and a soft plastic jerk bait to start. And then I have one that rips a little quicker, one that fishes slower, see which one's getting more action and then adjust accordingly. Right? Like if it's not happening, change both up or change one and keep another one. Some days you're out there with jerk baits too. And like literally I got, it's gotta be 10 or 12 colors of that shadow wrap I really like, or let's just say a husky jerk, like an HJ12 awesome bait that works awesome in every color. Literally you just can't pick a wrong color. Like you're running clown, you're running

Speaker 3 (38:36.066)
blue, silver, you're running fire tag, you're running black, silver, you're running gold, black. It's just like, there was one day this year with guests, literally, we would catch a fish, I would take that jerkbait off, we would put another one on, catch a fish on that one, take it off, put another jerkbait on. And funny enough, like black and blue is like a great colour. And can you throw blue in it for pike? Like maybe an underutilised one, at least when I read up online, I don't hear a lot about it. Like the HJ12 in the, I think it's blue, silver, orange, that colour.

So freaking good. And nothing really looks like that. Like nothing has that blue of a back. A Cisco is kind of blue, but like they're not up in two feet of water. I think it has to do with them just sure there may not be feeding on Cisco's right now, but they know what they are. Right.

So. You're like, what are you doing here?

Well, that's it. A lot of the time when we're sight fishing, so put it this way, like when we were in that bay, let's call it Bay of Pigs, that's a good name for it. Those fish were sunbathing. weren't like ripping around the bay hunting. They weren't cruising. The only time they moved was because we spooked them. Like when we stumbled across them with the trolling motor and I lost my mind, I was like, my God, they're here. I just spooked four. Those fish were up sunbathing, right?

Yeah

Speaker 2 (39:42.008)
Ha

when they're sunbathing, they're not particularly hungry. A lot of the time they're actually increasing their metabolism to then go back out and start feeding off drop-offs, weed edges, stuff like that, where they actually hunt. But if you were sitting, you went to the keg for dinner, right? And you got home and like your wife brought out a bag of chips, probably have a couple, right? Because it's near you. Same kind of thing. Throwing something small, like a five inch fluke, it's a bass bait, right? Or when we're talking fly fishing, like, you know, you guys called, was tines of pike flies, but like...

you'll throw leech flies like four inch five inch leech flies they're a big bass fly and and when we rode i had an awesome follow on this flag right to the boat like sometimes they just want that potato chip it's in their face they just can't say no to it they're not particularly hungry but they're a predator and you piss the predator off with five casts in its face it might snap on it

That makes me feel better, Jesse. I'm a predator. Well, what kind of predator I ask. Never mind. I hunt chips. Oh yeah. Okay, good. Again, like I said, I love looking through guides boxes. Some of them are real tackle nerds too, and they just buy a bunch of stuff to try. But generally speaking, I'm usually never surprised what I see in their box. I'm like, okay, that makes sense. It's just like, that's what I use. That's what I use. And it's just like, like,

When I went out yesterday, I caught my two fish, I caught one on a husky jerk tiger and I cut the other one on a five inch diesel minnow like swim bait. Like, mean, it's pike fishing, right? You don't have to go over.

Speaker 3 (41:10.718)
I try to always think about like if, friends of mine will be like, it must be so great to like, know, fish every day, fishing with people that know what they're doing. And like, while I do have a lot of guests that know what they're doing, a lot of my trips are with people who are just starting out entirely. So giving them something that they can cast and wind, like the equivalent of fishing a wacky rigs and go like cast it out, leave it, pick it up, leave it, reel back in and throw it out again. You know, with swim baits, it's cast out as far as you can, rod tip low and reel it as slow as you can without snagging bottom. Right. And

When you get a bite, pull. And it's, it's, and they work like there's just something about a swim bay that, that five inch diesel, like I think a fish can get up behind it. If you can cast that thing 70, 80, 90 feet, and then just slow wind, the pike is just going to follow it. And eventually, you know, something tweaks their mind. Maybe it bumps into a rock or bumps into a weed and they just pounce. So yeah, keep it simple for sure. But everyone's throwing spoons. Everyone's throwing metal. So I don't throw a ton of it. I try to be a little different, so take bass tactics.

Like even then, like some things I do that are really interesting and a lot of people are shocked by is I don't use a lot of store-bought leaders like steel leaders for Pike. I do use steel though, steel or titanium. don't really, for the finesse tactics, I don't use fluoro because you need to go pretty thick and the thickness will impact a lot of action on smaller baits or soft plastics. It just ruins the action. I use tieable titanium or tieable steel nylon coated leader. And the reason I do that, I can make them whatever length I want.

And if I'm not using a spinner, I don't incorporate a swivel. Like I just do a Alberto knot to my Power Pro and then I tie on a snap or one of the Mustad Fast-Touch clips. Like those things are awesome. And they're such small profile that you can throw it on a suspending jerkbait and it doesn't sink. It just literally will still suspend, which is kind of cool. I learned that more from fly fishing. there's, that's the cool thing about being a multi-species, but also a multi-technique tactic angler is I take so much from spin fishing and apply it to my fly fishing business and vice versa.

And that, that leader has been so common for pike anglers forever. Cause we use tieable lead, tieable wire ever since, I think it was called toothy critter was like the first one that I saw. Um, and it was like super kinky and it was like, just not, not fun to fish with, but, then it was like, not too kinky came out and I was taking it. Right.

Speaker 2 (43:21.12)
I use that, that's the best. I like how they had to name it to, you know. Hey, we fixed the issue.

And then we like, and now I'm utilizing like fly fishing fly brands, like scientific anglers, they make this seven strand titanium leader in a 35 pound test. That is probably the diameter of like 30 pound braid. Like it's so skinny. It's wicked stuff. It's a bit of a pain to tie a knot. Your knots don't look like they're going to hold, but they do. You pull them up as tight as you can without snapping them and they're going to be fine.

I think that's the main thing. So I bought a bunch of that not too kinky stuff and it's a tie bolt titanium and everyone's like, they'll look at the knot and be like, that's not a knot. And it's like, that's the knot it tells you to tie on the back of the package. It's not the regular fishing knot that you tie with your monofilament or whatever. It's a special knot and it doesn't look like it's cinched down, but it doesn't come apart. Like once you work that up and it's good. Under loaded tightens as well.

And if you feel real sketchy, just put a drop of crazy glue on it and then if you get that crazy glue wet, it'll instantly dry. So just put a little live on it or something that dries instantly.

I've seen Jesse, he'll even take like little thin strips of shrink tube. Just cut that and slide it over top of the thing. At least it looks more finished. The main reason I do that is because when you cut the not too kinky, it's so thin. Sometimes you'll grab your lure and it just sticks into your thumb. It's like, Right at bamboo fingernail torture.

