Perch vs. Perch

In this episode, Andrew and Jesse answer questions from their listeners in a Q&A format. They also discuss the differences between yellow perch and European perch, including their size and length.

The hosts talk about their favourite fishing apps and websites, express their excitement for the upcoming Cancast fishing show and explain why they haven't caught a 50-inch musky yet.  In this episode, Jesse and Andrew share their stories of the ones that got away, including Jesse's pursuit of a 20-inch brown trout and Andrew's encounter with the Big Kahuna pike. They discuss the importance of safety from CO2 poisoning while ice fishing.

Links:
Navionics: https://webapp.navionics.com/#boating@6&key=gfqjGvdiaN
Go Paddle: https://paddling.com/paddle
Predict Wind: https://www.predictwind.com/apps/predictwind-app
Avenza Maps: https://store.avenza.com/

Transcript

Andrew (00:06.55)
Welcome everyone to episode number 43 of the Average Ontario Anglers Fishing Podcast. And that song brings a smile to my face every time I hear it.

Jesse (00:16.784)
It's the coolest intro we've ever had.

Andrew (00:19.69)
That's 100% accurate, yes. So we have a real fun episode for you today. I know it's Jesse's and I, we really like recording these because it's one of the ways we get to really interact with our followers, with our listeners, our viewers. And it's another Q&A episode, which stands for questions and answers. Mainly, mainly it's both questions and questions. But we do our best, we share our opinion.

Jesse (00:22.166)
Yeah

Andrew (00:49.71)
Most of you probably won't agree with it, but that's okay. To start us off though, before we get into the questions, which we did, we, Jesse did a post on Instagram earlier today on the day of the recording and we got a bunch of questions back, like some really good ones too. Yeah, Jesse says 50 because his like number he throws out, there's probably 12 and we're going to cover all of them.

Jesse (01:05.204)
Yeah, at least 50 of them, yeah.

Jesse (01:14.496)
There's more than 12.

Andrew (01:17.994)
So to start us off though, Jesse has an interesting fishing fact which he promised me is actually interesting.

Jesse (01:26.088)
It is. So if you're new to listening to this podcast or you just started this season, the interesting fishing fact is a cool segment because it's something that me and Andrew find interesting ourselves and hopefully you do too. We have to ask ourselves like some of these facts are things that maybe, you know, you don't know yourself and you've always thought like, oh, I wonder how that works or I wonder about this. That's what the interesting fishing fact is all about. So I hope you find this one interesting because I certainly did. This interesting fishing fact.

is something that I've wondered for years. And for some reason, I was just too lazy to actually do any research, but Andrew will know this, but for everyone else that doesn't, the interesting fishing fact is, what is the difference between the yellow perch and the European perch? You've all seen those posts of guys, like on Instagram or on YouTube in Europe, fishing for European perch, or they usually just call them perch. And some of them,

giant. Like they look exactly like yellow perks that we have here in North America, except they're five, six pounds. What?

Andrew (02:28.822)
I know the answer. I know the answer. It's because they straight arm them in all those photos. They use action figures to hold them up, you know?

Jesse (02:33.928)
Yeah, they're just holding them way out like that.

Jesse (02:40.46)
You see some of those perches though, right Andrew? And they're like, they're the size of large mouth bass. They're huge. And it got me thinking, I'm like, why, if they're the same fish, which spoiler alert, they're not, but if they were the same fish, why don't they get that big here in Ontario? Because in Ontario, we have some of the best world-class yellow perch fishing in the world. So why do they kind of max out around two and a half, three pounds here?

Andrew (02:42.442)
They're, oh, they get me excited. Like, yeah. Yeah.

Jesse (03:07.228)
if you're lucky, like record size, two and a half pounds in Ontario, and why do they get six, seven, eight pounds plus in Europe? The answer, like I said, is because they are similar species, but they're different. They're different species, but they're similar. So I don't know why every time I do an interesting fishing fact, I have to pronounce words that I have no clue how to pronounce because I'm terrible with pronunciation. But the European perch, this is their genus. It is the...

Andrew (03:08.642)
That's... yeah.

Jesse (03:36.78)
Purcha flu v t s. I butchered that 100%. And yellow perch is the perch-a fla- I'm not even gonna try. So now we know, yeah, no they do. Now if you speak Latin or whatever the heck this is, if you speak Latin or whatever the heck this is, I'm sure you're probably like, wow, that guy's an idiot. But I can't pronounce it because they're not English words. But anyway.

Andrew (03:49.938)
It sounds like ancient gods and deities that people would worship. That's any Latin name though.

Jesse (04:04.82)
They do have very similar appearances, right? They look almost exactly the same, except the fact, like we said, the size difference is huge. Now you have to think, like I said, why don't the perch here get bigger? Because say like Lake Simcoe, which has giant perch in it, or like Lake Erie, giant perch. They have such a huge food source. Like there's tons of minnows, they're feeding on gobies now, which have become an invasive species, but they're feeding these fish and they're...

they're becoming the biggest they've ever been, much like the smaller bass, they're getting huge, but they still max out at that two and a half pound range. It's because they're different species and that's just the maximum size that they get despite the food. So they are different species. Now I'm gonna go through some differences between them. So the European perch, it usually weighs between, this is the average weight, one and a half to three pounds. Okay.

Andrew (04:58.856)
Ah, that's the dream.

Jesse (04:59.424)
So I would say in Ontario, the average size bass, like largemouth or smallmouth, is one and a half to three pounds, probably one and a half to two pounds, really, so think of it, yeah, so like in Europe, the average size perch is the size of a decent largemouth in Ontario. Isn't that crazy? That's the average size. Now, it says that there's a maximum weight of around six pounds.

Andrew (05:10.23)
Yeah, two pound bass is usually at the average.

Andrew (05:22.453)
That's nuts.

Jesse (05:28.796)
Now, that's not the record, I'm gonna get into that soon, it's a lot bigger than that.

Andrew (05:32.67)
Isn't that weird? I know I did an interesting fishing crack a while ago of like, oh this Lake sturgeon or whatever it maxes out at however many pounds or four feet long but the record was 15 feet or something stupid like It's like, uh, I guess they do grow bigger

Jesse (05:44.81)
Yeah.

I, yeah. So I guess that's the average biggest that they get, not the crazy, you know, one in a million fish, but the average, uh, North American perch, we're just going to call them yellow perch. The average weight is a 0.4, like less than a half a pound to about one pound. And, and, you know, we were ice fishing this last weekend and generally speaking, when you, you're fishing for perch, most of the perch you're going to catch, unless you happen to be.

Andrew (05:51.927)
Yeah.

Andrew (05:56.078)
Thanks for watching!

Jesse (06:16.56)
on a school of jumbos, most of the perchy cat are, you know, six to eight inches long. That's like an average size. Now you can catch them like 12, 13, 14 inches in some of the better lakes like Erie and Simcoe and stuff like that. But the average perch is pretty small compared to a European perch. Now here's more about the length so you can kind of picture it better if you've never seen pictures of a European perch. But by the way, you should look it up because it's super cool. These things are huge. So the average adult yellow perch has an average length

of six to 10 inches, but they can reach, and you see them caught every year, especially through the ice, 12 to 15 inches. Like a 15 inch perch is, that's a long, that's a fat perch. That's like a two and a half plus pound perch. Yeah. Giant. The average European perch is 10 to 15 inches. So that's a decent size bass right there. Like a 15 inch bass, that's a decent size.

Andrew (06:59.318)
I've seen like a 14 and a half and that, yeah, that was nuts.

Jesse (07:15.612)
So there is differences obviously between that, but it says that the record length European perch can actually be almost 25 inches long.

Andrew (07:24.546)
That's like two feet long. That's nuts.

Jesse (07:25.76)
Huge, yeah, a two foot long perch. Anyway, so I thought that we could talk just very briefly about some of the record size here. So European perch, they obviously vary in size depending on where you catch them in Europe, but they can actually live as long as 22 years. 22 years old, that's how long they can live.

Andrew (07:46.318)
Whoa.

Jesse (07:50.684)
Another cool thing about them is the record, the British record is six pounds, two ounces. Okay, but that's not the record overall. That's just in Britain. So, yeah. So I looked up on the website, fish the biggest perch caught on rod and reel was eight pounds, four ounces. Eight pounds, four ounces.

Andrew (08:03.662)
That's alright, innit?

Jesse (08:19.42)
and it was caught in 2010. And I'll post a picture of this on our social media and stuff, but this is an absolutely gigantic perch. Like if you can see that. When you see those guys in Florida, yeah, you see those guys in Florida holding up an eight pound largemouth and you're like, holy smokes, that's insane. Imagine that as a yellow perch or European perch. Now to differ.

