This is the first episode of the 2012 season and one of our most talked about in recent years, we basically carry on in our quest for “who’s the lucky dude that’s going to be the next host of the Fish’n Canada Show?”.

As Angelo stated, New Blood was on the slate last season and 2 Ontario born Hot Sticks were the participants named John Blanchard and Paul Castellano. Both active fishing guides and both of which Fish’n Canada considers great friends. So who’s it going to be…

“Well, we didn’t think we were heading in the direction that last years final show took but man did it snowball into a big deal,” says Angelo. “I simply fired out the idea to Pete that maybe it was time we considered taking on a new body in the TV hosting department. And with a little coaxing and a mix of the right contenders, he was all in!”

In a nutshell, we put out a survey to the audience as to who was their favourite candidate and after a see-saw battle for the top… the audience really couldn’t decide… it was pretty much a dead heat.

As the show goes on they discuss the fact that the most interesting thing Fish’n Canada decided to do was to offer a ‘comment’ field in the survey. It was interesting to hear people nominate friends, family, or even themselves other than Paul or John. The survey results started coming in as soon as it hit the internet and came all year long. The results were too close to call. It was cool to use the web to collect feedback from the audience, and we’ll definitely be using that again.

Other discussions were would the audience have picked Pete when he started? How have surveys worked in the past? Didn’t audiences hate Mike Miller? What happened to Reno? These were all considered while trying to make a decision.

“Personality is the most important factor of working with the team” says Pete “and both Paul and John have great personalities … contrasting but great”. Which is one of the main reasons why our hosts had such a hard time picking one prospect over the other.

Popping baits are one of the most effective top water lures around and the Pop R is still on the top of the heap. Which ever size of popper you use, tie it to Mono-filament line (fluorocarbon sinks… not good) with braid being a distant second choice.

We say distant because braid is so “stretch free” that an angler that only fishes occasionally will probably pull the hooks away from or out of some of the fish’s mouths. Use a 6’6″+ Medium action rod on either a spinning or bait-casting outfit and give a 2-3 count from the time you see the strike to setting the hook.

GETTIN’ THERE

To get to there the boys took hwy 400 north to hwy 89 west. They then travelled north on 18 to 42 which merges into hwy 26. Finally the went west on 26 then north on 9 line which took them to the Land Force Central Area Training Centre.