Great Ontario Give-Away Get-Away July Winners

[Music]

in canada [Music]

well hello everybody mr bowman hello mr viola how are you here young man i think i'm okay

i uh i i was about to say look at you with that nice little hairdo okay i'm sporting a new quad thank you

as my as i told you if i had the other day my buddy ryan at the labor at one of my jobs you say nice

haircut where'd you get that a taster's choice

he was a lunatic that guy uh hi everybody thanks for joining us nice

to see you uh you all back it feels so good to get a haircut doesn't it doesn't it feel like 12.

yeah like it was it was like forever well the back of the old neck getting a little bit of fur on there looking like

a raccoon or whatever hey not good not good

uh so welcome to uh the program and welcome to uh month four of the great ontario

giveaway getaway good entire gogg dog just say the gog gaga gogg how's

that that's it that's it right we've got a ton of things uh before before we um we get into the meat and

potatoes which is why i'm sure most of you are here today uh let's talk about uh some of the stuff

that's taking place around here pete well we could go to our uh we've had a pretty busy

month since we last talked on the website that's for sure yeah uh yeah let's go through some of

that stuff i think wow we got a ton of stuff that came up but so we picked out some of the uh some of the

articles or pieces that we thought were pretty interesting um starting moving right to the the uh

earlier in the month or halfway through the month sharks in the in the st lawrence river we've got a writer dean taylor

uh who's uh he's a great little writer i'll tell you what and a very keen angler but he brought this article about

other sharks in the st lawrence river and i think it's a very interesting piece because let's be honest here i mean there's

access from the ocean out to st lawrence all the way and sharks especially

a bull shark can store salt water in its system and go into

fresh water so it's a good little piece to read it's kind of interesting are there you know what i mean actually i've been watching uh as i'm

sure a lot of you have uh this whole shark month that's going on right now onto the discovery

uh channel and network um some fascinating things about shark that i didn't know i mean pete just mentioned the the bull shark that

can can uh do whatever it does it it can live in fresh water for the simple reason that

um it can't by the way it can't live there forever but it can sustain uh fresh water for

long periods of time because it's uh biology it's able to to to deal with um just like some fish

are able to deal with salt water on a part-time basis the bull can deal with fresh water

on a part-time basis but in keeping with that as i'm watching that and i know this article that pete's

referring to um that i read from from dean i'm thinking i wonder how many people

in the province of quebec and most of the maritimes in that particular

stretch of the the mouth of the saint parts realize that that not only are there sharks there but there are a

lot of sharks there it's not just

you might not even hear about it you know what i mean because out here we might just say yeah whatever but it's it's a reality you know what and

and like anything the evolution that takes place you know

there could be a day when there's sharks swimming around in lake ontario that's somehow they've adapted to fresh water and you never know right

maybe i mean you never know with the there have been reports of that i mean they weren't proven and

there have been reports of two that i in particular that i remember reading um of of sharks in lake ontario

obviously nothing that was concrete enough to uh to approve without a shadow of

doubt but there have been you know sightings supposed sightings so it's not out of the question

yeah it's not out of the question that'd be so cool i'd love to be the first guy to catch that

like on well maybe not the first game but i'd love to be able to document by the way um i don't know whether

you're following whether you're watching the shark week stuff or not but a little bit here in there little bits every night i've got a bit of it on

that i watched an interesting uh program was on um two nights ago i think was two or three

nights ago um about the the uh orcas now in

in both south africa and in australia both places that pete and i

by the way have done uh cage uh dives for great whites

but in both of those areas now orphans have shown up that have never been there

before and their main prey is great whites it's not the great

whites it's the liver the river of the great whites

that is that is the most amazing they're seeing dead great whites with this hole where the liver areas these great these

orcas know where the liver is and they know it's a delicacy and they're kicking the snot out of these great whites

and it's unreal that's how they how they team up and they work together as a pod to take

down these sharks and then when they take one down when that little bit of scent of that liver is out there all the great whites

leave gone like they're gone for miles upon miles per mile so pretty crazy nature is so

friggin awesome i love it like i mean it's sad to say something but you know what i mean we thought that great was the big boy of

the whole of the game no he isn't the aquatic world is just fascinating that's why we yeah

that's right and speaking of which another article uh that ange and i put a lot of time into this one

structure versus cover our top 10 types of structure and cover and in that piece you should really go

in there people to check this out because um we've brought some old slides that anne's had from a long time ago and reno

had for years ago just showing the basics of how fish react to different things

and then we based it on that and of course all our fishing experience and all that and you it's it's very hard to if you said

hey angel pete give us seven forms of structure literally structure it'd be hard for us to come up with that because there's a

very set uh definition for structure and uh the article says a lot about what's in

there but i think you'd be surprised at some of the stuff in there some very cool graphics and you know what we look

for what we consider structure and cover the differences and you know what these fish i mean i'm

telling you what fish use structure and cover like we use this building for instance this is our cover for our daily work

place you know what i mean we eat at a certain place and all that fish do the same thing in a sense so this article really gives a good lowdown

as to what we base our structure and cover on and how we work it and i think once you start

applying um some of the basics first of all understanding the differences the subtle differences between cover

structure i know even to this day um a lot of us are confusing the two

absolutely and myself included by the way where we caught each other saying no no

that's not and then we debate it and we argue about whether it's cover structure so so i did a bit of research

when we were doing this top five article i did a bit of research on on what is

the definitive explanation for structure versus cover

and i found some great stuff and one of the the simplest ways to to articulate structure

is that it if you can see it on a contour map for example if it's on one of the

navionics maps or whatever other contour maps that you're using chances are really good it's structure

in other words it's a difference in bottom contour it's part of the contour lines right if

it's not then chances are real good that it's covered so like like a weed edge for example it

might look like structure because it's a you know a defined wall 12 feet of weeds that's that

that's looks like a contour line but it's not it's cover so subtle little things like that if you

if you could start putting that into your daily fish thinking um it will really change the way not

necessarily the way you fish but where you fish and where you fish is probably the most important part because you can have all

the best tools and experience and knowledge and equipment but if you're fishing where the fish ain't chances are you're not going to