Andrew (08:31.05)
Whoa, whoa. The guy looks like he caught a carp. Ha ha.

Jesse (08:46.86)
Speaking of yellow perch, which is closer to home, I looked up the Ontario record. So I went to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters website, which has all of the Ontario records for the perch. Now, I thought we could just talk briefly about this chart. It says a bunch of like the sizes, like the biggest one. And then there's a bunch underneath that are like the runners up basically. And I found it interesting as to what lakes these were caught in. But anyway, the record in Ontario.

was, and I'm sure I know guys will say, oh, I've caught bigger ones than that. But this is the official recorded weighed in perch, two pounds, 2.52 pounds. So like two and a half pounds, which doesn't sound huge, but that was almost 16 inches long. It was 15.75 inches long. It was over 12 inches wide, like around in girth. And it was caught in Lake St. Francis. So like, you have to think that's almost

Andrew (09:32.171)
Yeah.

Jesse (09:43.452)
a 16 inch long perch and it was like basically two and a half pounds. Like that is a giant perch. And the picture of this thing, it's just, it's a giant. You have to, I'll, I'll post it on our Instagram, but I found it interesting. The, the runners up, they're all like, well over two and a half, like they're almost two and a half pounds, like well over two pounds, and it says the, the bodies of water that they were caught in. I'm going to give you, so for the top one was Lake St. Francis, but for the next five down, I'm going to give you.

Andrew (09:46.091)
Yeah.

Jesse (10:13.168)
a guess as to where some of these fish were caught. Give me a guess.

Andrew (10:17.519)
I'm gonna guess Simcoe. Simcoe's gotta be on that list.

Jesse (10:20.544)
Simcoe is not on any of the top five. Yep. Nope. We're...

Andrew (10:24.042)
No way. I would say St. Clair.

Jesse (10:30.812)
Yep. So Lake St. Clair was number three and then all the other ones were in the top were Lake Erie. And if you live out near Lake Erie, I've heard of how fantastic the walleye and perch fishing can be. So congratulations on living close to somewhere that's that good at fishing. But yeah, I'm not saying that bigger fish have not been caught out of Simcoe. I wouldn't doubt it. How many perch have you have you caught that you didn't weigh at all that look giant a lot and you've released them?

Andrew (10:32.064)
Okay.

Jesse (11:00.288)
sometimes.

Andrew (11:01.326)
I know that you and I, we saw one, we were fishing out of a hut years ago and we were catching like jumbos. We were on line. We were catching 13 inch perch. That was the day that I actually caught my biggest perch of my life was, I think it was 13 and a half inches. And you caught one, I think that was 14 that day. And all of a sudden this perch came in and 100%, it was a perch, you could tell, it was looking straight down on it. You could see the banding, the barring on it.

and it just dwarfed the rest of them. Like that, that was well over two pounds. Minimum, minimum well over two pounds. So that, like I know like Simcoe, I've seen record size in there and I have seen a couple of photos of people post of absolute jumbos come out. Fuck.

Jesse (11:30.652)
It had to have been two and a half pounds, yeah.

Jesse (11:44.144)
And especially I noticed a lot of the anglers now that are fishing, especially on Simcoe, because it has so much pressure, they do release a lot of the giant fish that they catch. But those are the spawners, the big females, the ones that are gonna be the record size. So who knows, maybe some fish closer to three pounds have been caught and released and are still swimming out there in Lake Simcoe. That being said, like we said in a few podcasts ago on our ice fishing one with Drew, Lake Simcoe is not the only lake that has perch in it. There's lots of other lakes with perch.

Andrew (11:54.016)
Mm-hmm.

Jesse (12:14.268)
Lake Erie, Lake Simcoe is one obviously, but there's tons of other lakes. But if you're going for a record, you're probably going to want to focus on one of those. So that was my interesting fishing fact. And if you do have pictures of any huge perch that you say are bigger than the Ontario record, I want to see a picture of it. Send it to us.

Andrew (12:34.454)
Yeah, yep, absolutely. That's fantastic. Oh.

Jesse (12:37.86)
Oh, also, I wanted to add one thing. I wanted to add one thing. I was kind of looking at like techniques, like, oftentimes you'll see like advertisements from fishing, like brands like rapel and stuff. And they're the European advertisements. And it looks like bass lures, you know, they'll be like, Oh, this lure and they're like, great for perch. And it's like a big lure. And you're like, what? Because we think of yellow perch, right? And you'll watch these shows they have like perch turk perch fishing over there is almost like bass fishing over here. They're out in like bass boats. And they're like they have tournaments and they're fishing like

Andrew (12:58.919)
Yeah.

Jesse (13:06.856)
like medium heavy fishing rods fishing big lures. I just think it's funny because they do the same thing for perch that we do for bass. And you know, probably North Americans in general, when we see that we're like, oh, that's stupid. They're perch, but these fish are bigger than bass. So I would love to go European perch fishing because you know how aggressive perch are here? Imagine an aggressive six pound perch. That would be amazing. Oh, anyway.

Andrew (13:21.721)
Yeah.

Andrew (13:30.694)
It's interesting thinking of a species that looks so similar to itself, but is a different species. It reminds me of when I went to the East Coast and I was insistent that I was catching Northern Pike, when in fact it was the chain pickerel.

chain picker all like they max out if they look they look almost identical to a northern pike except they max out maybe at 27 inches and I caught like a I caught a couple of them or just over two feet long which is getting close like trophy size of these you know chain picker all and I'm just thinking nothing of it because I'm like yeah I get this pike it's nothing like this it's 24 inch pike that's nothing.

But I didn't realize I was actually catching some substantial chain picker out there. So it just felt weird to imagine like Europeans, they come over here and they're like, oh, we're going to go perch fishing, you know, and they just catch all these like dinks like what's going on? I was like, no, that's 12 inches is a good one.

Jesse (14:29.828)
Yeah, they're throwing like the two and a half pounders back. Like, where's the big ones? It's like, whoa, whoa.

Andrew (14:35.375)
Yeah, like just thinking of the opposite, their perspective of us and our approach. No, that's, I do like that. That's very good. Uh, I didn't know that. So that's, I appreciate the added knowledge. So I will give you an interesting rating of, I'm going to say

Jesse (14:39.689)
Yeah, for sure.

Andrew (14:55.426)
I can't take that face seriously. I'm gonna say 88 booga boogas out of 100.

Jesse (15:03.06)
I'll take that any day. That's caveman ratings.

Andrew (15:09.243)
So we also have now after we've gotten our introductions kind of out of the way the main segment of the podcast which is our question and answers. So Jesse is going to start firing us both himself and to me some questions from our listeners that we received from on Instagram and we do our best to answer them within 30 seconds or less.

When I say we do our best, I mean, most of the time we fail at that, but we're going to do it again. So let's hear that first one.

Jesse (15:38.089)
So I have my stopwatch on my watch, so I'm going to hit it every time we do it. So what I'll do is I'll pick questions that I'll give to either Andrew or myself, and some of the questions we'll both answer. But we'll start off with a really, really good one. This one is for Andrew. And Mitch says, do you accept fan mail?

Andrew (15:46.126)
Jesse slows it down for his answers though, which is, you know.

Andrew (16:06.542)
Yeah, I do. I don't know how you'd get it to me, but we have our we have our average interior anglers email address. You know, we have that for contact. Best way to contact me though is at AOA underscore Andrew on Instagram. I'll usually get those messages better than all find an email, but no, no creepy fan mail. I'll say that no stalking, nothing.

Jesse (16:28.061)
Yeah. Well.

Yeah, no weird pictures. One of the best things a family we ever got was our intro by Ted Williams. So thanks again, Ted. I just, I love that intro. I know we're gonna say that like every time, but it is definitely, like I said, the best intro we've ever had. We'll see, maybe he'll make another one for next season. It'll be even better, who knows? So anyway, now we'll get into the more serious questions. Southern Ontario angling, one of my favorite local Ontario fishing accounts.

Andrew (16:35.358)
Yeah, no thank you.

Andrew (16:39.774)
Yeah.

Andrew (16:51.522)
That'd be cool. Start working, Ted. Oh.

Jesse (17:01.452)
This guy's an absolute beast. He says, if you could only throw one bait for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Andrew (17:01.995)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew (17:11.522)
for what species? Cause he can't do all species. What? Ned rig. It'll catch anything. And I like fishing it better than, use more techniques can be done with a Ned rig than just a wacky Rick Senko. So I would say, I would say Ned rig. That's my plan this year. I got the big, the mega TRDs and I'm putting a stinger hook on it. So I'm hoping, we'll see.