Speaker 3 (44:45.922)
When you're tying that stuff, like do not drop the tag end, like put it somewhere, put it in a fridge can. Like I've had one embedded in my foot cause I, I use it in fly tying for joining multi like jointed flies, articulated flies. And I had a piece stuck in my foot for like a little while. took a while for it to come out. Not fun.

Yeah, it's like an acupuncture needle. They just stay in there forever until you get an x-ray.

Yeah, exactly. think titanium is like pretty dang safe for your body. But yeah, no, that's, there's some cool things you can bring over from each tactic and utilize them. Heck, sometimes I'm like, you know, I now use on flies, like there's a company called out called Pocari. They're like these dragon tails, like they're curly tails from like a, you know, like a like a grub. And you would tie that onto your fly and it becomes a bulldog. You're right, you run one of those and there's your

you

Speaker 3 (45:34.444)
little mini bulldog behind your fly. Like it's so crazy. It's neat. So there's a lot of things you can do to stand out from the crowd a little bit. I even incorporate those things on the back of like cowgirls, because I think they have a much better action than an actual soft plastic and they're much more durable. I love a grub on a cowgirl, by the way. It's a great musky tactic. Just a little grub on the back hook, cool little action, but yeah. So there's things you can do which changes it up, makes you look a little different out there and catch more fish.

That would be awesome.

Speaker 2 (46:00.556)
I'm a sucker for twister tails on anything when it comes to musky. Like if it's glide bait, I'm just like.

Phantom with an accent for Hell Hound right there.

to have the twister tail on it. Yep. I'm impaled. I'm waiting for waiting for Jesse to get a vehicle that's a hitch. I'm going to make him a hitch cover. That's a big twister tail. All right, we could talk about Pike forever. But since this is Matt's mixed bag, I thought the next one that we could kind of Andrew is going to throw all kind of gar questions at you. Jesse said earlier, my favorite gar. I have a lot of questions because I've never caught one.

That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (46:35.822)
They are

back up in June and we'll get them.

Awesome, well, I'm gonna hold you to that.

So I can find some time in June and we'll go get you guys some gar. I can pretty much guarantee that as long as it's sunny.

Speaker 2 (46:48.238)
so we want that thing.

You want something, you want Bluebird those days.

Gar are just like Pike, super cool. Musky like just monsters, right? Gar are the closest thing to a dinosaur besides crocodiles and alligators. those things.

far off. I they lived with them. They're so cool. mean, there's fossilized, there are prehistoric fish like them and bofin and then the lungfish in Australia, they're considered prehistoric fish that are fossilized and they are still alive. So crazy. But when you look at them and more importantly, when you touch them, you realize they're weird fish. Like when you land a gar and you, you know how you like, well behind a pike you can grab by the shoulders and pick them up if they're under 32, 33 inches, easy to kind of do.

Same thing with garb, when you grab them, their skin is not like any other fish scale you've touched. They're not slimy. A lot of people are like, oh my god, they're going to be super slippery. Their scales are textured. It's like they're like sandpaper when you grab them.

Speaker 2 (47:48.408)
Kinda like Gwalai, like Gwalai are bit more grippy.

kind of like walleye but they still have like yeah walleye are sticky you you grab them and I got it like it's not gonna flip out of your hand like a pike or trout for instance a trout like most slippery fish ever but you're right kind of like kind of like walleye but the difference is when you grab them the armor plating is so solid like you feel like you could squeeze that fish with everything you had and there'd be no way you could hurt it like I don't know I don't know closest thing like grabbing a shark or like you know shark skin on a piece of metal like they're so solid like you can't squeeze them

And you can, that's a great way to land them, just grab them behind the head. While they don't have serrated teeth that will cut line and stuff, they will swing their head around quite wildly when you grab them. They can puncture waders and they can puncture your skin. That whole type of fish, prehistoric fish, has quickly become a large portion of my guide business. I probably do a combined total of 30 trips a year for gar carp and bofin. That's wild, which is great because in late May when the pike have kind of disappeared deep into, until bass opener,

Mmm. Well, I mean, we could go walleye fishing for sure. We could go muskie fishing once it opens on third Saturday of June up here or go to the corthas earlier. like, Gar, and Gar provide so many shots. It's nuts.

When, when gar fishing, I've only ever seen them, like you just see them. That's, that's it. You drive by and just see it. that how you, like, is it all just sight fishing? Is that how you target them and locate them in a bay and sight fish?

Speaker 3 (49:16.078)
For me, it's all-site fishing. Basically what I do is I'll take people, I'll book a pike trip, for instance, and it's towards the end of May and you get on the water and it's bluebird, flat calm, water temps are hot. And you're like, this is going to be tough. So you go pike fishing for a little bit, you might catch a few deeper water, 12, 15 feet of water type thing. But then you look at them and you're like, do want to go try something different? Let's fish for what's probably best today. And you go into these back bays, like in those same spots, mind you, that we pike fished.

in the early season, in the first week of the season, that is going to be your gar spot once late May, early June rolls around. The bottom is mucky. You get into those back bays, all of a sudden the water temperature is 72, 75 and it's like late May. You're just in such skinny water and like a foot of water, your trolling motor is overheating because it's wrapped in weeds and like it just shuts down randomly. Like mine does that all the time. Like you're like, oh yeah, I smell a little bit of hot plastic. You know that smell you get on your...

Probably do work in your motor.

little too hard. Yeah, you got to like be careful. have one I did catch one trolling motor on fire last year. Doing that the the plug like the I can't remember the brand whatever it was the connection was obviously a little loose and there was some resistance and all of a sudden just started smoking like crazy. And yeah, it was it was a little rough. But you know, from that I just hardwired now there's no more plug. No more issue.

So the gar are going to be right up in the shallows. I'd be lying if I didn't say the best way to catch them is with fly tackle. Definitely. People will be like, yeah, you mean the rope fly. you know, I'm sure people have heard of the rope fly. There's no hook. It's unbraided nylon rope. Usually I like personally, use, I used to do a lot of rock climbing and still climb a little bit. I have a couple of ropes, a couple that are retired and I just cut the rope into like six inch lengths and take that inner core, that white nylon core out.

Speaker 3 (51:06.988)
and I tie on a few strands and then take a dog brush and brush the heck out of it just to make it like a tangled mess. But when they get wet, they actually look a lot like a nice streamer. Like you put on some stick on eyes and an epoxy head and it's great. And half the time you're throwing them to a gar and out of nowhere and out of season smallmouth smokes it because it looks so good. But like there's no hook. it's kind of like, well, cool. You're not going to get hooked.