get them and structure and contour is what and that weed line that andrew is

talking about will not show up on your navionics app it will not show up on your garment even if you

even if you do quick draw on your garmin on our garments we run a quick draw run our own maps you still don't have a weed

line on there right you still have only the structure on there the the brake lines you know the humps the bumps

whatever it just shows up but it doesn't show you weed lights you gotta it's very cool i gotta interrupt you

because i'm an idiot i've got a small little shallow mind and so when i see stuff like this i have to point out

dan uh carol says i gotta i don't know why he's saying

this he's obviously answering to somebody else but every time i see this line i laugh i got a princecraft fishing boat for my wife

i think it was a good trade dad you're the man for even put that out

there maybe you're not married maybe it's just a good one or she'll never see this but that's pretty damn good i gotta say

oh my god and moving on quickly we got our top

five canadian bass lakes we went across the nation for that one engine it's been up for i think a little while but uh

we'll give you our opinion on that it's you know it's just and these things are all our opinion when it comes to that kind of stuff any lakes et cetera

that's just danger nice and you know some of these lakes um another story that came across this real

quickly is the the pickerel the piccolo debate we kind of said will the real pickerel

please stand up because a buddy of mine mikey burris and knows him very well too um caught a chain pickerel out around

the kingston area in the kingston-ish area and he sent me the picture and i said buddy can i put this up into an

article i said yeah absolutely go ahead and he didn't even realize his first one he's fished that area for

his whole life it's mike's first one angelo caught one years ago in that same area

we started looking into it and we started seeing these documentation of different pickerel in that area and and then again

and there we got into a little bit of the pickerel versus walleye and that is a true pickerel that picture you'll see

you're going to see that on there that is the pickerel the walleye is the walleye and when you call the

walleye a big grove it's just a nickname it's all it is but she doesn't ask to call me mr johnson

you can call me ray or you can call me jay or you can call me ronnie or you can call me johnny my cat doesn't have to comment justin

i love that skit so that's our top 10 angel beats top 10 soft plastics

if you're ever looking for us sponsored by ram trucks by the way thank you very much um if you're ever wondering what we like

to throw for soft plastics uh we've got some tried and true that we've done forever but we've also got uh some new stuff that we really you

know cut our teeth left let's call that that um best largemouth bass lures uh

one of angelo's uh bassmart pieces we thought we'd bring that back because it's right in the middle of bad season right now and the

largemouth is starting to pick up again or maybe slow down again depends on who you are

where you're fishing um it can be large to me large

mouth bass are the hardest one of the hardest fish to catch big ones everybody's gonna say ah you're full of

crap beat i'm not full of crap you want to try and catch a five pound plus largemouth that's a

tough fish to catch you agree or no agree on that one i agree with you 100 a lot of people

mistake them for three pounders but uh i wanted to um

just go back quickly to one of the uh the the stories that you talked about with mike burst about the uh

the pickerel in that king scenario uh if you if for those of you out there if

you have any more information you can help us with on this if you've got uh either friends or yourselves that

have made contact with pickerel in that north shore kingston area um

just open to amherst island that whole gap that goes out in lake ontario let us

know because um it'd be pretty interesting to start putting together some statistics

about this species because it's not that common uh i don't even know if more than you know maybe one or two

percent of us have ever even seen one of these things we know that they're here but they're very rarely caught and i

wanted to add to that that day that i caught that pickerel in um uh in the kingston area i also caught

the very first crappie that i'd ever seen there it was almost back to back

it was kind of weird so wow yeah well you know what we fished that area a lot just going back to that and

aunt just caught one mikey burst has caught one and i've never caught one over there in that area so that tells you we put a lot of time

in there there's they're very incidental catches but they are there they are around so and uh look just like a pike with a

or you know some people uh mistaken for a tiger musky et cetera et cetera it's basically in

the esox family the same family but it's a got a their pattern on the size looked like a bunch of little chain links what

it is another recent story uh we'd like to just focus on here for a moment and

urge you to go read because i think it's important for all of us um the story was titled the red tide and

it's uh about um uh an abnormality uh in the tampa bay area

that i think was about three weeks ago maybe a month ago now and it wreaked havoc on the fishery there i mean just

tons of fish dying and it's the red tide is a is an algae bloom uh very little known about it but it

happens uh in certain areas and it's it was kind of an interesting story that we threw to um

because you know there's so much about aquatic places that we just don't know about we like to to theorize and and

and based on our own personal experiences sort of uh you know suggest that perhaps

certain things are happening but at the end of the day there's very little this whole orca eating uh great white livers this is brand new

this is something that just was just discovered so we're learning this stuff every single day

and this story is certainly one of them how much don't we know right that's the thing but how much do

we not know about the the sport of fishing and the fish species that we're fishing for right now

there's there's there's a ton out there speaking of tides buddy why did the lady wash her clothes in

tide not sure pete why because it was too cold to wash them out tied

boom yeah all right good one right there that's a dad joke right

there i just gave that to my buddy sean gleason he used it on his family they said oh my god dad not another one

all right oh god hey come let me go let me just say that one last article because this one's really important

he stopped releasing your pet fish into the wild it was found i think was down in uh in minnesota they were finding these big

goldfish in in the ponds which now can can connect to lakes etcetera etcetera

just a word of caution to anybody out there do not release your aquarium fish into

the wild anywhere into the wild you need to basically kill them and dispose of them is what

you need to do because it is illegal to drop these fish anywhere else but in your aquarium

okay and then everybody feels oh you don't want to kill my fish or whatever like that but it's getting too big for

your aquarium you are screwing up the ecosystem by putting goldfish koi fish anything like that

into the wild okay it's not natural it is illegal it's the same thing as transporting

walleye from the lake to your house alive in your live well it's illegal because you could drop that

walleye into another body of water so you got to be careful with all that kind of stuff please do not release and as much as i

totally agree with that you know that i totally agree with what you said there's a little bit of

hypocrisy in that whole piece of dialogue that you just shared with us and i'll tell you what i mean by that

we're the first ones to stick up for ford's i'll give you a good example the the the province of new brunswick a

couple of years ago uh was trying to and they may still very well be trying to i think they are

to eradicate themselves of an invasive species uh that all of a sudden appeared in