Jesse (17:12.628)
30 seconds. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, all species.

Ew. I guess.

Jesse (17:27.424)
So I just see Andrew musky fishing with a Ned rig, a big Ned rig.

Jesse (17:36.325)
Megaturd.

Jesse (17:42.216)
I'd say for me, it would have to be a jig. Just like a skirted jig. And I would probably say something like a swim jig per se. Cause a swim jig, you can swim it with a paddle tail on it. But at the same time, you can also like, drop it into a juicy spot, skip it under a dock, something like that. And I feel like, except for some species like steelhead and stuff like that, for most like fish you'd fish for in a lake, like we've caught walleye and swim jigs.

Andrew (17:42.39)
How about you, Jesse?

Jesse (18:11.952)
musky, pike, bass, almost any like warm water, freshwater species. I could see even catching the lake trout on a big white swim jig with a paddle tail on the back. I think a swim jig is just a fantastic lure. It's super versatile. It's hard to go wrong with a jig. It's like one of the original looters of all time, right? So that'd be my answer for that. Here's a good question from Rob's in the shed. I hope he's not in the shed because it's pretty cold outside right now, but.

Andrew (18:29.698)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew (18:36.386)
Hehehehe

Jesse (18:37.524)
He said, do you use snap swivels for ease of lure change, or do they mess up the presentation? That's a great question.

Andrew (18:45.486)
So I use snaps. I've stopped, I've kind of gotten away from snap swivels just because just to put a snap on is a lot less weight and it's less, it will impede the action less than a full swivel there.

But it depending, I'll usually only use a swivel if I'm using some sort of bait that spins. So either a spinner or a spoon during faster shivles will spin. That's pretty much the only time I'll put a swivel on. But oftentimes, yeah, I use like a nice finesse but sturdy snap to change baits frequently.

Jesse (19:19.292)
Yeah, same with me. Like I'm a habitual lure changer. I know sometimes I should just keep on the lure that I'm using because the fish just aren't in the area, but I think they're not biting my lure because it's not the right one. So see all these lures behind me. Like I love lures. I love buying lures, but when it comes down to it, you know, you only need like five lures, five different baits, right? But.

Andrew (19:38.746)
Yeah, well, every time you tie a knot and you snip off the tag end, you're losing about, if you're good at it, an inch and a half, let's say two inches of line. That'll eat up the amount that we change baits. That'll eat away feet off of our tip it that we have, our leader that we have tied on if we're tying every single time all day.

Jesse (19:51.507)
Yeah.

Jesse (19:55.248)
I have to re-spool every day.

Jesse (20:01.744)
Yeah. So I do like, like Andrew said, I do like a snap. Like if I'm on some of my rods where I'm going to change baits, like if I have a like a rod and I'm going frog fishing, like for large mouth and lily pads, it's straight to the braid. I'm not going to ever put a snap on that. Not saying you can't, but not going to. I don't want anything that's going to catch weeds. But if it's on like my crankbait rod or my jerkbait rod, where I might be changing baits, where a tiny little snap isn't going to mess with the action, I can have a snap on there because

Andrew (20:19.894)
Yep, I agree.

Jesse (20:31.024)
I'd rather not be retying, especially with fluorocarbon all the time, because it's annoying to tie knots with. But a little snap is fine. And again, if you're using a spinner or spoon, something like that, have a ball bearing swivel, it's fine. But yeah, if you do use a bigger snap, it can mess with the action. Say like a jerk bait, if it's supposed to be suspending perfectly, I was like, look what I got right here. If that jerk bait is supposed to be suspending perfectly, and you add a snap, even that snap will make that bait sink, which is not what you want.

especially for that suspending bait.

Andrew (21:01.071)
Mm-hmm. Or if you're fishing a heavier floral leader too, like Floral Sinks, and it will start to drop it.

Jesse (21:05.822)
Yep.

Exactly. So if you have to use one, again, I don't like tying knots all the time. Use a good snap. And I know Andrew started using some really high-end Japanese snaps that are like really strong. Yeah, don't buy small cheap ones.

Andrew (21:15.318)
Yeah, worth it. They're rated for like 75 pounds, but they're so small. Like.

Jesse (21:22.088)
Yeah, yeah. So don't cheap out. And my other tip with that is don't use the same snap for days and days and days. Change your snap out regularly because every time you open and close the snap, like I don't know if you've ever had to break a piece of metal, like say like a nail, if you've got it with pliers, it's strong, but once you bend it back and forth a few times, it snaps, right? So every time you open and close that snap, it is wearing out. So after every day you're fishing, make sure you check the snap if it looks like it's a bit fatigued.

cut it off, tie a new one on. You don't wanna have your personal best bass or whatever fish you're fishing for break your snap. Like just about to grab this fish and your snap breaks and it gets off. It's like, ah, I wish I had spent another 60 cents on the snap. That was a good question. I really liked that. Jeff says, tackle room tour.

Andrew (22:00.274)
Yeah.

Andrew (22:04.066)
Hehehehe

Jesse (22:13.037)
I wouldn't mind doing that. We'll have to do a day when we talk about some of these lures and combos and stuff. That would require more cleaning behind this area. So we'll talk about that.

Andrew (22:21.334)
Yeah, see Jesse's taco room is an actual room. My taco room is like a four foot high hovel. That's basically like half attic space. And that's where I store all my stuff. So the tour would be quite dreary.

Jesse (22:38.821)
Here's a good question from composite angling. He said, what is your most used and favorite fishing related app or website? That's another really good question. I'll start off because I had a little time to think of this unless you have one right off the top of your head.

Andrew (22:53.442)
I honestly, I was gonna say Instagram. If you can actually talk to people, I'm not saying use Instagram to try and like, you know, look at backgrounds and find out where you're going. But Instagram is a great platform to be able to post, you know, and find other people who are interested in what you're doing. And if you can reach out to them and grow friendships or whatnot, you can learn a lot from each other, asking questions about stuff they're using and whatnot. So for me, that is a huge resource that I find.

bit more accessible than like going on a forum or something like that.

Jesse (23:27.228)
Yeah, actually that's a good answer. That's not, I was thinking completely like different apps and websites, but like that's a great answer. We've met a lot of people and met a lot of like companies and local makers and stuff on Instagram that we never would have if we didn't have an account. So definitely check like social media in general, right? For me, I'd say Navionics is great. It has gone up in price a lot. Me and Andrew actually just looked the other day because we were going out ice fishing. And I remember it was like 30 bucks for like the app version that you can use out.

Andrew (23:55.469)
Yeah.

Jesse (23:57.2)
It's gone up to 70. What was it? $79 80 bucks plus tax for one year. I like I know it's valuable information, but it's tripled in price in the last like five years. But I'd say it's worth its weight in gold. Yeah.

Andrew (23:59.594)
It's 80 bucks. It's 80 bucks now. Yeah.

Andrew (24:09.194)
Yeah, I am going to get it this year. Yeah. Driving a boat and having avionics, especially on lakes you're not familiar with is, you know, spending 80 bucks, but saving the bottom end of your motor. That's a small price to pay.

Jesse (24:25.544)
Yeah, unless you have a fish finder with it already built in, like you can get the chips and stuff. But if you don't, if you're just an average angler, having Navionics on your phone is great for finding spots when you're fishing in a boat, also hard water, also even shore fishing, because you can find like drop-offs and stuff. So Navionics is great. Another app that I use all the time is it's called Predict Wind. There's a whole bunch of different wind apps basically, and it tells you the direction of the wind.

Andrew (24:49.774)
We use that one all the time.

Jesse (24:51.268)
I use it all the time, especially if you're fishing in small crafts like small, like my canoe, some days, you know, depending on the body water you're fishing, say if you know the wind is coming from the south, you know it's gonna be rough. Like in this particular lake, you're like, if it's 20K winds coming from the south, there's no way I'm going out. If there's 20 winds coming from the north, that's fine. It depends which way the wind's coming. So that app for me is called Predict Wind. I'll link all this in the bio below if you wanna check these apps out.

Andrew (24:54.467)
Mm-hmm.

Jesse (25:20.704)
They're great, because you can actually, it predicts like a few days in the future too. So it can be like, okay, you know, Saturday is gonna be super windy. And maybe you're fishing out of a kayak or canoe and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna reschedule, because it's gonna be sketchy. And generally I find that it's actually usually pretty accurate. And it's been, it saved our butts a few times. And it's a free app. Another.

Andrew (25:37.418)
Yep. It has, absolutely. Another one that I've used actually, as I was going to say, is Avenza maps, which is recommended to me actually by Royce, we had in the podcast last season. Yeah. So Avenza maps, you have to purchase, there's some free maps available on it. Some of them you purchase and it's

Jesse (25:49.94)
Radio Voice Royce.