Hit all you want.

Yeah, which can be a pain in your butt when you do go garfishing and bass is open in a five pound small mouth or large mouth comes up and eats it and there's nothing you can do. So, but yeah, the rope fly works the downfall with the rope fly is the hook ratio really isn't that great. Like they eat it, you have to let them chew it, you have to let them you count to like six or seven, and then you just apply steady pressure. And then hopefully the rope tangles around their face.

I want to Jesse try this technique of having to see the bait in the fish's mouth.

You just count I'll be with you like okay now

Speaker 2 (52:05.742)
I'm gonna you on. Jesse, he's dying just thinking about it.

It's a weird way to fish. what's the cool part about it? Often they're in the heaviest of weeds, like right up in the lily pads. All you see is a tail sticking out and their head is somewhere underneath the lily pads. And you can fish that right through the heaviest of junk because there's no hook. Like you can just put that thing through there. And I do also tie them a little bit bigger so that they hold more water weight and I can throw them on like a medium action spinning rod. So it works quite well, right? You only have a casting range of about 20 or 30 feet.

I I could see him in that range anyways.

Yeah, overly spooky, right? So that works great. But I think what I prefer is because the rope can take sometimes a little while to get the rope out of their jaws. And you're standing there for two, three, four, five minutes. And while they do have the ability to breathe air, unlike a lot of fish, can process air through a prehistoric lung and exhale over their gills. They still need to be wet. There's still a fish. They prefer to be in the water. So I don't use it too much. And if you were to break one off, that fish is dead.

you know, they'll never shake it. you know, you would use that rope fly, but you know you have to use minimum like 30 or 40 pound floral. Like there's no messing or straight 50 pound braid. Like I'm not going to give you a chance to break it off. What I prefer to use now is, especially when I'm fishing in sparser cover, standing reeds that haven't really grown in yet, or even just sandy flats where they're sunbathing would be a small three inch bait fish fly with a treble hook stinger off the back.

Speaker 2 (53:39.214)
treble hooks are like a nice finesse treble hook is the deal. I've never caught them but I've heard that before of single hooks. just like they come into the side and just slide down the jaw and there's gone.

So a treble, like I'll use like a thin wire number 10, like pretty tiny treble. And you're throwing them at like 50 inch fish. Like it's a weird feeling. That sharp hook, I'll pinch the barbs on them too, cause it'll give less resistance going into the snout. So if it's barbless, there's less, more penetration. As long as you maintain tension, you land the fish. And often you're never even hooked the, the, the hook will kind of go around the beak and it's like a grappling hook kind of around their face and it bends on an angle. And then you got the guard.

You know what, like my favorite way of guiding them is, I mean, I would love to buy a saltwater flats skiff where I had a pulling platform and push pull and get you through the backs. But like, let's be real. I only have so much room in my driveway. It's already got two boats in it. What I do with my guests is I'll get them on my front casting platform. I'll drop the trolling motor and I'll put my waders on and I'll actually jump out of the boat and I'll slowly pull the boat. Like I'll hold onto the trolling motor shaft and I'm just going to slowly pull it because they hate trolling motors. They hear the sound and they take off. They're not a fan.

And usually when I'm with a guest, you know, a pretty tall guy, most of my guests are a little shorter than me. They can't quite see what I'm seeing at that height, right? We're only now maybe through, if I'm over six foot, like I might only be three foot above the water surface with my head. So my range is not that effective, but putting them on the bow of the boat, they're seven feet above me, right? They can see 50, 60, 70 feet and they can kind of like help me find them too. I mean, it sounds kind of weird. Usually it's the guide pointing out the fish, but like

still often more often than not I'll spot them even though I'm down like super low I'll be like oh there's a fin over there and they'll be working over there. What'll happen is while I'm waiting I've caught my net like in my hand and the minute they take their cast with their fly rod or their spinning rod and hook a fish I sprinted that fish like I don't give it a chance like I'm running at that fish because it might only be a 30 foot cast and the fish comes up shaking its head and I put it in the bag like the fights are quick because if you fight them typically they get off and and that's fun like it's

Speaker 3 (55:48.27)
For Gar, the biggest thing you have to get excited about is the eat. Like the way they engage on a fly or a super shallow running jerk bait or a shallow running like a wake bait is really good for them too. Again, treble hooks, right? You cast at them. Maybe if they're sitting there, you have to identify which end is the head for one, which is kind of hard, easier said than done. If you see spots and like a fan shaped tail, well, obviously that's the tail. You know, the head's probably four to five feet away from that. You want to aim past them, about eight to 10, 12 feet past them.

and aim maybe one to two feet in front of them. So when your lure or your fly lands, you don't spook them. They're very sensitive. Often their fins are out of the water. They're right on the surface. And you want to retrieve that bait past their nose. And as it comes past them, you're going to watch them rotate. And they're going to spin their fins. And they're going to get all excited. And then they start following. And as they follow, just like a musky, you want to start speeding it up and twitching it and doing crazy things to make it look really injured. Agar is a weird fish. They don't eat with the tip of their snout too much.

They'll slash at baits with it, try to injure the minnow, if it's a real minnow. I've seen them like blitz bait fish in a back bay and they're like bait fish jumping everywhere and they're almost like a marlin swinging their bill around. It's crazy. But they'll swat at your bait. And if they're really going to eat it, their eye is located about 12 to 14 inches from the tip of their mouth, right? Like it's a weird fish. They'll swim right up and put that eye right next to your lure or your fly. And then out of nowhere, it's like a mousetrap reaction. They swing sideways and they bite it.

Like it's so fast. It's like you can't clap your hands faster than the way they eat. So they eat it. And then I'm yelling at you to set the hook if you've got a trouble hook bait. Set, set, set, hard as you can. And in fly fishing, we use a term called strip set. Instead of using the rod, you pull with your line. So typically when you're streamer fishing, you pull with the line. But once you pull with the line on a strip set, you then jack them as hard as you can was what we call a trout set or a rod set. You smoke them with a strip set, hook them, watch them shake their head, and then smoke them hard and try to get a little bit of flesh on that hook.

you are going to lose 80 % of the fish you hook. Like it's just part of it. They go airborne right away. They come three, four feet out of the water. If they land and they didn't lose it, they will take runs. Like they're a fun fighting fish. And if you're getting them in like 45 to 50 inch range, like they can get, they actually, they pull really good. mean, that's a 15 pound fish probably, but they, they, they actually have a, know, you get them in the net. Like I run at them. We put them in the net in like 10, 15 seconds. Like it's quick. That's the best way to put numbers in the boat. And then you're trying to like,

Speaker 3 (58:12.344)
teach them how to hold on to them and not only are their teeth something I'll be careful about, their scales are called garneoid scales, the shape of them. like, used to be used in like indigenous body armor and stuff in like the Mayan times and stuff like that, like crazy.