their waterways and they deemed it to be dangerous to the um aquatic life that lived there

prior to them so they went on a campaign to try and eradicate this species from their waters and uh

the species was musky so when people from muskies canada heard about this

and anglers like ourselves heard about it we were all up in arms saying what are you crazy eradicate musky are you out of your mind

you should be thanking the lord that you've got musky in that area the reason i say that is because

we have invasive species here that we currently have been enjoying for for well one of one or two of them for

over a century but they weren't here so we have to be careful when we talk about

eradication removing not putting in don't introduce because we also have to accept the fact that if

it's something that we like like the musky we don't feel that way yeah but we're not saying that this

article is not saying that it's saying it's that is that's a whole different ballgame what we're saying is don't

transport fish from one lake to another or one place to another and don't throw

your aquarium fish into the wild that's all we're saying right and also saying that you need to kill you made a very good point

according to the law you need to every fish that you take home

from a day's fishing that you're going to consume needs to be dead correct it's alive in your live well

you're breaking the law and and you could be charged in fact we have heard of tremendous fines for stuff like that so

yeah so you really need to be aware of it and and careful um but yeah there's some big goldfish

out there for sure in this article you got to read this because it'll link you to another

article where i saw a koi fish in halliburton lake and this koi fish wasn't your little koi that

swims around the mandarin aquarium there you see those beautiful like this thing was giant it was at i'm

gonna say 15 pounds if it wasn't an ounce it was that big and to the point i and i said oh my

god this thing is and it wouldn't bite because it's a koi fish so i tried to catch it it wouldn't bite so i called the mnr and they

brought nets up the next day but unfortunately the thing got away but i probably died through the winter anyways but they said you know

this fish should be removed if we can't so there's an interesting question on the screen right

now that relates to what we're talking about uh from cypress blue wanting to know how

bad are zebra mussels now and the reason that that that question is being asked because of course it wasn't that long

ago we had never even heard of zebra mussels in this part of the world and then all of a sudden it was

uh the invasive species du jour it was everywhere and and we were uh

terrified i mean the roof was the sky was falling when zebra mussels were introduced inadvertently introduced into the great

lakes and they spread like crazy i mean they literally went i think within a

decade they went from zero to 100 it was insane and so to answer the question and

of course we thought it was the end sport fishermen like ourselves thought it was the end of sport fishing

it was going to completely destroy our recreational fishing

um but it didn't and everything kind of settled down after a

few years we started to see that that uh in fact it was starting to be it was

put on the menu for a lot of our game fish that started eating uh zebra mussels um the

shoreline um commercial businesses that were initially impacted by

well or even intake uh from for uh hydro plants for example were severely

uh compromised by zebra mussels they've all redesigned and through their

through the zebra mussels efforts they've had to come up with different ways of thinning discharge and intake water

from the great lake which in the long run are better for us anyways so the zebra mussel was beneficial in that

sense in helping re-design some of those water intakes the end of the day it now

is very much an important part of the whole ecology we've got in in our marine life

it's it's it's food it's worth the three right in there it's food so

as i've always said you know i we hate some of these invasive species we hate them the thought of them coming into our

space but at the end of the day mother nature looks after herself because this has been

going on for a million years think about it everything that he evolves has been in somebody else's

space eventually and so um it definitely is something we don't need to worry

ourselves with that uh all that much you know nature will take care of things

all right i've been told that we need to move on by moving on we're very tactfully done um

been told that we need to move on i guess we're running a little bit late pete okay i guess maybe we're boring our team

here are we blowing our team yeah they're boring our team because our team really doesn't care they want to know what what what we're going to do about what

we're here for and that is the contest so great ontario got away

giveaway but you know what the beauty of this is we don't have to listen to any of them

good really right good point we do we do the rule making here so what up

let's move on to their own pace shall we let's move on i see calvin's in there calvin i hope your health as well then calvin might

have to go back to the to the hospital or something i saw a post and maybe i'm mistaken on that calvin hopefully you're well

um he's still he still doesn't even say anything about it because skelton's a tough old bugger but uh hopefully all the best

deal calvin if you have to go for more tests et cetera et cetera i'm not sure that but all the best uh before we get

to this month's five winners because that's where uh both uh nikki and jordan are panicking right

now because they have them on the line i guess oh you see they're okay they have a point because if they're in the waiting

room then then they have a point what else are you going to do on a friday for god's sakes well some people got to work you know

chill not everybody has a great boss like you you know what i mean thank you peter by the way can i tell you how lovely you

look today well thank you i got my hair cut too it's not quite as nice as yours but it's it's a little shorter

um thank you all right before we get on to the contest itself uh i have in my hand a letter from one

of the previous months winners that just came back from a trip of course we try and post this stuff on

on our website uh as as all of you that are going and returning from these trips send us information we'll

we'll put it up so everybody can share your stories but this one i'd like to

read because it has a lot to do with what we're about to talk about here in a moment it's from uh ian

and nancy lee who were uh winners in the very first month

of the uh the great ontario getaway giveaway and um they go on to say uh

ian and i so this is nancy ready and i would just like to take the opportunity to thank everyone at fish in canada

and noto for the wonderful a vacation we just had by the way it's not just fishing canada let's not forget that uh

ontario tourism played a major role in this destination ontario destination north ontario uh

we're huge in putting this together but anyways uh by the luck of the wheel we ended up in the most beautiful part of our

province and that is the northwest corner they drew a place called rainbow point

lodge and so they were able to visit with family along the way they had family in

northwestern ontario obviously we even stopped in kenora to see a family keepsake that was proudly on display at the local

museum it was truly a very special trip they go on to tell us about the they caught more

fish they lost count of the fish they caught they went on and on and on the reason i bring this up is that

nancy and ian wrote to us when they first discovered where rainbow point

lodge was and they weren't um they weren't exactly happy with the trip

that they had won because it was completely as far away from where they lived as you could

possibly go in the province of ontario so they were a little discouraged with you know the amount of time it was going

to take and the efforts that were going to go into it and could they you know either change it or maybe could

we do so bottom line is they wanted to make alterations to their trip and uh

we of course couldn't told them so explain to them that you know they need to

they need to give themselves an opportunity to experience that part of the world uh and and and and go on this trip and