Andrew (26:00.19)
It's not super user friendly, but you can access a lot of like Crownland and stuff like that, which I know those maps can be difficult to locate, but you can get some pretty accurate, not so much topographical. They have some, not very rare I've found maps that are the geography under the water, but for finding access points and stuff like that, what is accessible, what is private property and whatnot. It's very valuable for that site.

Jesse (26:28.572)
Yeah, we found some good fishing spots with that for sure. Another, the last one we'll say is there's an app called Go Paddling. This actually got recommended to me by, I think it was the guy from the place that I bought my canoe, Freedom Canoe and Kayak in Berry. And he's like, oh, check out this app. It's pretty cool. It's a free app. I like when you open the app, it says, the only way you can get into the app is you have to accept the fact that you always wear a life jacket.

it'll say, I always wear a life jacket. I accept, and then the app will open. So make sure you always wear a life jacket, but it's a pretty cool app. Again, use this with some caution because it's basically users update where they've been able to launch their canoes and kayaks. It's not for boats, it's for canoes and kayaks. And there's tons of them, even in our area, like the GTA.

Andrew (27:01.602)
Hehehehe

Andrew (27:17.166)
So oftentimes the launch is there, you have to launch by hand. You can't drop a trailer in there. Like a lot of these are canoe launches.

Jesse (27:22.428)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the cool thing about this app is if you click on the app, say you wanna fish a certain lake, there'll be all these red dots and it'll be like, oh, there's one launch here, you click on it, and then there's information and pictures so you can see. Some of the pictures you'll see would be like, oh, that doesn't look like I can launch a canoe there. It looks sketchy and other ones look pretty good. And then there'll be like user ratings for the launch. They'll say, oh, there's free parking, there's an outhouse, a lot of information. Some of these I found though,

aren't actually launches and they are on private property. So you really have to be picky, but I have found a lot of really good launches for my canoe on this app. So again, we'll link all the links to these apps that we found helpful down below in the show notes. Right? Ha ha ha.

Andrew (28:01.162)
And that 30 seconds went by really slowly for everyone, but just so you know, Jesse was timing it that was only 30 seconds

Jesse (28:07.98)
It's only 28. So Mitch asks, why haven't you caught a 50 inch musky yet? I'll answer this with a few words, because we don't fish St. Clair. We fish the coerthas and the coerthas don't have that, I know there's 50s in there, there's not a lot. The average fish in the coerthas is like way below 40 inches. We're working on it.

Andrew (28:17.25)
Ha ha!

Andrew (28:27.798)
Yeah, an avid musky angler who goes fishing quite often, they're fortunate if they can pull a 50 out of the corthes. So for a couple average guys, where we don't get to go musky fishing, like maybe what?

Jesse (28:42.164)
few times a year.

Andrew (28:42.746)
six to ten times tops a year. That's not just like, oh for the fall went out six times, no for the year we get out maybe six to ten times. So the chances of us pulling a 50 out of those lakes, it's not high chances. We're trying though.

Jesse (28:49.128)
Yeah. I'd say six to 10. Yeah.

Jesse (28:58.58)
Yeah, and I know like there's people like, oh, they catch 50s all the time in the corthas. No, they don't. I talked to a lot of people that live in the corthas and fish a lot. And oftentimes the biggest fish they'll pull out of there every year and they fish like dozens of times on their lake that they know very well is high 40s. So not using that as an excuse, but generally if you're looking for a trophy, you're probably not fishing the corthas. You're probably gonna be fishing the Ottawa River, the St. Lawrence or Lake St. Clair.

Andrew (29:25.31)
Yeah, which are very hard to get small crafts on safely.

Jesse (29:26.164)
We hope to get out to Lake St. Clair. Yeah, we hope to get out to Lake St. Clair this fall because I know a lot of people, one of the guys that I was talking to on Instagram, he had never caught a musky before and he went with his buddies to St. Clair and on his second day he caught a 51 inch musky. So like it has to do really with location and not, yeah. Yeah. So my advice would be if you can't, you know, get to these lakes.

Andrew (29:46.334)
Some guys have it rough.

Jesse (29:54.644)
Be happy with the lakes you're fishing with even if they don't have giant muskie in them. We're happy where we fish to catch a 40 inch because sometimes most of the fish you catch in some of the areas we fish in are small boats. They're smaller rivers and stuff. And if you catch a 36 inch fish, that's a giant on some of these small rivers.

Andrew (30:10.494)
Yeah. And everyone was happy catching 12 and 13 inch perch until you told them today that they could be catching six to eight pound perch. So it's all perspective.

Jesse (30:19.925)
Yeah. I do hope to catch a 50 inch musky in my lifetime, but you know, that'll probably happen on the Ottawa River for me because I started fishing there last year and I absolutely love it. Yeah. We actually talked to the cast and conquer guy. His name is Andrew too, I think at the ultimate ice fishing show. He's a guide up on the Ottawa River and we were talking to him about musky fishing up there and he's like, yeah, your chances of catching a 50 up there are pretty high. So yeah.

Andrew (30:31.528)
I can't wait for...

Andrew (30:44.266)
Yeah, no, I can't wait to do that too.

Jesse (30:46.976)
All right, here's another question. Jeff Penner, he says, are you ready for Cancast? I'm ready, you ready? Do you have any money? I was gonna say.

Andrew (30:53.966)
I've been saving to be ready. I actually have legitimately been setting money aside and not touching the savings account so I can then go to Cancast and blow it. Ha ha ha.

Jesse (31:04.712)
Yeah, I'm really excited this year for Cancast. This is the third year, the third Cancast. Yep, the first one was really good. No complaints, spent too much money, of course. The second one was way better than the first one, and the first one was good. So I've heard through the grapevine that this year coming up is going to be absolute insanity. Kyle Crothers, who does the Cancast show, him and his crew that set it up and organize it.

they do a fantastic job. I don't know how the heck they do it, but they pull, they pull it out of their butts every year, like something better than last year. It's crazy. So we're excited. We're going to be there. We're actually going to be doing the same thing we did last year. We're going to be walking around and taking some videos and stuff of people. So if you do see us there, make sure you say hi, but yeah, if by ready, I have not enough money yet, but I have a few months to save up. So yeah, I'll be ready.

Andrew (31:53.546)
Yeah, I'll try not to lose my voice this time too.

Andrew (32:01.815)
Hehehe

Jesse (32:03.728)
Okay, here's another pretty good question. This is from Paulie83, our musky fishing buddy. So I'm assuming that this question is musky related. So, hard bait or plastic?

Andrew (32:13.324)
We'll see.

Andrew (32:17.818)
Uh...

Jesse (32:17.9)
Cough cough

Andrew (32:20.454)
I'm going to say I love fishing hard baits for musky. Do I think that they are more productive? No, but I love fishing a hard bait. Like one of my most memorable musky I caught was the last one I caught last year, which is on that pikey chub, which is hanging on the wall over there. And that's an old vintage hard bait. For me, that fish was awesome.

Jesse (32:44.924)
Yeah, that's hard because I was actually thinking when I was thinking of this question, I'm like, I know Andrew's gonna say hard bait. Yeah, like I knew you were gonna say hard bait and I knew that I was gonna say soft bait because all of my biggest musky have been on soft baits and numbers too for me. Of last year, I think I caught the most fish on medusas, like the mini medusa. This is a smaller one, but in like June and July.

Andrew (32:49.662)
And the suix are hard baits and I love fishing suix.

Andrew (33:04.045)
Yeah.

Jesse (33:14.748)
I had days where I caught multiple fish on these. Yeah, which were hard baits. But for me, last year it was Medusa's and tubes. I caught my two biggest fish on a water wolf tube and I caught my last one with this like crazy spinning blade I put on the last hook, but like just big plastic. I don't know, like, does it look more natural?

Andrew (33:15.022)
Yeah. I got most of my musky on top water last year. Yep.

Andrew (33:36.151)
So what what's I think plastics are generally slower presentation and then hard baits. I know you can like again, so hard bait you can fish it very slow. But like what would you classify a spinner then like a bucktail? Like it's not an either.

Jesse (33:55.236)
Yeah, I guess it would still be like hard because it's not like soft. I don't know

Andrew (33:59.698)
Yeah, like for me, like it's not, it's not rigged on a hook. So I would classify as a hard bait. Um, but for the, for the most part, like it's hard baits are going to be cast and free, we're trolling baits, soft plastics. Yeah, you can troll them, but they're, they're more like pull pause or, you know, vertical presentation. So I think it's those really cater well to musky, especially if you know where they're going to be.