Obviously, that comes a little point. Exactly.

and they're like razor sharp. So if you're holding onto that fish and it starts like tensing up, you know how you hold a pike and it'll curl sometimes? You feel that same thing in a garg, just throw it over the side of the boat. Because honestly, it's going to shake and you're going to slice your hands open.

Speaker 3 (58:44.534)
I do have gloves for people like mechanics kind of gloves. I don't like using gloves on fish. I think it's bad for fish slime and that kind of stuff, but I'm pretty comfortable holding them now. Like I can read when they're going to flip and then you just give them a little toss and away they go. There's a lot of photos of me holding people's gar. I hate that guy photo where it's like the guy showing off the musky. Like I hate that. Like, but in gar situation, like, you know, gotta do it. Yeah. So much fun. And the season is like, it's perfect. Cause like if Pike's slow and it's sunny, you go gar fishing and it's just like.

people cannot have a bad time gar fishing. You're wading in warm water, you know, or you're in the boat, I'm pulling you and you're just like, no word of a lie. I've had days where people hook well over 100 gar. Like it's just, just bang, bang, bang, bang. And everyone you throw at eats the fly or the lure. And I've been talking a lot about fly because it is the most effective. But if you use like a six centimeter husky jerk, like a little bit bigger than like a crappy one or like, they're deadly. They love those things. Maybe a floating jerk bait that dives like.

super shallow. You cast it beyond him, you just twitch it in front of their face, keep going. And when they smoke it, don't be shy with your hook set. like, hook them and just be okay with missing most of them.

That's the story of my life anyway. I really wanna do this now.

The way I relate it is like in fly fishing, a lot of people glorify tarpon fishing and rightfully so those things are crazy cool, but they don't even count them when they land them. They just count them as jumped fish. So you jump a tarpon and it gets off that counted. Like that's great. Cause they're so hard to like control. I always just joke with guys like, you jumped one. You know, we jumped 10 today. Like, and if they tarpon fish they laugh cause they don't fight like they're not fighting for, you know, 20 or 30 minute tarpon, but like it's similar. Like they lay up in the shallows, fins out of the water. They're in little pods.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21.102)
stink, which is kind of weird. You grab them, they're pretty stinky. Like they had a weird smell to them. If you haven't fished gar, like check him out. Like any Great Lake has them. Find them in Lake Ontario, find them in Georgian Bay, Lake Huron. You can find them in lakes like that are attached to Georgian Bay, like Gloucester Pool, for instance. has a, you know, it's originally part of Lake Huron, right? Georgian Bay, it's just been damned off, but there's a population of them in there. And when you find them, you're going to find tons.

So does Andrew. We're used to it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49.1)
Like, it's nowhere to live. You know where they live? You know where you've seen one go back there when it's hot and sunny? The hottest, sunniest days with no wind, like it's just stagnant. I sell it as like almost Amazon jungle fishing. Like you're pushing through weeds, it's not comfortable, it's sweaty, but the fish are super cool.

Sold! here's a question then. We're not going to talk about bofins and stuff today, but what's the time frame for bofin? Is it around the same time?

Yeah, I, again, like, I will fish them up until and even after bass opener sometimes because like if I see a bofin when we're large amount fishing, I don't care. They, we got one the other day, pike fishing, like blind fishing, and it was an enormous one. was like almost 30 inches. Like it's a huge bofin and they pull so freaking hard. Like we thought he had a giant pike on and then it comes up and it was, you know, eight inches wide across the back. like, oh, it's a huge pike. And then, you know, like that's only 30 inches. What the heck? And then I put it in the net and like, ah, that's why.

But yeah, the bofin, their spawn takes place similar timeframe. The cool thing about bofin is they protect like a brood. So a young grouping, like if you've ever seen bullhead catfish or catfish in general, they have like these crazy schools of bait in the shallows and your largemouth fishing and at opener, you'll see them and you'll think it's just a black floating blob and then you're like, wait, that's alive. Same kind of thing for bofin. If you see this black moving cloud of bait, that's probably the size of a garbage can lid. Just throw a flippin jig in there or a tube jig or...

Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11.31)
bait of something and you are going to get smoked by a male bofin. The hardest thing with bofin is their hard mouth. So you got to hit them two or three times and maintain pressure. Like everyone we catch, they come out in the net. They don't stay hooked. just hook never even penetrate. The one we caught the other day wasn't even hooked. It was just holding on to the swim bait. It was so stubborn. It was like, just open your mouth and it would like keep your mouth shut and you wouldn't get into a problem. know, people could take advice from that too.

Hahaha!

But yeah, they're up there too. So if I'm fishing for them, I have a separate rod rigged up. And you know, there has been times, I'll be honest, like we're gar fishing and people have been like, you're bass fishing. And I'm like, absolutely not. look at what we're, if you need to complain, like here's the photos to prove to you what we're doing. If you know anything about fishing, we're not large mouth fishing. I don't know if I've seen a large mouth angler jump out of his boat and drag it through six inches of water with a guest casting. Like that's just weird.

But, you they're around, so just have an idea of what you're throwing at. It's sight fishing. It's not fan casting. You're not just blind casting into the weeds. We're literally target hunting. Yeah, I'll have a rod rigged up for bofin. I'll have a rod rigged up for garp. And maybe it's a good segue, I'll have a rod rigged up for carp because they're all in the same spot. And you sometimes don't know what you're going to get a shot at when you pull into these shallow flats. So it's a ton of fun.

What I'm hearing is next spring, I want to try again. We won't have time this year to get back up to go for some massive pipe with you. Next spring, I want to do that again. But what I'm hearing is ancient fossil, like a fossil fish day. That's the next thing that's happening for me.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43.086)
Do it. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's not gonna lie. It's a bl-

Actually, I'll tell you my gar story. I've caught a few both in myself. Andrew actually had one straight notice flipping jig one time.

I see. do that. Heavy gets straightened right out. Oh, yeah. I've had the rods. We broke two rods on them last year.

One-B rod, thought I had a PB largemouth on, was flipping for largemouth against the Bull Rushes. I the hook and I flipped and jigged and did I what? I didn't see it. We were able to deduce by the fact that the hook was straight and that it fought like my PB times 10 that had to been a bowfin.