enjoy it so anyway bottom line is they did they have the time of their life and it was a life-altering experience

for both of them which is fantastic and we we uh we were tickled pink to hear back from them

we've heard back from lodge owners another one uh vermillion bay lodge uh who is the host for

month two winner uh rob wilkes and his dad who decided they were gonna book in 2022

as opposed to this year partly because of the fires that are going up uh up in that area but uh gord who owns

the place wrote to us and uh said he just wanted to express his gratitude for being a part of this wonderful

initiative um i think it's a great opportunity on several fronts of course the whole covet

deal has put many lodges into a financial bind and this at least uh is an important

gesture on your part to try and help out we appreciate the support both financially

and more importantly to have you step up to help out it's also a great way to

expose our industry to new guests from southern ontario and he goes on and on and on and i

wanted to bring both of those up because before we talk about this month's

winners we want to go over some of the things that maybe we i i would i be safe

and say we're disappointed in yeah yeah of course why not

so a lot of not a lot and by the way i i shouldn't let me take that back the majority of you who have won trips are

tickled pink and and you're absolutely knocked out at what you won and and uh no complaints

from our part at all but you know the the odd one we've had to deal with which was kind of disappointing but in the

long run we were able to work our way through those issues yeah

i i think though it's important that we remind folks why we're all here why we're doing this because i think we've lost throughout

the contest we've lost sight of this important factor you got to remember too

this that's that is the the ultimate problem with a contest let's say people are trying to win all of a sudden

they get a different mind frame you don't start thinking about why the whole depth of it they think about i

gotta win i gotta win i gotta win so go ahead sorry so when this contest was being put

together uh pete and i uh were brought in at a certain point to give our opinions

on the design of the contest and whatnot but what we found really particularly difficult for us

to um to get our heads around what were what was the legal element behind the

contest and the do's and don'ts and in how uh to what extent

rules and regulations have to be designed in order to keep contests like this on

the up and up and being able to run from beginning to fruition without

you know too many interruptions we thought it's just a contest we're giving away some trips how bad could it be

well thank god we had legal people uh to advise us on the design of this thing because we

we're discovering just how bad it can be what are the things that

not by our design by the legal team's design one of the things that was entrenched in the rules and

regulations and for those of you who have taken the time and i hope i wish everybody would um you know what we're talking

about the the rules and regulations of this contest are designed in a manner that we can literally do anything we want

and i mean that if you read the rules and regulations you'll just you'll see that that if we notice anything in irregular

if we notice something that's not in accordance with the intended purpose of the contest

we can just change it i want you to keep that in mind um as we move along here

so two purposes of the contest to help the north

and to possibly expose people who otherwise would not be exposed to

the great wilderness adventures that the the rural part of ontario particularly the north can give you

to help expose as many of those folks as we possibly can so that they'll try that first time and

hopefully get hooked on it and start using the resource start sharing it

with their family and friends that's the intent of the contest if you thought anything other than that

you were wrong that's what the intent of the contest is promote the north see if we can help operators who are struggling during

covet and open the north up to folks who might otherwise not get an opportunity to experience it not talking

people who don't fish or hunt or enjoy i'm talking people who fish hunt and enjoy but for whatever reason

you know are limited to to their experiences in the outdoors it doesn't mean that if you're experienced you can't win because

as we've shown you can't but that's kind of the intent and the purpose of the content

okay so what i would like to suggest everybody do at this point once we're

finished here today and we move on to the one of the final legs of the contest which is month number five

everybody needs to go and read the rules and regulations there's two in particular that we'd like

you to pay attention to mr bowman the first one

is very obvious you can only use one email address to enter this contest

what can be done on a lot of contests we've found out is that people can start adding multiple email addresses to vote

for themselves okay you can't do that if we catch you doing that

you're out you're going to be out why you would do that in a contest like this as they said we're helping the north and

we're helping the people is way beyond us but you need to know that is a very

important rule okay there's one in other words you can't have more than

one account just one account you can only have one account

and and like for people to think that our team doesn't have the resources or the

know-how or the gumption to find out if you have one account or 10 account or

two accounts or six accounts you're really wrong i just want you to

we might not catch everybody well we're going to catch some i'm going to guarantee you we're going to catch some

okay so uh so anyways yeah that's a very important rule i mean let's remember that everybody says you

click the little check mark that says you read the rules hopefully at least the first time you did it you know what i mean but you got to keep

reading the rules because as the answer said because of stuff like this we can change the rules anytime we want

okay and if we find nefarious going on out there okay we're not going to be happy and

we're going to change so number two rule and we worked with this

at the very beginning because we were told by the legal team hey you know what you better cover your asses here

um and make sure that you know because there's a finite amount of money and

trips that can be given away make sure that you know you spread it properly through as many people as you

can and eliminate a a a one person or a group of people getting

all the trips we said well that's not gonna happen i mean after all who in their right mind if they won a

trip would try and win another one i mean it doesn't make sense to us but that's

because we're dumb and we're naive but thank god that the legal people saw

fit to put mechanisms in place that we could protect ourselves against that

so one of the other rules that has been steadily evolving throughout the

course of the contest is just that it started out with only you can only win once and then you're out of

the whole contest and that wasn't enough that had to be modified amended to only

one winner per household per per contest and that wasn't good enough and then it

had to be modified to once you're connected to a trip

you're out you can't keep trying to win more so all of that to say that we're not

going to make a big deal of all of these

and and listen i don't want to i don't want anybody to think that we're pointing fingers at anyone in particular

because it's not one particular person we've been dealing with this from day one on a surprisingly large

scale and we don't want you to think that we're looking at this as something

it is illegal in a sense because it's against our rules and regulations but we just think that's morally wrong

bottom line it it goes against the spirit of this contest and so we're

doing everything we can to make sure that that just that doesn't happen that's the bottom line there you go it's

well sorry don't cheat people read the rules and don't cheat damn it yeah reading the rules what's

important tony you can bite me how's that all right

anything else we need to cover on that no let's get to these uh let's get to our lovely one they've been

waiting long enough they've been working a whole month they're getting uh getting their uh their beautiful prize