Jesse (34:05.172)
Yep.

Andrew (34:25.93)
you're gonna usually have more success on a more targeted approach, like using a soft plastic like that.

Jesse (34:32.508)
Yeah. And for me, like, I just have more confidence with a soft bait because I feel like they look more natural to a fish. Like you see the baits behind me. I got a bunch of water Wolf Shadzilla juniors, seven and a half inch paddle tail swim bait looks literally it's the same size as a perch. I go look at that one. It looks like a perch. It swims like a perch. It. Yeah. So I think like just that confidence that I have when I chuck out a Medusa, something with big twister tails or a big palatial and you reel it in, it just looks like something that's alive.

Andrew (34:50.506)
That's bigger than the perch we caught ice fishing last week.

Jesse (35:01.628)
I know some crankbaits have a pretty realistic wobble, but the plastic baits, they just, I have more confidence. So I'd say for me, definitely soft.

Andrew (35:09.726)
I need to grow my confidence and actually catch a muskie on a soft bait. I've never caught one on a plastic bait. The closest thing I did was to catch it on that big TNT chatterbait. Angry dragon.

Jesse (35:14.612)
I'm gonna force you next year just to fish a medusa all day.

Jesse (35:25.901)
Pardon me. Last week, actually, if you noticed on the podcast, I was like fighting back my cold. I had such a bad cold for the last week and Andrew's like, we got to record. And I was like, okay. So.

Andrew (35:27.106)
Hehehe

Andrew (35:36.755)
Yeah, I think we recorded on what Thursday and posted it on posted it Sunday.

Jesse (35:40.988)
Yeah, and I was sick as a dog, but yeah. Anyway, here's a cool, really cool question from Floyd. He said, we all have the one that got away story that we kick ourselves for, what's yours?

Andrew (35:56.743)
Do you have one in mind, Jesse? Alright, so you say yours first, because I'm debating between two, so I gotta think of which one.

Jesse (35:58.022)
I do, yeah.

Jesse (36:03.637)
So I grew up trout fishing with my dad, stream trout, brown trout. My dad would always take me for browns. A little creek was behind the house that he grew up in that we used to fish. And if you fish stream trout, you always know the magical number for a brown that a giant is 20 inch. The 20 inch brown, that's what everyone wants is a 20 inch brown. And when I was young, I fished a lot with my dad in these particular streams.

And you know, you'd catch 12 inches, 14 inches. You get a 16 inch. That's a nice fish. That's a nice fish, but it's not a 20. Once you get up to the 20, they just start getting fat and big, right? Caught a bunch 18 inches. I never got that 20 though. Now I kept fishing even after I moved out from home and I had never caught that 20 and I kind of stopped trout fishing as much because I started fishing out of canoes and kayaks and stuff. Started doing new things. So I didn't fish as much. So

One time I got a day off work and it rained and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go trout fishing, why not? I haven't done it in a while. So I went down to this spot, I knew a good spot, really deep pool, a bunch of logs in it. And I had a doeram on a hook, plopped it down into the hole, got this tremendous bite. Like it was, I thought it was a steelhead because it was like late May. There's still a few steelhead kicking around. And I grabbed my rod and I was fighting this fish and 100% it was a steelhead. It was big and it comes up.

And no word of a lie, it was like a 22 to 24 inch brown. It was huge, giant, just beautiful, like orange, dark brown, like big red dots, hook jaw, like big male, like perfect trophy specimen for like a creek that's like seven feet wide, right? And I'm fighting this thing on my like light action 6'6 St. Croix rod and six pound line. And this pool is just full logs and sharp rocks and everything. And I'm fighting this thing like as gingerly as I could.

didn't have a net, because I forgot it. I'm kicking myself, like, oh, there's no net, I'm on this bank and it was muddy, and I was like trying not to slide into the water, I'm trying to grab this fish. I finally got him up to the surface, and he was kind of like sliding along the top, the surface with his mouth open. And I was like, I don't even care, I know he has teeth, but I'm just gonna grab my hand in his mouth and just pull him up, right? And he came up to the surface, and as soon as I put my hand out to grab him, he started like struggling, and I...

Jesse (38:22.516)
pinned him down to the bottom of the, like the water. And the thing just started flopping and flopping and flopping and as he flopped, he snapped the line. And I had him pressed down with my hand and I'm sliding into the bank cause the mud was just giving way. And I was pushing him down into the water. And I was like, I literally just trying to get my hand up in his gill or something, just so I could like grab onto him. And he just like kept wiggling and wiggling. And he just shot out from under my hand. And he kind of like sat there in the water, kind of like to look at me being like,

too bad sucker and then it's gone down to the depths of that pool and never saw him again. And I was so mad. Like I generally don't get mad when we're fishing but I was so mad that I had got that close to like destroying my family record of Browns. It was like, it was giant. I was so mad and I went back to that spot three or four times in the next two weeks to try to catch him again and nothing. And still haven't seen that fish again. That thing, no word of a lie. No, it was like a big fish story, but.

He was the size of a steelhead, but it was a brown. It was huge. I still like that day still haunts me. And you know why he broke my line? This really annoyed me too. I had bought this, my wife had bought me the St. Croix premier six, six light action spinning rod. It was a perfect shirt rod. The tip of the St. Croix, like the top eyelet, the ceramic on it had shattered. I don't know why. And it had frayed my line. It was like, my line was like.

Andrew (39:29.57)
Hehehe

Jesse (39:52.04)
like frayed and like it was like starting to come apart and that's where it snapped. It didn't snap near the fish. It snapped up near the rod because as the fish pulled down, the line just sheared against the guide to the ceramic guide. I ended up getting that rod fixed. I had someone put a new guide on it and I was so mad and I just thought it was a fluke, but then I had another same corridor on the same thing happened to them. I don't know if it was just like, this was like 15 years ago. So, or maybe like 12, 15 years ago, whatever.

Andrew (40:13.474)
that year or something.

Andrew (40:17.549)
You haven't been married for 15 years.

Jesse (40:20.192)
How long has it been? I don't think I was married at this time. No, I was like 20 maybe, so like 13 years ago. But yeah, I was so mad. I was like absolutely infuriated. Yeah, that day still haunts me to this day. I wanna go see that fish right now is either completely dead of course, or it's like 30 pounds.

Andrew (40:39.071)
For me, I was trying to debate because I've had some stories where I've had like encounters with big fish, but they're not really the one that got away because I never had hooked up. I would say the biggest one for me is the big kahuna. We talked about it before and are fishing up my cottage now. The biggest pike I've seen come out of this river personally that I mean our family have caught has been like 30, I think 34 inches.

Jesse (40:56.172)
Yaaaaa-

Andrew (41:07.126)
Fair size pike, you know. Yeah. And so we were, Jesse and I made up the legend of the Big Kahuna. And we had finally got upriver, which takes forever in this old boat, the old motor. And we saw, I started fishing this back bay that was normally closed off. And I was fishing the biggest Williams Walbro they had. And I caught, and it was a 12 foot, a 12 inch leader. Because we used to use six inch leaders and we'd get bit off by pike all the time.

Jesse (41:08.48)
From that river, yeah, that's a giant. Yeah.

Andrew (41:37.162)
So I only ever use a 12 inch leader and the biggest Williams wobbler. And I was casting out and all of a sudden I feel the strike, I set the hook and it's like instantly gone. I was like, what? Like I just felt weight and then just line cut. And I look at it, the knot didn't slip, the line's not curly or nothing like that. And you could see it was braided and it just got like clean cut. So we absolutely had to have been a pike.

keep fishing the area and this pike rolls up beside this 12 foot tenner and I kid you not this was over 40 inches and at the time I'm well we were what I was 15 years old something like that like and where we're losing our minds over like the big kahuna actually exists and the fact that he bit me off you were using something too and he bit you off too didn't he

Jesse (42:20.62)
I think I was 15, you were like 13. We were young.

Jesse (42:29.983)
Yeah.

Jesse (42:35.156)
He, okay, as I recall, he bit me off first.

Andrew (42:35.746)
where do you bend the hook out?

Andrew (42:39.766)
Then I tried, yes. He bit through your leader, that's what it was. He bit through your leader. Your leader failed or something. Leader itself snapped. Yeah, then I tied on, because I knew it was like, oh, I'm doing a big pike. So I put on my wobbler and then yeah, yeah. So then he bit, he swallowed that spoon in a 12 inch leader and then cut the line.

Jesse (42:40.956)
Yeah, and then Andrews threw back. Yeah.

Jesse (42:52.872)
Yeah, yeah. Cause I remember.