Did you lip it? No.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22.008)
It's like me, the first bowfin I ever saw, my dad caught on Lake Simcoe. were fishing in the back bay for largemouth in Cooks Bay, I think. Yeah. And he caught what he thought was his biggest largemouth ever. Comes up covered in weeds, sees the mouth, lips it, and it's a bowfin. And just shredded his thumb. Like the teeth on these things are, they're pretty savage. They're not like pike teeth, but they're shorter, but way, they're super sharp. Not enough to worry about a steel leader, but they will shred your fingers.

Yeah, yeah. they're such cool fish. So I caught a few over my years. I've never actually targeted them. That's something that I want to do one of these days. We actually when we were early season bass fishing a few weeks ago, I saw three of them in the shallow bay. And speaking of my gar story, it was actually in that shallow bay last year, I was chucking a six inch mag draft, which is a six inch plastic swimbait fishing a weedless like eight eight off these took like it and I was just

I doubt.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12.974)
casting as far as I could in the shallow bay is like two feet of water. I'm just reeling it in. All sudden my bait I feel like a tug. And then I see my bait because it was white and I just see it like certain tracking sideways. I was like, what the heck? Reeling it in and it's pull I can pull it. And I look and it was a huge guard and it had just my bait scissored between its mouth. And I was like, there's no way I'm gonna hook it. I have an eight on beast hook. And I just started pulling on it and eventually it popped out. It was a giant gar. It's huge.

Minister!

Speaker 3 (01:05:41.194)
If I'm thinking where I think you are fishing, that area has the biggest long nose gar in the world. That's where world records have been caught.

I'm going back there next month.

That whole Lake Ontario area, that side of Lake Ontario is known for giant car like breaking 50 inches regularly. There was a huge craze for it back in like 2008, 2006 for Gar on the fly, like the world records were being caught there regularly. Cool fish, like really cool fish.

is one of my goals this year, I just decided is to catch a gar by myself and Andrew. then so I can say that I actually did it. And then that way, if we go with Matt, we'll actually have somewhat of an idea of what we're doing. So he doesn't have to babysit us like last week.

You should.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28.846)
Small troubles, man. That's what you mean.

Speaking of small troubles, let's talk about carp. Just kidding. I love this episode because it's so this year we've talked to guides every single episode, right? But we've only targeted we've only been talking about one species per episode, which is great because like you could talk probably three episodes long about one thing. Of course. Me and Andrew could talk about two hours about fishing chatterbaits like. course. But this is cool because we're talking about all these random fish.

Pike aren't so random, but these other fish are pretty random. we don't really fly fish. But I am interested in you talking a little bit about fly fishing for carp, because this is something that I have done. And in my opinion, is one of the most difficult things that I've done. It's harder than musky fishing, in my opinion, most of the time. Yeah, like for me, I'll just tell you my experience. I used to fly fish a bit mostly still fishing, but I had an eight weight.

It's harder for different reasons, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27.854)
And I tied up these flies because I used to tie flies. Not as good as Matt, but I tied up these flies called the dirt squirrel. And it was literally like a beaded fly. It was almost like a crayfish fly because the bead would make the hook stand up a little bit. It just looked like a dirt squirrel. I just call it the dirt squirrel. And I went out there and I saw a bunch of carp just cruising in the shallows and they were picking stuff off the bottom. I was like, that's literally what you want to see. Like this is perfect. And I was trying to get my fly and I suck at fly casting as Matt will tell you. And I got my fly like if

If you go right on top of them, they spook. If it's too far away, they won't see it. And I'm trying to cast. And eventually, finally I cast. This is in a river, by the way, with trees hanging over. So casting was a bit of a, you know, was a feat. I got one right in front of the thing, you know, a few feet away and I pulled it slowly in front. The thing went down and just picked it up. And I set the hook and holy smokes. The most insane fight on a fly is like a 25 pound carp on the fly.

In a river full of logs. I don't know how I did it. I got it in and I went back the next day and I skunked and then I went back the next day and I caught one more and then I haven't done it since. That was like seven years ago. But maybe you can give me some tips if I do it again, because it was pretty difficult. I was going to mention too a carp and a fly rod is another thing because when people think, they carp, those are just a big fish. They're slow and they don't people who haven't fought carp on even any tackle rod. You don't realize how powerful they are.

Sam and will take line but carp will slowly take your line. Can't stop them. And so when you have a reel that doesn't have a built-in drag system and your drag is your hand, that's a wild fight.

Yeah

Speaker 3 (01:09:07.166)
Yeah, no, it's in the fly fishing world for them at least the amount of times I've heard them referred to as golden bonefish can kind of drive me crazy because like bonefish aren't I mean, they're challenging to catch but carp are way harder to catch than a bonefish like I've done both and you know, a bad day bonefishing I'm usually getting three or four, you know, it's it's pretty funny carp a good day is one fish, you know, that's it's it's wild. Yeah, the thing about

The other thing that doesn't make sense about them is when you hook a bonefish, it's like hooking into an F1 car. is crazy fast runs. And then you pull the fish out. like, how are you only 15 inches long? This doesn't make sense. A carp is like hooking a dump truck stuck in first gear going uphill. Like you're not stopping a dump truck with your fly rod. You got to wait for it to decide that it's stopping. Like that's kind of the way it's going to go. You know, you hook them and you're like, okay, yep, the lines it's on the reel. Great. Awesome. And it's running and 30 seconds later, it's still running.

you

Speaker 3 (01:10:02.354)
And okay, it stopped. Okay, gained a little bit. and it's running again. It's wild. They literally have so much power that, you you just got to go along for the ride sometimes. And the thing is they're relatively spooky, like you mentioned, like line selection and fly selection. Leader and tippet selection is also important to actually get bites. And like you just mentioned, like 25 pound carp is pretty attainable for most of us in urban environments. They are around. They're that big found in the Don River in Toronto. You can find them right there at the mouth, right?

I used to love that spot and it's probably even going to be better now since it's changed a little bit. They rewilded it. It's very cool fish. They're found in park ponds, they're found in lakes, found in rivers. So they're kind of attainable for a lot of people. Now catching them on bait, know, chumming up with corn and throwing in a mix, throwing in boilie pieces, throwing in boilies, catching fish that way is a ton of fun. And I do have the, you know, the rod pods and we're bait runners and all that kind of bite alarms. It's a blast, but...

catching one on the fly that you stalked, you saw it. I'm knee deep in the water. I'm walking after that fish. I'm watching to see what it does. You fed that fish. wasn't like you chummed it up and it ate your bait.

It's like hunting, I assume. I've never hunted, but.