package hopefully they haven't won before so no let's get to it let's get at it

let's uh let's bring it on all right uh this month's and now and these are in

no particular order yeah gotta we gotta go we have to go first second third part

because of the wheel right right okay because of the wheel i keep forgetting that damn wheel got me in trouble a couple

i know so all right uh winner number one with uh the biggest tally in the group

um the story was titled cod fishing of all things

god digging i love it uh kathleen roberts uh robinson wrote

the first day my dad took us to newfoundland to meet his family we learned how to hand jig for cod from

the boat at 45 my love for fishing lives on and northern ontario is a great place to do

it you got that right uh so congratulations colleen and uh we believe that she might

be with us kathleen kathleen sorry hi kathleen how you doing hi i'm good good congratulations

yay thank you so much your hard work paid off for sure uh very

quickly in their picture people can't see it very quickly tell people how you jig for caught at

newfoundland so you use a really massive hook with um clear mono line

on a piece of slab of wood and you'd put a dead minnow big one on it

drop her down and jig away that's about it right that's a great

explanation kathleen it's just a lot of people to understand that it's not even there's no rod and reel involved or anything it's basically a

piece of wood with a couple of notches and they wrap the line around and it's the most primitive yet fun way

of catching cod fish it's so cool and so much fun have you ever if you ever get the chance and there's still you know it's

obviously the galaxies and cod fishing right there you got to try it sometimes so that's excellent so safe to assume kathleen that your

roots go back to newfoundland uh yeah so my um well my mom

likes newfoundland men so my biological and stepdad are both from newfoundland parks um

so sorry mom because i know she's watching um so that pitcher was on the southern

shore south of st john's his family is from a town called witless bay

and that was on gather all's boat tours that takes you out and does

whale watching and cod jigging and funny thing is in 2018 when he passed

away we actually took his ashes back there and a group of my girlfriends came with me

and we chartered a boat and went out and caught jigged for the day and the only male

on the boat was the captain it was a boat full of women car jigging and we did amazing that's awesome

good for you by the way happy birthday to you

thank you perfect this is a perfect birthday present for you this is awesome actually it is it's awesome so we um we try to do a

northern trip every year um and with covid we have been i'm not

been able to so this is awesome excellent uh we're thrilled to death that you

allowed us to be a part of that birthday gift to you how's that thank you

absolutely fantastic so the only thing left at this point first of all how much experience do you

have with trips into northern ontario so bucket list trip for me was lake of

the woods which i did in 2018 um we've done wawa we've done shablow

so for yeah but we do covered it well that's not bad

so normally we just if we're fishing local it would be like a georgian bay perry sound kind of

weekend type deal but the week-long trips we try and go as far north as we can super

bring on lock soul baby

well there's only one thing left kathleen we know that you are going on a trip we just don't know where so why don't we

change that right now perfect nikki

spin that wheel brother

i don't know if we've been there before and shall we you know what sometimes it's hard for us

to recall it sounds familiar i'm sure somebody will point it out to us here in a minute calvin will probably be right oh for sure kathleen's looking

it up right now i can tell [Laughter] anyways congratulations thank you so

much i really appreciate it and i would um just want to give if i can do one shout out

to my guys at rca fishing for all the votes and for my local tackle shop kingsway

colin he's been helping me as well with the votes and fishing canada fan club yay

guys thank you for all your help and uh you guys as well as the lodges for

really offering this up for people that maybe can't you know don't get the chance to do this it's really awesome pleasure

thank you for joining me thank you good job on all the hard work kathleen well done

thank you see ya kathleen robinson uh winner number one

this month hog jigging i love it baby yes this one is yours peter

this oh my god this is the one with the essay do i have to read the whole thing edge

okay entirely up to you buddy well i don't even have his full name here myself because i'm just very very malone

very malone okay fishing with a buddy uh i'll i'll try and do the best i can

but this is a pretty long piece here my parents were never big on teaching my brothers and i had a fish so i self-taught

myself through trial and error periodically my friends and i would go fishing in the river behind our home typically we do cats carp suckers on a rare

occasion bass as we got older we learned to drive and expand our fishing locations on one

particular occasion we drove to bayfield where we fished the bayfield river awesome i know that area

we had no idea what kind of fish were there what's that no you don't i thought yeah i do is it bayfield on

the georgia this is b field not bayfield uh on the on uh

oh no on the huron peninsula in the european union may i continue just bring mine bring it

back good day gentlemen good day sir how are

you i'm doing very well thank you thank god angelo interrupted me because i didn't want to finish your whole essay there if

i didn't have to you know what i mean i'm not i went to napanee high school and reading wasn't really up there too

high for me you know what i mean bayfield for your purposes is just north of grand bend

exactly exactly and they have this river and a buddy and i wanted to go fishing

one day so we spent a saturday we headed out and uh not knowing what we

were going to catch and uh the salmon ended up

biting on mine and i had no idea it was a salmon i didn't even know why we were going to catch a salmon

and running up and down the shore trying to keep my line on because i i didn't have a strong test for the

particular salmon that i had on yeah and uh tired them out and

dragged them ashore and um uh that was my that that's when i really got hooked on uh fishing and uh

you know it's just there's certain things in life that just click and that that particular salmon got me

hooked and i've been an avid fisher person since that's a great story how long ago was

that oh are you trying to age me an hour no no that would have been 19 let's see

1974 five six somewhere in there and i expect you're in high school

i'll bet you you can remember every last detail about that experience i'll bet you

remember you see the picture in your mind don't you i do i do and the funny thing is you

know friends will always remember me running up and down the bank of the river because they were just chuckling because

they thought oh yeah yeah i was trying to make it out bigger than it was

how little do they know what a salmon moves like in a river the reason i say that is because it's an

extraordinary thing that happens to those of us who who get the bug and and fall in love with this thing

called angling and that is that we can remember the most my new little details about little

events that take place you know took place three four sometimes five decades ago and yet most of us are

hard-pressed to remember our phone numbers do you know what i mean

yeah fishing like pete and i for example if we sit down and start recalling

experiences we will remember the color of certain jigs that

we used to catch a particular fish in a particular location 30 years ago but yet pete