Jesse (42:59.836)
Yep. Now, and the fish was generally like, if I'm looking back now, that fish was probably like 42 to 44 inches long, which, you know, like, that's still a giant fish. It's not like a giant giant, but that's a giant fish for that river. Like if you had a 44 inch musky in your hands, that's a giant fish. Like it's not a 50 inch, but it's still a big fish. But this was a pike.

Andrew (43:02.519)
Oh

Andrew (43:16.044)
Yeah.

Andrew (43:24.09)
Well, my biggest pipe to date still is 36 inches. I would love to, I wanna get a 40 under my belt. And if I could, having seen one, knowing that one bit my bait off when I was like a teenager, a young teenager, like, oh, yeah, probably. Cause young guy. See ya.

Jesse (43:39.356)
Yeah, he's probably still up there. Yeah. You should have been using steel cable. I mean, seriously. All right, here's a good question here from J Matthew. He says, safety from CO2 poisoning while ice fishing. That's actually an interesting question because Andrew, we went out the other day and he was all ready for that.

Andrew (43:48.246)
Hahaha

Andrew (44:03.162)
Yeah, so I actually have a carbon monoxide detector that just takes AAA batteries and I store it with batteries so they don't... excuse me, I got a sneeze. If maybe... nope, it's gone. So it just uses AAA batteries and it's a portable monoxide detector.

So we had that set up as soon as we got the heater on. I fired that thing up and had it sitting just in the pocket beside the tent and the inside of the tent. So we were safe. We do our planning to do an overnight trip. And so to have something like that, you can get them for 20, 30 bucks on Amazon.

and that can save your life. If the safety is on the under heater that you're using, if it has them, if they fail, that will wake you up if you're in danger. So that was never a question. I made sure we had that before we even went on the ice. I'm like, we're bringing this with us.

Jesse (45:00.432)
Yeah. Another thing I saw recently is they said, if you're ice fishing in an enclosed shelter and you have the heater on and you try to light a lighter, but the flame won't stay on, it means there's no oxygen because there's buddy heaters. Like they may not produce a lot of like CO2 or carbon monoxide, but they, they just, they completely take the oxygen out of the air. So if you start feeling slightly lightheaded, open a flop just for a second, let some air in, right? It happens, right? But definitely having one of those detectors.

Andrew (45:26.39)
Yeah.

Jesse (45:30.24)
can be a big deal, because you wouldn't want to just be like, oh, I feel sleepy and just never wake up again, right? It happens. Unfortunately, it happens.

Andrew (45:36.542)
The one I have too, it actually has a small digital display, so it'll show the air quality. So even if it's not in the danger level yet, you can look at it and see as to how bad it is getting.

Jesse (45:46.812)
Yeah, and I can just trick Andrew by being like, oh man, the air quality's bad, get out. Just get out. Put him outside, zip it up, catch all the fish myself. That's a tip. Here's a good question from the morning voice. How important is it to clean a fishing rod? You ever heard of that?

Andrew (45:51.01)
Jesse just breathing heavy onto it. Oh. Yeah.

Andrew (45:58.463)
Yeah.

Jesse (46:06.956)
There's one thing that I'll say when it comes to clea-

Andrew (46:07.045)
I have, so I would say.

Jesse (46:13.716)
Go ahead.

Andrew (46:15.326)
I was going to say that with cork, a cork handle and fishing rod, it can degrade like tremendously if it's covered in fish slime, like I was saying, pike slime and stuff I know I've had experience with, or you know, blood, even like scales and stuff like that. And you pick it up the next year after it's been in storage all winter and it's not been cleaned, or even the next, you know, next month on your next trip and...

the cork can start to crumble and degrade because it's made in like layers oftentimes or pieced together so there's seams in it and over time yeah they're going to dry out they're going to age but if you can regularly clean it maintain your rod then your grip will last longer too.

Jesse (46:58.012)
I know you can get the cork sealer. I've never used it myself. I honestly like this may sound kind of weird, but I like having a rod that has a weathered cork handle. Just for me, it just seems like, you know, this rods put in the time, it's all beat up and I love that. But you can get a cork sealer. I forget exactly what it's called, but if you look it up for a fishing rod, cork sealer, basically waterproofs the cork and keeps it, keeps stuff from absorbing into it, makes it look. Some people like the rods and stuff to look nice.

And that's, you know, that's your prerogative. Put this stuff on, you let it dry, and it really does preserve the life of the cork. It looks really good. My cork, on the other hand, looks like trash, but I like that, so that's okay. Another thing I'd say, if you have a two-piece rod, make sure that where the ferals connect together, there's no grit. Sometimes we go like carp fishing or sand fishing down at the river mouth, and there's a lot of sand everywhere, and you'd be putting your rod together. You just hear like,

Andrew (47:39.97)
See you.

Go ahead.

Andrew (47:49.134)
Mm-hmm.

Jesse (47:57.916)
you feel the grit between the ferals and you're just like, oh, and you look and there's like scratches on your rod. So definitely make sure that those areas are clean and blow out the hole in that before you connect them together so that you don't damage the rod. Cause that's actually gonna damage how the rod fits together. You don't wanna be casting and eventually just have your rod just shoot off into the water. You have to reel it back in.

Andrew (48:18.51)
Yeah. And the other thing I'd say is with weeds, if there's weeds, if for some reason, let's say you're picking weeds off a bait and you threw it on top of your rods in the boat or something.

or you were for some reason poking at a bunch of weeds in the ground. If they start to dry out on that rod tip, when you go to break them off later, cause they'll dry and crumbly, you know, you could be maybe bending a guide or something like that, just trying to clean these old crusty hardened weeds. So, I mean, that's a pretty much a no brainer. You have literal garbage on your rod, take it off.

Jesse (48:50.732)
Yeah. Here's a good question from Aiden. He says, what would you rather do? Go a full day of catching small fish nonstop or not catch anything all day, but catch your personal best. I'd rather I honestly because we muskie fish a lot. I fish all day, not catch anything all the time. I'm used to it now. I'm more than fine doing that. I'd rather

Andrew (49:09.474)
Yeah

Andrew (49:14.105)
For once, give me the other option.

Jesse (49:18.412)
I'm totally chill. Like I grew up steelhead fishing where you'd fish like early, like winter steelhead sometimes, or like late in the year, when you'd be lucky to catch, you'd be lucky to get one bite a day. Like that, that's the deal sometimes. And like when the water is really low and the conditions are crap. It's like, I'm used to that, but there are some days that I just love fishing. Like I have a nephew, we go fishing for sunfish. We'll go out there and just, I'll fish for sunfish all legit day. We'll catch sunfish and rock bass and perch all day. And it's fun.

Andrew (49:18.944)
Yeah.

Jesse (49:47.808)
but I'm totally down. Me and Andrew go down there and chuck huge musky baits all day in the fall, just to see one, not even to hook one. So if I have to do that all day and catch a giant musky, 50 inch, that's fine.

Andrew (50:00.978)
If you were talking about, let's say like bass fishing, you had to define small. Like if you say, you're gonna catch two pounders all day long. Like, you know what? I like having those days. I don't know if I had to decide every time I went out fishing, it was either break my record or I could only ever catch a bunch of two pounders. That would be a tough decision. But you know, those days are fun when you catch a bunch of two pounders. If you're saying you only catch small fish isn't like less than a pound or catching a quarter pound bass.

Yeah, I'll take the PB every time. Every day you go out, you break your record.

Jesse (50:34.068)
Here is a great question from Hayden. He said, what's your favorite winter pike lure? For me, it's gotta be a, yeah, a hot dog. You see that like viral trend when people just put a hot dog down the hole? That really just shows generally how stupid pike are. You see a hot dog, they're like.

Andrew (50:41.463)
A hot dog on a stick.

Andrew (50:46.781)
Yeah

Andrew (50:50.854)
Well, they're, well, they feed off dead, a lot of dead minnows and stuff like that. So they're, they're optimistic feeders. Yes, they're incredible hunters, but at the same time as something dead floats in front of them, they're going to eat it.

Jesse (51:03.432)
Hey, humans are pretty intelligent, but we'll eat a Costco hot dog, so.

Andrew (51:08.768)
I see a hot dog on those rollers in the gas station and I get thirsty. I get hungry, you know? It's like, mmm, there's a grease dripping off that looks good.

Jesse (51:12.576)
You get thirsty? Ew.

Jesse (51:17.692)
I'd say for me of all the pike that I've caught through the ice, a lot of them I've caught while I'm perch fishing with like small jigging spoons. They seem to like spoons, but I'd say my biggest pike I caught through the ice was on the Freedom Tackle Minnow Spoon, which is a cool spoon because it's where you attach the hook or the line is actually through the middle of the spoon. It's not on the tip. It has a really cool flutter down. When you pull it up, it kind of goes up and then it flutters down. Pike loves spoons all year long.