But it's very similar to anything. You're waiting. I try to tell people one cast, one fish. Don't take 20 casts of that fish. If you're going to make your cast count. If the fish sees it and you made a good cast on the first shot, there's no reason for it to reject your bait. It'll probably still reject your bait, but you're flying. if you throw 50, 10, 15 casts at it, it's probably not going to eat anymore. You're just going to spook it. And once they spook carp, I've documented it's like.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38.082)
They have the ability to release a pheromone in the water. So when they spook, it alerts other carp and it's wild to see. So it's not like a white-tailed deer raising its flag and running away and all of them run. It's kind of delayed reaction. Like you'll spook one and it'll run the opposite direction from the school. And then like 10, 15 seconds later, they'll all spook out of nowhere. And you could have just blown up 20 or 30 carp and you're like, well, time to find a new spot. The tricky thing with carp on the fly is you're going to see him. And this is it makes it challenging, kind of like musky. Unlike musky.

you're going to see a ton of fish. You're going to go out and you're going to see 20, 30, 40 carp a day. But it doesn't mean you're going to catch one, you know, on the fly. So biggest thing is stealth. I fish multiple different lakes. I fish the Great Lakes where they actually become predatory and we catch them on Gobi flies. catch them on a frig. We've caught them on three inch swim baits fishing for bass, you know, like carp are predatory in the Great Lakes. They will eat, they hunt down Gobis. And where I fish on Georgian Bay for them, the flats are hard bottom. They're live stone flats.

and the carp come on and you watch them tail and they spitting image of the little bit of redfish fishing I've done down in the States. They look identical to a bull redfish pulling up on a flat, pushing a big bow weight as they come onto the flat and there's three or four of them and then you watch them light up and they're chasing fish and they're like literally attacking gobies. Like it's so cool to see. But then I fish ponds and I fish, you know, hundred acre lakes and these small little lakes that are invasive, you know, that have been loaded, you know, maybe traditionally large mouth lakes, but have become so full of

full of carp that there's no gobies in those lakes. There's not much in the way of bait fish. So they're very, maybe they're smaller fish, but they're very reliant on benthic invertebrates. So dragonfly nymphs, mayfly nymphs, maybe there's crayfish in the lake. And they're a little bit less predatory and you have to get the fly in the right position and do nothing. Like put it there, let them come over to it. And if you don't, if you twitch it, you might spook them. You know, it's often a do nothing technique. You show them the fly, you leave it, they swim past it. You pick it up go to a different fish.

Meanwhile, in the Great Lakes, sometimes you can't strip fast enough for them to hunt down your fly or a tube or whatever. I mean, the amount of carp I've caught sight fishing with tubes, a two inch tube thrown in a carp, they will take it. Don't pass that up on Simcoe, trust me, it's a lot of fun. When the bass fishing might be little tough, find a carp and throw it. If you throw a small tube or a Gobi bait at them, they will eat them. Great times.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54.702)
I've seen guys at the harbor when we were fishing for, I think it was in the fall and I saw a guy legit catch one on a little Cleo. Foley is like, the guy's like, oh, you snagged, like the guy snagged it. I'm like, dude, he was reeling in. Scott caught one last spring. We were early bass fishing, caught one on a chatterbait. Yeah.

These things are a different breed in the Great Lakes. are they're angry.

They get big for a reason though, like they're not just like nipping little nints all the time, like they're eating meat.

So really the big thing I look at is what I'm fishing the body of water and then I adjust my forage accordingly. On Georgian Bay, I'm either throwing a Gobi fly or a crayfish fly first and then I'm throwing a dragonfly nymph second. And I gauge my gear accordingly too. So on the bigger lakes, I'm throwing eight weight fly rods usually. Sometimes my casting distance might be 60 feet. It's better if you can get them in just underneath your rod tip. That's way better. If you can go like a real short cast, you'll be much more delicate with them.

But the eight weights needed just to punch a further cast and maybe a bigger fly. On the smaller lakes, I'll probably throw a six weight, sometimes a seven if I know there's big fish around. And then for fly lines, they're starting to become carp-focused lines. The whole fly industry is wonderful, but they start to build so many fly lines that you just can't physically have them all. It's crazy. Your standard weight forward floating line is really going to get you through most of the time. I...

Speaker 3 (01:15:12.35)
use a tropical, like a bonefish line for warmer months, so when I'm fishing them in July and August, because the water temps are the same as I'd be fishing in the southern flats. It doesn't have any memory when I'm casting. It's a delicate presentation, but still has enough power to shoot a decent length cast. And then my leaders are pretty long. Like I'll throw a 12 to 15 foot leader so that the fly line lands far away from the fish. Like if the fish is sitting 30 feet away from you, nose away from you, nose down feeding, I want that fly to land six, seven feet past the fish.

I don't want my fly line to land on my side of the fish. Like don't want the line landing on top of the fish. It's going to spook it. The technique is called the drag and drop. So once your fly hits the surface, instead of stripping your fly, because you'll like the strip feeling adds vibration when you're pulling, pulling, pulling. There's like vibration of your fly line. And that can spook the carp. So your best way to kind of be on them, about one foot in front of them. And carp kind of have a blind spot right in front of their nose. You kind of have to be left or right of their eyes to get.

them to see it. You will let the fly hit the water and then you lift quickly your rod tip straight to the sky and your fly will skate just under the surface of the water and once it gets over top of their head you drop your rod tip and the fly will drop down beside them. And then quickly you strip up that slack line with one good pull of your hand, let that fly fall and you will tell if a fish is going to eat it right away. It's going to see it and it's either going to spook like crazy because it just did not like that thing coming on it or it's going to turn towards it. If it turns towards it you just got to watch for that mouth to extend. You're never going to feel the strike.

The mouth extends and comes back in, and then you do a short pull. You just, like it's called a strip set, but you just start pulling like one, two feet. And if you feel tension, you kick them hard with the hook set, rod tip up in the air, bend the rod, let that line go to your reel and the fight is on. They hit them on the drop a lot. When that fly is just falling down slowly, like my flies are unweighted typically, or if they are, it's with bead chain eyes or one small tungsten bead. I just want enough, because I don't want it to splat on the surface. It'll spook them. Real gentle landing and enough for it to drop.

Typically, I'll have them in three weights, unweighted, bead chain, tungsten bead, and maybe if I'm fishing four feet of water for them, a small lead eye to get the fly down a little quicker. And it's like very simple patterns. they're not hard. A lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17.834)
It sounds super complicated, but I think the main thing is it's very satisfying when you actually catch one though.

If you haven't done it, go out and try and then maybe look at someone who specializes in doing it because you will learn so much in just the day of fishing and how we approach them. The biggest thing is to just find the right fish to throw at. You are going to see so many fish in the right spot and there's so many I wouldn't waste my time on. And reading fish body language is so important for all aspects of fishing, but sight fishing in general and carp, definitely important. If those fish are cruising, walking speed or faster, don't even bother.