is next to me he's got the worst memory on the planet he forgot what he had for breakfast this

morning it's crazy you know what though i gotta say that is a bad bad example you give there because

all we throw is black blue jigs so it doesn't really can't

barry what's your experience as far as traveling into the remote parts of uh ontario i have never fished northern

ontario oh wow so we you know just it was on the bucket list

and just dying to go we don't care where we just would like to enjoy that

experience well said great

she uh she loves fishing as well you better mention her by name or there might be some

uh ah yes well jane hornell and uh she her family's had a cottage uh in the

georgian bay uh perry sound area for over a hundred years so i i practice my fishing there and

we enjoy fishing so much so and uh there's so many breeds of fish

that we can catch there bass bike salmon uh so yeah we just enjoy being

out in the wild one thing left to do buddy is figure out where you're going

sounds like a good thing all right

nick nolte where are you at a boy let's see what he's got up his sleeve

let's see what he's got to roll an area where she stops nobody knows round and round

garden island lost garden island lodge garden island lodge is that where we're going this fall land

i think you i think it might be i think it is if i'm not mistaken and there's some giant walleye if i'm not

mistaken in that spot like that's a great trip

i'll have fun nabbing a few of those you do that is great news the only thing

we ask from you uh barry is to keep us informed you know make make sure you take lots of photographs

write write some stuff for us while you're there share those experiences with us and and all the rest of the folks uh on the

site and uh and bring back some great memories for us would you i shall do that gentlemen

and thank you very much for putting this on and and i know it's a task to get done

between yourselves the the fishing canada group and uh natto and uh you know all the

shout out to all the other fellow fisher people here that uh enjoy it just as much as we do

perfect thank you my friend thank you very much okay mary

all right that is two down yes that's two down three i have to tell you something about

number three before we even tell you who it is i have to tell you something about number three

and um it's one that i have secretly been rooting for i'll be

honest with you i've secretly been rooting for because my daughter uh my daughter jocelyn

pointed him out to me uh i think day two of the when we launched

the contest is it reno i'm sorry is it reno no

uh she pointed out to me she says have you read the uh the letter from so and so and it's

titled so-and-so and quite honestly i mean it's not like we i get a chance to read all of these letters unless a lot

of them are pointed out to us that's not something that although i when i have time i will sit down and go through a bunch of them

um but so anyway so she she was so moved by his first uh letter and i read

it and i thought wow this is really good i hope he does i hope he does well and um

he did not do well at all he he wrote a great story it came from the heart and the picture

was fantastic but i think he didn't understand what it was going to take

to win one of these things uh he thought you know build it and they will come we'll put it up and and they'll come

well they didn't come and and they didn't come uh the second month and and so on and i was so thrilled that

that's when the guys pointed out who uh the the finalists were for this month

and and uh i i i was i was thrilled so it's time to to let him know uh his name is merv

ellis [Applause] hello what's that pete i said nice

yeah congratulations third place uh goes to merv ellis um with uh with a

pretty cool story fondue's fishing memories he goes on to say my fondest fishing memory uh as a child

growing up on the shores of crow lake ontario we know that one even though we didn't have fancy boats

and big motors we did spend many hours on the water during the winter months ice fishing as well

and sometimes the many people uh would only catch a walleye or two but the social part was as good as catching

fish many years later my children of my own and now grandchildren i have many fond

memories of the days fishing with my grandson trevor as you can see in the picture he learned

how to tell a fishing story as good as any old timer please consider voting for me and thanks

for reading my story merv congratulations merv welcome to the program

thank you thank you very much everybody and you brought back a lot of a lot of good

stuff about the story on my first entry uh you know even though i put in a good

story i thought that we didn't win and the second time you know we come close and the third time we come

close and uh i was actually almost ready to drop out for this month

and i had family and good friends and they said oh come on give it another try

so all of a sudden uh you know i decided i'm gonna go and do it again well here we are and thanks to you we're

we're looking at third place winning look at you buddy persistence we're gonna go brother that's all right

we just tried to hang in there exactly perseverance it's a pleasure

meeting you uh i kind of had uh conjured up you know images of who you were and what you were exactly the way i i

depicted is that right dave uh fantastic job man and well you and i

you and i probably have as many years of fishing experience oh i'm sure we do

what's the background in terms of uh of of traveling for fishing experiences uh not extremely

uh a lot in the north we've done a little bit on lake nipissing uh i did a trip 10 years ago uh

on dog lake just north of chapel yeah and uh it was actually uh it was a good

trip but the fishing was kind of disappointing because we were there uh just after ice out

oh and yeah and the fish were hard to find yeah but you know the the experience was

nice uh the lodge owners were perfect you know you couldn't get it any better so at some point i said i have to do one

more trip up north guess what brother guess what lucky there you know so it's

worked pretty well you know you know so i uh i want to before i get we get off track i want to thank you

personally uh in canada everyone connected with fish in canada

uh for putting this on because uh you know without the opportunity that

you put forward the lodge owners are are suffering and we know that so my

uh one of the reasons i wanted to compete was to help in that way if i could and

i think what you're doing is excellent and everyone else that's participating in this i think should feel the same way

well thank you merv we really appreciate the kind words they're always always welcome for sure

um and and you know and i'm glad you said that because we started this program today with

trying to articulate the intent of the contest once again in case people had forgotten why we're doing it

that's right it's so uh it's it's great when it works let's put it that way it's very

rewarding when it works and when it doesn't work it's yeah we get a little pissed off but but

that's life right well hopefully things work out you know good and we get the lodges opened up

again and we do a lot of local fishing uh you know i can say that

within the last week i've been out three times ah so and and we and we've been quite

successful so yeah yeah as you as you call i used to i grew up calling him calling

them pickerel and we now call him walleye

you know what that that's going to be an ongoing one forever so it sure is well i appreciate we've

been watching your show i as long as i can remember okay okay let's not get carried away you just

said you and i were about the same age so well yes but we're both just young fellas all

right a couple of young puppies i'm glad you brought something up because i'd like to

just quickly i know we have to move on and the guys are all pointing at me here and telling me to go but i i want to go back to something you

just said that's really important yes and that is that it doesn't matter

where you go to fish it can be the most remote part of the world a place where no human