So I'd have to say if I can only have one lure for ice fishing for pike, it'd probably be a spoon. So simple.

Andrew (51:53.006)
Having not caught a pike through the ice, I would probably say mine would be like a Williams Whitefish or something like that. Just a big ol' spin.

Jesse (52:01.324)
We're gonna change that this year. Here's a good question, because we kind of got into this a little bit earlier, Andrew kind of said, but, this guy, Muscles, we'll just call him, or her, I don't know. Have you ever slept on the ice?

Andrew (52:17.826)
Not yet. I know you went on a trip a few years ago up to Nipissing and you were able to do a little camper hut, but that's the reason why Jess and I did get the one. I think we mentioned it in the previous episodes as well, but we're excited to do an overnight trip with our own gear now.

Jesse (52:36.252)
Yeah. So like I slept over in a sleeper hut on Nipissing, which isn't really the same as like sleeping, like tent camping on the ice. Yeah. So we actually got, as Andrew said, we got a clam thermal. It's an eight by eight foot. So it's not huge, but it's big enough for two cots and fishing space in the middle. So we actually have a planned Lake trout trip we're going to do in February. So we're excited for that. We're just right now we're having to get a propane tank so we can run our heater.

more than a few hours at a time using the one pound tanks. We're actually gonna get a bigger tank and the hose and the filter attachments so that we can stay warm. Because if you're out there for a day, you can get cold, you'll be okay. But if you're out there for multiple days and overnight, you need heat, like a lot of it. So we're excited for that. Here's another question. This one is from Wham Bates, who is a gold member. If you don't know Wham Bates, he's been supporting our show since the beginning. He's a super nice guy, makes super good baits.

Andrew (53:05.426)
Yeah. Heh heh heh.

Jesse (53:33.908)
He says, when are you going to have the delightful Wes from Wham Bates on as a guest on the podcast? It's not happening, we don't like this guy, we've been faking it the whole time. Just kidding, we'll have him on soon. I was actually thinking Wes would be a great person to have on as just someone that comes along onto the show and he just like has to prepare the interesting fishing fact himself so we get a week off and then we can rate him. I think that'd be great. So, yeah.

Andrew (53:39.427)
Yeah.

Andrew (53:50.615)
Yeah.

Andrew (53:56.108)
Hahaha

That'd be good.

Jesse (54:00.82)
Here's a good question. He says, what? This is also Wambates. This is his actual question. That was a gag question before. What new technique are you going to try or use more in 2024? That's a good question.

Andrew (54:13.291)
Uh, so I am going to try.

I really want to try the underwater, not so much jerk baits, but basically like twitch baits. So essentially I want to do more of walking the dog underwater, slower presentation. I know they had like, Thrapple had that one bait a while ago, which is basically a subsurface walk the dog style bait. And I have a, yeah, and I have like a small mega bass bait from BFS.

Jesse (54:37.512)
Yeah, it's like the Twitch and rap.

Andrew (54:44.61)
that I used a couple years ago and that thing is wicked. Like it's, it was getting hits left and right. So I want to try some more like that with, and also, swim, glide baits. I'm gonna get another glide bait or two and do some big baits and actually focus. I know we said it before, but I want to do a couple trips where we just focus on big baits.

Jesse (55:09.608)
Yeah, you usually always say that, but when you go on a trip, it's always like, it's hard to commit to just throwing big baits. So I think we're gonna have to do that when we go on a camping trip and we have a lot of time to fish, to take like an afternoon and just bring like a bunch of big baits and just fish for big baits for bass. So it's pretty fun. Here's a good question from iCatchDinks who is an amazing guy. Unfortunately, he only catches dinks. I literally looked at his Instagram account, not a big fish to be seen, just kidding. He's got a few good ones. Anyway, he said, what's the wackiest lure?

Andrew (55:32.054)
Hehehehehehe

Jesse (55:37.204)
you guys have ever come across. And this is definitely a question for Andrew. Because he is the weirdest looters.

Andrew (55:43.618)
So wackiest, that's tough. Wackiest one I've caught fish on, that's not bad. But I have to say that the wackiest one I've actually personally caught fish on was either the Lunker Hunt Spider or the Dragonfly Lure. Those are pretty odd looking baits.

Jesse (55:48.796)
I'd say like a wacky worm is pretty wacky.

Jesse (56:01.535)
Yep.

Jesse (56:06.144)
What about the Savage Gear Snake?

Andrew (56:08.642)
Oh, the snake actually, yeah. So the saboteur snake, that thing, that produced some big bass actually. But I have seen, sorry, I just wanna say, I have seen, I actually have one now, I think, is a little mermaid. It's an old, like, kind of like novelty lure, but it's like a mermaid. And there's like, there's some crazy old vintage stuff. There's one bait, it's very hard to find. I've never seen them personally, but.

Jesse (56:10.622)
Yeah.

Jesse (56:14.496)
So Andrew.

Jesse (56:22.961)
Oh yeah.

Andrew (56:35.334)
essentially it's picture like a crankbait, like I think it's like almost like a lipless crankbait with a hole in the middle of it that you put these little like cartridges in and you shove it into the center and it's like bubbling action and it's somewhere to chemical reaction and it will bubble under the water for like 20 minutes. And as you cast out just leave this trail of bubbles like that cannot be like good for the environment.

They even had some where they actually had uranium, like glowing uranium, like paint and stuff like that in the bait in glass vials so that it would like emanate and show. Sorry, not uranium, mercury. It was mercury. They had vials with mercury. They did have uranium paint though. They did have uranium paint though. They had those on lures, but yeah, they had a mercury vial inside the lure. It's like, it's like, uh...

Jesse (57:12.02)
The good old days. I was gonna say uranium. Where'd you get those from, Russia? Ha ha.

Oh, that's crazy.

Jesse (57:26.056)
Yeah. It's like, do not ingest. Yeah.

Andrew (57:29.673)
In the state of California, it's been known to cause cancer.

Jesse (57:32.612)
Yeah. So here's a little backstory. Whenever we go to a fishing store or tackle store, which happens all the time, unfortunately, I'm I've, I've gotten kind of away from it, but at a time a few years ago, I was just like, super bougie. I'd be like buying like, you know, I do a lot of research and be like, Oh, I'm going to buy this mega bass. I'm going to buy this jackal. And I would buy like some pretty high in baits. And this is before Andrew would ever spend more than $10 on a

Now I've kind of converted him. He will spend the odd like high-end Japanese bait, but Andrew would be the guy ruffling through the clearance bin, but not just for the good stuff. Like I'll go through the clearance bin. I'll buy good stuff from there all the time. Like I used to work at sale. The clearance bin sometime has gold in it, but Andrew will be looking not for good deals, but for the stupidest lewers you'll ever see. And when he finds those, he proceeds to show me them. And then I go, haha, that's stupid. And then he goes, I'm buying it. And then...

Andrew (58:03.021)
Yeah.

Andrew (58:27.234)
Yeah

Jesse (58:28.456)
He proceeds to use it and catch the biggest fish of the trip on it every time. So the perfect example is that Savage Gear snake. Gimmicky as heck. Will it work? I'm sure it'll catch fish. Bass eat snakes, we know that. He takes it up to Ogonquin Park. He's fishing this snake and we're fishing a smallmouth lake. Like this lake is known for smallmouth. And I'm like, what are you doing? You're chucking a snake. It's like literally 10 inches long. It's slithering across the surface and he's fishing it. Oh, it looks great.

Andrew (58:32.613)
Yeah

Andrew (58:37.164)
Yep.

Andrew (58:54.514)
It looks so cool.

Jesse (58:57.184)
but he's fishing it all day long. And I'm like, just give up, man. Like it's not gonna work. He chucks it beside a log, boom! This like four pound largemouth blows up on it.

Andrew (59:03.718)
This whole bay is like, the bay was only two feet deep. Like it's one of those super shallow bays, just super warm. And Jesse, you don't really look at this bay, you're like, that's too shallow. Like you can see everything. I'm like, nah, like they'll hide underneath logs. And I cast right beside this old stump. And yeah, sure enough, got like this big large.

Jesse (59:16.008)
Yeah, it was shallow.

Jesse (59:24.944)
I will say though, actually that wasn't the biggest fish of the trip, but it was the second biggest. Yeah. But anyway, he is. Yes. Yeah. For some reason that lake we our biggest fish are always largemouth, but there's some big small one there too. Here's a good question. John says, what type of line do you prefer for ice fishing and why braid monofluor, etc. So knowing that this question was happening, I actually grabbed my ice fishing rods because I'm in my tackle room.