They're just going from A to B. Those things are not feeding. They're on a mission. Like whether it's they're going to spawn or they're going from A to B to feeding area. Use those fish though, to help tell you where the other fish are. So like follow those fish, know, stay, but don't make a cast because you'll spook them. Just follow them. And they might lead you to a little corner that you didn't know about. And there might be a dozen cart back in there, tails in the air, noses down, filtering through the mud. That's a big thing. If you see them cruising and then they work left and they work right and they're kind of zigzagging through the flat.

They're on a mission.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19.854)
They're probably not heavily feeding, they're on, they're looking. You know, they're waiting for a crayfish to spook or something. So you might get them on a crayfish or a Gobi bait. My favorite fish to target is one we call it laid up in fly fishing. They're just sitting there in the sun. Solo fish. If you spook it, you're not spooking a school. That's a nice thing. I hate throwing at big schools because you're going to spook one, you're to spook them all. So that solo fish just sitting in there on the edge of a weed bed. And if I can walk up behind it, like this is the funniest thing with carp.

a little bit blind in front of their nose, they're definitely blind behind them. You walk slowly, like a lot of fish, right, that 45 degree angle back from their eyes, same with trout, they can't really see you. If you walk up behind it straight from the tail and take your nine foot, seven or eight weight, whatever, it's your long leader and you just reach out as far as you can and drop that fly on the surface, like European dim thing, we call it dapping. Like you just reach and place that fly on the left or the right side of the fish so gently that it doesn't make a splat and it sinks just down beside them.

If you can get that, like, five out of 10 fish will eat it. It's so predictable at that point. Like, I get so excited. There's no cast. Like, you're literally just reaching and dropping. Kind of like flipping through grass a little bit. Plunking pockets type thing. And then you watch them pounce on it. Like, they light up. They go for this, like, comatose kind of just chilling. And then they just turn, eat your bait and rip line. And it's tons of fun. They're a fragile fish. Like, you do have to take care of carp if you... I hate to that because they technically aren't supposed to be here.

but like they were purposely introduced. Got to remember that fish don't stalk themselves. We brought them here for food way back. They've just gone everywhere now. We're not talking about Asian carp. We're talking about, or, know, big head and silver carp, talking about common carp. They've become like a target species for so many people and so many people are very passionate about them. So don't drag them up on the ground, let them bash their head around. Cause you know, they could be 20 pounds. They're going to give themselves a pretty serious concussion and probably end up belly up. I try to land them in the water. I use a net all the time, scoop them up real quick.

keep them wet. know, lot of the European carp anglers put them in like, way slings and like little water filled padded beds, basically, it's like a lot. Right? It's crazy. I'm waiting. So like, if you drop them, you drop them, they're gone. No big deal. They're super slippery and hard to hold on to. And they're very muscular and there's nothing to hold on to. Like you grab their tail and just fold. It's like, there's nothing. One hand between the pectoral fins, one on the tail, hold it up kind of like this type thing. The best you got.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20.361)
than I have.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32.674)
Sick.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40.238)
and get close to the water in case like they flip out and you drop them. They're just going to land in the lake. And also they have, you know, what I like to call a very hookable mouth. Like you don't have to have a crazy hard hook set. Like just get tension and it's probably fucked. Like the fish is going to bolt and it like they're in Euro pikefish or Euro carp fishing. There's a rig called the bolt rig. So like it's a non sliding sinker. The fish sucks. feels pressured and takes off and bolts and that gets hooked. Right. That's just from the weight of the sinker. Same kind of thing in fly. You just like maintain tension. You're on. It's going.

And a lot of time it's quite deep. So you have to have like a long pair of forceps. And I fish barbless. Their mouth is so soft that like with a barb, you can see it stretching as you're trying to pull that fly out. Not that you catch a lot of them. You might catch one or two a day on a good day, but you do want to kind of take care of fish. I hate seeing them bleed for no reason. you know, so barbless flies for sure. They eat them and they want to swallow them right away. They don't suck on them. They don't smack them and spit on them like a pike hitting a jerk bait. It's down the hatch.

Just suck all that up, spit it out.

Exactly, like they're filter feeding through mud, right? And then whatever swims away, they grab. So yeah, have a black dragonfly nymph in your box. Have a black willy bugger, small willy bugger, great option. Have something that looks like a goby, have something that looks like a crayfish, that's probably 90 % of the time. One cool thing is that they will surface feed. They will eat bugs on the surface. So they will also eat cottonwood seeds on the surface. So like when the poplars or everyone's allergies are acting up and those big...

fluff dandelion looking things are coming down from the trees. If those end up in the water and carp know it, they will eat those seeds. So you can throw on like a piece of white wool on a hook and actually catch them on that, which is kind of fun. But the most fun is that September flying ant hatch. If anybody's ever witnessed a flying ant hatch and gone small mouth fishing or they eat those things in insane numbers. And same with carp. They come up and they're like cattle. They just start grazing on the surface going through these like, and if you put on a

Speaker 3 (01:22:30.706)
Maybe not of actual flying yet, but like a grasshopper pattern or something that's on the surface that looks a little bit different, or bigger, you can get their attention. And getting a 25 pound fish on a dry fly on the surface is pretty cool. It makes it even harder, but it's totally doable. God, they're fun. Yeah.

I think the thing with carp fishing is they're accessible to everyone. They're relatively easy to find. Depending on the technique, it can be relatively easy. Like me and Andrew, we're actually going carp fishing tomorrow. We'll check out a can of corn, we'll cast out like we have a rod pod with three rods and we'll just sit there and have a few beers and just relax after work. And it's, it's nice. Like we're not old guys yet, but we feel like it after work sometime. And sometimes what we'll catch, you know, we'll catch one and other times we'll catch 15.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13.74)
It just depends on the day when the fish are in that area. And it's relaxing. And I think more people are getting into it, which is great to see. But I still think they're severely underrated species that a lot of people don't even think about fishing for.

would say though in the fly world when I look at, when I'm seeing like videos coming on YouTube or I'm seeing people talk about it, like it's still gonna be trout is like always number one. That's like a lot of things. And then in freshwater, the second most popular fish in North America is the smallmouth bass on fly. But right up there's carp now. When you watch these videos, there's some great ones out there of guys from Montana, like fishing guides, live fishing guides. What do they do on their days off? They go carp fishing. They don't wanna see another nice brown trout. They're over it. They're like easy to them.