being has ever been before true and you still have a tough day fishing that's right

that's right it happens we've had them we've had these one it had been tough but

you know what we've taken our grandkids out over the years and when my grandkids were old enough to hold a fishbowl we went and bought them

all a good fishbowl and uh you know we spent time fishing and so on so

we would go to a cottage every year and kids would come at different times you know the family would come and

sometimes you'd catch fish sometimes you wouldn't but it all was the social part right yep yep that's what we did it for for

sure there was only one thing left my friend do you know what that is right well we'd like to find out uh something

let's go okay let's go

uh-oh i guess you're not going anywhere oh there it is there we go

i wish we had some sound effects for this thing [Applause]

eagle lake oh we have been there oh my god we have been there so that's north

western ontario that's northeastern ontario merv and it's uh the eagle lake is synonymous

obviously it's a world-class muskie fishery but everything unfortunately gets pushed aside because the muskie's

so popular there there's a great walleye great pike and great smallmouth as well

and and uh there's some white fish that go to the other end of the lake from eagle lake now what area is what area is that in

uh dryden right in ontario oh okay yeah i know we're way up there buddy you're way up you're

getting toward the edge there yeah i was in dryden once that was it was all right well you're going again

okay very good and thank you very much i really do appreciate everything you've done to put this together

so glad you won buddy i'm so glad you won well i liked it when you said about the story but you try and try and try

and finally we came up with it nice buddy it was my family and and

a lot of friends that stuck by it and uh persevered in the long run beautiful make sure you uh fill us in on

your trip well you're my friend oh definitely definitely will and i'm not that far down the road from your place so

you know we could meet and have coffee or something absolutely that would be great thank you

very much congratulations buddy wow eagle lake lodge yeah it's a good

it's a great place it's a great place man good for him good for him all right

you're up buddy okay fourth place now you got to remember here angelo i have no names in my paperwork yet so

so unfortunately like i would say race mom would be the winner here but i don't

know the real name identification the title of the story is my first 50-incher

that's correct that is the one okay do you have the story i have the story

why aren't you reading sorry and then i'll i'll give the name out fishing on lake sinclair with mike hauser and i was using

my pink thirsty lure thirsty lures frank thurston the guy in peterborough who makes he's the original met prank on a

shoot a great guy when this beauty 50.5 inch fish chomped on it

i may have been lying down and possibly napping at the time so the story goes so you know that's

true okay but you may have been was to say what a beauty yeah it was the fish that

got me hooked on muskie it was one of three that bit the pink lure that weekend

that is fantastic susan spanga

how are you susan hi guys congratulations thank you

before we we we move on to how you know this is all the luck of the draw with the lodges you know that okay

but how appropriate would it have been if if you and merv had switched places and you had gotten that

i am a multi-species angler so um like in the last in 2020 i caught 29

different species in ontario what's up yeah good for you

okay in my glory if it was a muskie lake but i am quite

happy with any lake so did you go on that mission to to get all these species so probably so for a

lot of years i was doing the cfn fish off which kind of forced you to

target the micro species so any fish eight inches or bigger um

so once you start doing that i've always i the last few years i've made the top ten and the top i think the top five last

year um for the fish off so you're always catching multi-species so then i kind of expanded it

i do a lot of fishing on my own um last year i headed up to timmins

and um targeted um sturgeon um with my i have a friend terry that

was living up there he's actually moving on me but um yeah i did a road trip of my own up to timmins and

got my 19 sturgeon in two days fishing from shore

um but yeah i love targeting any species um i would say that musky

and salmon are my top ones that i love to fish for right now but um pretty much any species makes me

happy this week is the start of my holidays and i am fishing for on um

erie on monday and then i'm heading from there to ottawa and i'm fishing for with bill craig um on the ottawa river

for a couple days and then matthew chase for one day on the ottawa river and then i'm coming back and i'm fishing

sinclair for two days for musky too so are you are you uh on the ottawa are

you going for muskie only or anything does it matter yeah look at you well you know you did

it you did it right because ottawa river although it's a fantastic fishery is is a little tough

lake saint claire is the best muskie lake in the hands of my opinion in the world that is the ottawa river so

it's good you when you get on it and the fish there are the river fish so they're they're they're awesome and when you get

onto it you're gonna get something there it's you're going to have fun for sure i'll have to explain the story

around my childhood so as a kid um i did not fish

um my dad took me a couple times um smelled fishing under the burlington

bridge and that was really the limit of our my fishing as a child so

um about what was it maybe six years ago i left my husband and i needed a hobby

of my own and i just started fishing on my own six years ago and

i've done six years fishing four years ice fishing and i am hooked i get six week quotation a

year and it's all focused around fishing there was no like real connection to it

at all nothing nothing all right who's your boss by the way giving you six weeks

vacation that's what i want to know i'm 52 i worked for the same company for

30 years so i have lots of vacation okay all right what made you

decide to embrace fishing what that moment i want to know that that second you said yes i'm going

to make it my life's passion from this day forward what triggered that well when i moved

out on my own i couldn't find a place um so i moved to a place called emerald

lake and pushledge and it's just a little small man-made

lake with like trampolines and play things in it and um there was like just small pan

fish in there and i just started fishing on my own having no clue what i'm doing but i've

had so many mentors along the way i joined mississauga bassmasters i

joined ontario women anglers great canadian female anglers i joined kw muskie club and there's just been so

many people that helped get me out on the water i have invites i'm so privileged and so lucky

to have so many friends in the fishing world they get me out all the time monday monday i'm fishing with the

canadian fishing network scotty martin team um i'm taking a group of people out on

erie and that's what i'm part of on monday so you are hardcore girl that is awesome

for you that's fantastic that's fantastic great story uh great job at uh

winning one of these events by the way fantastic job because we know it's not easy it makes work

hats off to you there's only one thing left for us to kind of figure out here susan and that

would be where exactly are you going where i'm going and who i'm going with

oh let's settle butterfly nick here we go

multi-species susan doesn't matter where this is awesome

what'd you say we could say oh i've heard this this one up north too i think well

they're all up north but this one i have not heard of it i've read a few things about this lodge i think it's a

good one oh they're all good ones they're all good yeah they're all good ones so

i did old ricky lodge um last june um up that's about the

furthest i've gone up north i think this might be further i think this one's up there i think you're doing you're gonna have some fun

make sure we get lots of pictures document the trip for us

the ups and downs the good the bad everything we wanted that you could possibly give us please when you either during or come

back i will for sure there's no doubt i love my pictures all right congrats

susan thanks guys and to thanks lori from nodo and all the lodges for doing this for us

thanks to all my friends and family for voting rca people for voting for me kw masking

for voting for me i appreciate it all nice well done you take care thanks

susan spogna what a great way to start your holidays right there right

good for her i still can't get my head around that she dumps the old man she dumps the old man and then takes up

fishing for the first time in her life you see that if her husband was a man and i might have been down for him but

now you got enough fishing in your life this is the best man that's the best sport teddy putnam said that i don't have 29 friends