Andrew (59:27.51)
No, you did catch the biggest, yeah. Which also was a largemouth on a smallmouth lake.

Jesse (59:54.356)
So I prefer two things, straight fluoro or braid to fluoro. And the reason that I like fluoro, I'm sure you can get it with mono, but fluoro is as clear as you can get of a fishing line. And when we fish, you know, a lot of the lakes, gin clear, especially in the winter, like crystal clear. You can look down the hole in 20 feet, see fish swimming around. So I'm gonna use any advantage I can. We use mono for years and still caught fish, but fluoro, if you can afford it. So on my combo,

that is straight fluor, this is the only combo I use straight fluor on myself. I've got an inline, I guess they just call these an inline ice reel. It's kind of like a mini center pin reel. And the reason I like using straight fluor on is because they don't really hold that much line. Generally we're fishing less than 30 feet of water with this particular combo. This is just like a little perch combo. It's a light action. And I've got a little tungsten jig on that and actually have a little limestone lures, like

Maggit or what is it called the megamite or whatever But I do like straight floral because this reel doesn't hold a lot of line anyway I can put literally 50 feet of line on and i'm good

Andrew (01:00:55.822)
I don't know.

Andrew (01:01:05.242)
I do prefer, because I use a lot of spinning wheels still on my ice combos, and so I prefer getting an ice braid.

Jesse (01:01:06.165)
Cough cough.

Andrew (01:01:13.558)
because I find I get a lot less line twist on braid. It has a lot less, or like line memory. Like the twist is the same amount, but the line memory is a lot less with braid than it is with monofanel or even fluorocarbon. But I'll still put on, you know, even a six foot floral leader on, tied onto that braid anyways. But I prefer on spinning wheels, I like to use the braid.

Jesse (01:01:38.92)
And the reason like that other combo with the inline reel, the way the line comes off, it doesn't get as coily because on a spinning reel, the line comes off in coils. On an inline reel, it comes off straight. So using straight fluorocarbon, especially like in that real life, three pound. So it's like thin as hair. So you don't get a lot of tangles on it. So that's why I like that. But my main combo, if I can only have one combo for like perch fishing, this is a Fenwick Tecna 28 inch medium light.

I like it a little stiffer because this is the rod that I use a lot of my like slightly bigger jigspoons on and I feel myself that a slightly stiffer rod helps you get a better hook set on these fish. And this combo I like to fill with six or eight pound ice braid and then I attach like a six foot fluorocarbon leader of like four or five pound mono. This particular one I have a slab grabber. I have a donkey rig so it's slab grabber and then

about 12 inches of line, I have a high hook, and this is a limestone lures drip tease. This is like a perfect little bait. So as you jig this spoon, you can attract the fish. And if they're not interested in that, they'll swim up and grab this bait. That's a technique that works very, very good. It's amazing. And that one, I like to use braid because it helps you get a better hook set with a slightly bigger hook. When you're using a tiny tungsten like that, even on three pound fluorocarbon, you can get a good hook set, no problem. Because it's, you know, the hook's so tiny. Like I almost hooked myself three times the other day when we went fishing.

Andrew (01:03:03.734)
Yeah.

Jesse (01:03:06.696)
like drop my rod, grabbed it, and the hook's like right in your finger, like, ah! But there's one more question, and we're gonna need your guys' help with this if you're listening. So I had a few people ask me about the AOA tournament this year. Now, it's not really a tournament. It's more like a meetup, and there's gonna be a slight fishing contest, but there's not gonna be like, you know, first prize winner, maybe, I don't know. But we need your guys' help. We've had a lot of interest in this, and this...

we've been kind of looking into it. It is gonna require a lot of work. So we need to find some place in the Quarthal Lake area that can hold about 50 to 60 people with parking, with a boat launch and with an area where we can have a barbecue. So if you have any suggestions for a place or if you know someone that maybe owns a property or something like that, let us know because we're looking kind of at a few options right now, but you never know. Maybe someone will have an area that is

know suitable for what we're looking for about 50 or 60 people. Also we've had a few people volunteer to volunteer for the event so that's great if you would be interested in volunteering let us know just so we can have an idea of what we're working with. We're looking to have about 25 to 30 participants or boats so it could be more if there's two people in a canoe for instance or a boat so definitely let us know if you're interested.

Andrew (01:04:29.758)
And this as well is like a non-profit event that we're planning as well. So it's not like we're, I don't know, other tournaments, whatnot, there's revenue that comes from it for here. It's completely non-profit. This is to have a good day fishing. You get to meet a bunch of people and also be able to support some of the sponsors and stuff for the events that we're going to have.

Jesse (01:04:53.66)
Yeah. And it will be a charity event though. So like there will be a charity donation that you'll have to make to be able to come to the event, but we'll give you guys more details. But again, if you have any ideas of where we could go, I've had a few people giving me suggestions and they were pretty good except something about them wouldn't work. So we're, we're now opening it up to all you listeners. If you know a place within, you know, the core of the lake area, that's a lake that's not overly busy. Like we don't want to have a kayak, you know, small tinner, you know, meet up on the lake that has jet skis whipping around, but let us know.

Anyway, I would like to mention at this time, and I know Andrew's gonna get into the Patreon part, but we have gotten a lot of reviews in the last few days since the last week. That's fantastic. We've actually, like I follow the podcast ratings. I always said to Andrew, I'm like, oh, we're rating here. And it changes. Like we post our podcasts on Monday or Sunday, usually like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we're ratings. We're like, you know, in the top 20 of like all of Canada for wilderness. So like.

You know, you got fish and Canada guys up there and like, we're like, they're like, you know, five or six and we're like at 12. I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then you'll check on Saturday and we're like at 98th. So like, it obviously goes up and down, but consistently we're, we're on a good week after we post the podcast, we're ranking pretty high and that is thanks to you guys downloading the episodes. Make sure that if you're on Spotify or Apple, have it auto download so that it's ready to go that counts as a download for us.

even if you don't listen to it, but you should listen to it. But also make sure you give us a review because that helps our ratings too. So Andrew's gonna give you the housekeeping.

Andrew (01:06:19.351)
Hehehehe

Andrew (01:06:26.666)
Yeah, so a huge thanks, as I said, to all our listeners, all of our subscribers, all of you who have already done so, of leaving a review. If you want to be extra cool, you can go on another streaming service and leave a review there. If you listen on Spotify, go to iTunes podcasts and leave a review and rating there. That's a huge help.

Thank you everyone who continues to listen on and gives us amazing feedback. Huge thanks to our Patreon subscribers, our Patreon patrons I should say, and they, you guys and girls are able to cover our expenses to do this every month or help push towards that so.

That's a huge load off for us and it increases our joy and desire to keep going because we do enjoy doing this and unfortunately if nothing comes out of it then it's tough but we've been getting an amazing response. So thank you for everyone who's already done so. And if you would like to subscribe on Patreon we do have the link posted below. All of our giveaways this year are going to be for our Patreon only members. And we...

We have a lot of giveaways this year. I will say that. So you're going to have lots of chances to be automatically entered to win as long as you are a Patreon member.

Jesse (01:07:42.444)
Yeah, and just.

Jesse (01:07:49.428)
Yeah, and just to add something about the giveaways, for January, only one giveaway for January, but in the months, it takes a lot of planning to do all the giveaways. And I admit, I dropped the ball in January, it was hard to get some, like right after Christmas, it was hard to get some giveaways going. But starting in February, we're gonna have two giveaways every single month, possibly more depending on what's going on, but guaranteed two giveaways a month, and I've got some really cool ones lined up. Like I know you guys are gonna be pretty excited about them.

Andrew (01:08:00.211)
Yeah.

Jesse (01:08:18.58)
The only thing like I say is I'm annoyed at the giveaways because I don't get to win them. Maybe I can make a fake account and then enter. Oh yeah. Imagine that if I said a giveaway and then you look the next week and it's just hanging on my shelf behind me. I'm just like, oh, hi guys. Anyway. Anyway, thanks everyone. We've had a great year so far. We're about what? Four episodes in, three, four episodes in, and we're really looking forward to the next, what, 36 episodes. So thanks again, everyone.

Andrew (01:08:25.747)
I'm

Andrew (01:08:32.381)
It's like, well, I'm a Patreon member, so there it is.

Andrew (01:08:47.252)
It's going to be blessed. And before we finish off, we need from Jesse the quote of the week.

Jesse (01:08:54.168)
The quote of the week the quote of the week is I wish I could fish for European perch It didn't rhyme

Andrew (01:09:04.274)
Excellent.