The carp are like frustratingly hard. Like people call them, like I said, golden bones. I've also heard the term prairie permit. And if you know, fly fishing, like those things are ridiculously hard to catch. Like you throw out a ton of them without getting bites. That's, think carp are more similar to in that sense. They're so selective and like you will think one's going to rush your fly and eat it. And then just turns around last second and doesn't. I don't see too many people get as excited about fish as they do when they get their first carp on the fly. Like it's, not easy. It's a good time. It's a really good time.

So to kind of wrap up this episode, speaking of carp, if that's something that interests you again, I've fly fished a little bit for carp mean Andrew a little bit of fly fishing. But if you're someone that maybe, you know, has a little bit of experience doing it or zero, Matt is really good at fly fishing and he guides fly fishing for beginners to you may not like it, but he's gonna do it.

I'm not a guy. The father and son out last summer, we were supposed to do an introduction to fly fishing down the trout river and it got way too hot. Like we're very cautious of river temps when we go trout fishing. So I was like, look, come to this lake. It's full of bluegill. We'll learn to cast in the grass. We'll go panfish fishing. We'll go for a little wade. I'll bring you some waders and we'll catch bluegill. I'm out there with his son and sure enough, this group of three or four carp just slowly start working their way through. And I was like, give me your popper. And I take it off and I put on a carp fly on a four weight. And I'm like,

Speaker 2 (01:25:14.606)
I'm okay with

throw a roll cast there and doesn't the freaking carp come over and eat it. And like we're on a trout rod or panfish rod. And this thing, wasn't a big carp, was, you know, eight, 10 pounds, but it was a nice fish and it rips line. This kid's never caught a fish on the fly in his life. He's probably two bluegill. just. Now he's into like a 10 pound fish and he's like, I'm like, get your hand off the reel. He has no idea what I'm saying. Like fly reels don't let out drag unless your hands off the reel, right? You need to like go over and talk them through that fight, but we got it. It was like your third fish ever was a carp.

No, no.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45.326)
I don't realize how crazy this is. yeah. So beginners, I can take you out. A lot of the casts are short. You know, we can get you dialed in real quick. I can take beginners out on anything. Like even pike fishing the other day, I had a group of guys that have never done the technique double hauling type of fly cast. And we sat on the baseball diamond for an hour, hour and a half and got them casting like 50 feet. And then we went out pike fishing and, you know, ended up catching a dozen pike. was a great day. So beginner friendly in all tactics, spin, fly, whatever.

Matt is a very knowledgeable angler and after fishing with him too, he's super chill to fish with. So if you're looking to book a guided trip, definitely do that. Again, we're going to leave links below to Matt's Instagram, his website, all that kind of stuff. can actually on your website for guiding, you can actually like look through the calendar and see what days you have available. So it's pretty cool.

sweet. Not a of have that. So my booking calendar is live. You can self-serve book up to a year in advance. So you can take a look and see what days work with you instead of having the email exchange where it's like, what days do have available? And it takes four emails to dial in just that you have any days available. You can just do it. Like I woke up this morning and had three days just booked. Like I've never talked to these people. They just book trips. It's pretty nice. You can do it all on your own. You can still reach out and chat though. I just am a little slower to respond this time of year. I do go back to you every evening. I'll give you that.

You're fishing every day.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57.861)
So anyway, this is a great episode. What do think, Andrew? I think it's great. I think you want to say it was. Yeah, you've inspired me. I want to do I want to do more. I definitely want another chance to come up. I'm not feeling like absolutely. Yeah, because I was like I seen Jesse. I'm like, man, I wish I had the energy to try fly casting for Pike right now. I'm like, I'm just going to sit in this chair beside the boat.

Five or six, just sitting on the chair casting a swim bait.

I still held my weight. I think Andrew caught more fish than me.

Cleaning up the back of the vote. It just that secret chum recipe he was using.

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's awesome. And I think this is a great episode to show people. We talked about three species that every single one of them is under underrated every single one people that that like fishing for them. Absolutely. They're like, yeah, they're great. But like Jesse said, we've got Pike's and Nickelback of fish. Everyone says they hate them, but we have the records that show people don't you lie. And, you know, Gar who people may have seen them, but they've never actually targeted them or

Speaker 2 (01:28:07.968)
at least never successfully landed one probably like they're they're a tough fish. It's a completely different way to actually be successful with. And same thing with carp. People think they're a garbage fish. And you just heard us talk about how they're so much fun to catch like go for it. So I think this is fantastic. I'm hoping people will take this and actually go and not just fish for them, but fish with Matt.

Well, that'd be awesome. you know, honestly, most of them are so attainable just in your backyard, like go to any Rivermouth on Lake Ontario, you're going to find all three. Yeah, much. Legit, like they're around. Especially now with that alewife die off, there's like going to be a ton of fat pike sitting down there near the Humbert gorging on dead alewife.

That's my honey hole. Just kidding. So we have a little bit of housekeeping housekeeping. So this is episode 102, which is pretty cool. Isn't that crazy? I never thought we'd get past like 50 maximum 50. And here we are at 102. Pretty cool. I never thought we'd pass our age. Now we've passed our ages combined plus, know, plus my dad.

Amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11.694)
We're going to whet your appetite for some of the episodes coming up. So actually next week we have basically an episode about early season muskie fishing. And by early season, I mean like right when muskie season opens, we're actually going to sit down with a muskie guide who targets muskies mostly in the Kortha lakes area. That's going to be a cool episode. And then after that, we have a very cool episode. We're not going to tell you who it's from, but we actually got a major fishing celebrity who's going to talk about large mouth bass fishing, flipping, frogging, pitching.

in the slop we're not going to tell you it is but largemouth bass and time travel no keep it a secret it's not bob azumi no we get him he's too expensive

Can I guess?

Speaker 3 (01:29:52.43)
I was gonna ask.

But anyway, we'd like to thank all of our Patreon members. Patreon members are the cool people that donate two bucks a month to help us keep the show running. There is a lot of programs and editing expenses that we do have. So we do appreciate everyone that donates to help us pay for it. So we're not paying it out of our own pocket so we can keep on going. We do have monthly giveaways as well. Congratulations to the last three winners. We just gave away we paired up with Daiwa Canada, we gave away a really awesome $300 plus bait casting reel $150 of Lunker Hunt fishing lures.

as well as a bunch of other stuff. So stay tuned for our next giveaway. And we also have at the end of the episode, something that we do every episode and we didn't tell Matt, because I wanted to surprise him. We have the quote of the week. Yep. And to handle that we have Matt Martin. Smooth river guiding.

not this.

Speaker 3 (01:30:43.15)
Don't be a snob, just go fishing.