[Laughter] and knowing teddy i believe him

god that's excellent by the way teddy that we keep referring to is the owner of uh i

i don't mind saying it you know one of the top lodge one of the top operations in the country

never mind ontario and northwestern ontario uh called hawk lake lodge and if you ever

get the chance he's in this this contest so he could be on the wheel here and come up next but

if you ever get a chance to to check it out it's called hawk lake lodge it's the most extraordinary

operation that you will ever set your eyes on and the fishing there i know we keep bragging about it

and we keep talking about it but you know there aren't enough words to describe how spectacular it is so if you ever get

a chance to visit it man oh man jump all over it don't uh don't delay all right winner

number five uh oh hang on i've got some breaking news it's got to be breaking because

it's being delivered hand delivered here live

okay so our uh next winner will not be with us live

so we'll we'll have to be uh we'll have to play the role of the next winner peter yeah we've done that before this is we

thought you'd be the first today with everybody being live so normally we don't have two or three so the name of uh the story

that uh this gentleman it's a guy uh submitted this triple header

and the story is i love fishing great way to get away from the hustle of everyday life

either on boat or just offshore thank you for your vote that's important

uh this triple header is my fondest memory no kidding look at that you know what

when when i look at this picture right here i got a good feeling a really strong feeling that

susan and jay fish the same lake i think that's lake st claire again you can tell by the fish

yeah exactly well first off a triple header doesn't happen anywhere else for muskie and the lake looks like that and the

fish look exactly like saint claire spotted muskie you know what i mean they all look like that so i'm pretty sure very destructive aren't they

oh yeah so in fifth place by now you all know because it's up on the screen is jay mccormack who uh for some reason

uh he was supposed to be here today but uh could not uh attend with us so we're going to

uh play the role of peter you're going to be jay uh uh mccormick so all right where would

you like to fish jay well you know you know angelo thanks for asking that question see i've done lake

sinclair already so i'm hoping i don't get lake sinclair but anywhere else in this beautiful province of ontario you know

in this northern area of ontario to me is just amazing angelo i love you pete not so much but i

love you angelo fishing canada and the dno and and noto and all that

tourism people i love you all so thank you let's just get that damn wheel spinning please can we

all right nikki you heard it let's get her spun let's see where jay mccormick is going

j-mac

that's right in the middle no no kingfisher resort kingfisher resort

again one we have not been to not ring a bell at all

right i mean there's only there's only twelve hundred almost thirteen hundred operators in downtown

people think we know them all though congratulations jay kingfisher resort look it up i'm sure you're going to see this online we'll

notify you our guys here will notify you um as for your fifth place winning prize

and well done buddy good work so in closing um congratulations to

all of this month's winners uh story we had to start out on a big bit of a negative uh edge there

but well you know what you got it you got to straighten things out if people are bending pushing and doing anything in

the negative we we need to bring it to the forefront right so and to take it to full circle uh i just want to remind

folks that after we're done with this last this is the last month um we're gonna tell you what the theme

of the contest here is in a moment but uh this is the last month of the of the uh event that you actually

have to earn your victory uh the next step on this is that we will depending on the budget

that's left over in the kitty after the next uh five winners

pull out their lodge uh experiences depending on what's left we're gonna

have a series of um random draws so anybody at that point who has voted

on the platform the contest platform um anybody who has entered on the contest

platform that has not won or associated with a victory will be eligible

uh to win anybody that doesn't fit into that will not be

in the draw so you got a chance everybody you still got chances you still

have chances that's correct okay now we need to know

huh what's our theme what's our theme for the last uh round that that's what i was just going to throw out there i think i know what it

is but i thought the boys would give it to me in writing so i could read it they probably have but what is your

craziest fishing story it's right there in front of you angelo oh sorry i think jay's gonna start

liking pete better than ange now you keep this up okay who don't know james

you don't have to call me jay you can call me ray or you can call me ronnie okay all right so

in simple terms for the last leg of the contest we need to know

what is your craziest wackiest most unusual

fishing story now because it's not outlined here in front of you

i would ask the question does it have to be a story that i was involved in

fair fair question to ask right sure because it says what is your craziest fishing

story i would assume before it gets asked i

would assume that it needs to be your story so you were either there

it happened to you but you experienced it you need to be connected to the story

your craziest wackiest fishing story doesn't

like if it was a direct relative maybe no it has to be them it's your story so if if if

yeah it could be your dad it could be your it could be your neighbor i don't give a damn who is there but it's your story in other words you didn't read

this in a newspaper and it happened in in uh uh you know southampton beach north carolina

to somebody else it's something that you are connected to let's put it that way you need to be

connected somehow to the story but it's the wackiest craziest fishing

story not necessarily fish catching but fishing story

is that fair well i got i got one that would win hands down but i can't say it right you

know it's a good one i gotta go i should enter this con can i enter

this one well you know what based on some of the stuff that's needed like what you might

[Laughter]

everybody maybe take a couple of minutes and read the rules again just one more time before this all

starts again read the rules as long as you're within all the parameters the rules you're golden

you're good to go all right uh good luck to everybody i want to wish

all of you all the best uh wherever you are it's a weekend upon us let's take

advantage and as we come out of our caves in the weeks and months to come enjoy it and let's be safe and healthy and we

will talk to you very soon good luck to you [Music]

you