Stocking stuffers, the ultimate pre-fishing tools, and a CFF Christmas special

That forks map looks great!!!

they all do but I think that one looks killer!!!

 

^^Agreed


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Picked up an Upper Sturgeon one for my buddy that has a cabin there. Super cool.
He’ll be very happy with it.


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Thanks again @Gord ! I am excited to hear his reaction when he sees it.

 

I agree!

And if you look close you can see my cousin passed out on a sofa in the back of a truck.

Just jokes, it really does look good. And lots of cool history at the forks. The exchange district, at one time, had the highest density of millionaires in the world supposedly. Prior to the construction of the Panama Canal, this was THE major shipping route. Pretty cool.

The water bus tour should get AEM and Active Target on board -- "On your left, in the yellow of this kickass map, you'll see approximately 32 Channel Catfish, staging to spawn....oh look! That one just went on it's side to drop some eggs! OH! and THERE"S the eggs!! Little Timmy, would like to count the eggs, using the Active Target panel of this Lowrance Live 12 unit?"

 

It’s said that Timothy Eaton had the Assiniboine River dredged so that he could get his yacht home.


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It is always neat to think about what lakes and rivers used to look like prior to human influence such as dredging, or the construction of dams. The Winnipeg River fascinates me in this regard.....our maps reveal a ton of artifacts of generating station/construction in the vicinity of the McArthur and Seven Sisters generating stations, and it is easy to visualize what the river used to look like prior to dam construction many decades ago. Neither the McArthur area nor the Seven Sisters area would have been boatable prior to backwatering from these stations....the hydraulic gradient was just too severe!

 

Very cool.


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And for you LW fanatics....a couple previews of print maps depicting some of the more structure rich areas of Lake Winnipeg's south basin.

Anybody have any clues on the origins of the structure (a series of ridges and valleys) oriented almost perfectly north-south just off the big reef just north of Grand Marais would be?

 

Glacial scrapes?

 

Could'nt say for sure, but I call that the very beginning of where structure starts on the S basin East side.

 

Glacial scarring, perhaps at one point in time the original shoreline of lake Winnipeg... there is some structure north of prudens that might suggest an old river channel running into the structure there...

 

That's an interesting speculation. Maybe a massive current seam from ancient Lake Agassiz receding...?

Original Lk Wpg/Lk Agassiz shoreline can be viewed east of Manitou. There's an overlook park there where you're standing on the old shoreline...pretty neat.

I wanna change my answer to @Patty 's propwash from drag racing his Javelin.....

 

Glacial scrapes/scarring is what I was guessing also....I spoke to a couple people with knowledge of glacial recession in relation to the features we found off-shore further south a few years ago that I think you must be referring to @Patty , but haven't asked any experts about the Grand Marais area. I wonder if the "reef" was formerly located a few kilometers further north, but the rocks were "picked up" by a glacier and moved to where it now sits? The scrapes maybe reflect that dragging/redisposition event?

 

I think labelling more of the community spots would be helpful to some Lake Wpg anglers.

Duratrac Ridge, KO2 Point, Send It Reef, Malibu Flats, DoINeedAnExtension Bay, and WhereCanIGetMyBladesSharpened Creek, those could all be added.

 

The St Lakes (St George, St Andrew, etc.) in the NE Interlake adjacent to Lake Wpg were scraped out by glaciers according to the provincial website. They're all north/south oriented. I read recently that Gull Lake was an "accidental" formation due to melting glacier water pooling in that area.

It's cool to learn about the geographical history of our lakes. Looking at how and why structure was formed, what's deposited or scraped out. Thinking about how it was formed leads to thinking about how it affects current and fish patterns.

 

It is if you ask me. I really like this stuff and am glad I'm not the only fishnerd that thinks about this stuff.

Growing up in fishing, I was the only one of my close buds that really got into fishing and thinking about stuff like geographical history of waterways/lakes/rivers/reservoirs. Every time I cross a little creek on a trunk highway or mile road with a ford crossing (we have a few around and it's cool to me to see that stuff in my work day) , I wonder where it originates and where it spills/trickles into.

I'm such a fishnerd, this spring I was working in a ditch and saw a little 10" Bullhead landlocked in some melt water puddle in the ditch. I tried to catch it by hand so I could bring him to where I figured he came from. Google Earthed it and the little bugger swam at least 7 miles from a little marsh creek that connected to the Morris, which connects to the Red....I figured he was spawned in the Morris which would've been over 15 miles of swimming to end up there....where I'm sure a hawk or owl made supper of him.

Stearns had told me that Tony Roach made him think about how the glaciers formed Woods. One side of islands tends to be smooth from scraping, and the other side tends to have the rocky deposits. That little bit of thought is pretty practical in fishing, and very interesting to me.

Thank goodness there are other fishdorks to talk about this stuff with, so it can actually be considered 'cool'

 

Fascinating to me as well.

Stearns and I had your map at the 2nd Lundmania, (you kept it secret at the first one, nice play bud!) in the forebay and we both made the comments that the map was so cool in the way you could see the portions of the forebay that were man made...specifically where bulldozers pushed and scraped flat sections and the 'walls' to create a reservoir. Compare that to the 1st ever Canadian Lundmania where we were relegated to the only map available at the time...there was no talk of map gazing and saying "let's try here" ...was way more generalized into areas and dock talk...fast forward to AEM and we'd pick and choose independently, individual spots and structural elements, with a million times more interest in the make up of the river itself and of it's potential to hold fish and influence the current.

Also, the McCarthur portion you put up above---- just amazing how you can imagine how impassable that would be, prior to the flooding caused by dam creation.

LOTP as well....the meandering creek bed hidden from the naked eye, that is defined in your map in perfect detail. So interesting.

Nothing to do with AEM, but I remember watching old PWT shows (Lindner Media) and how some competitors were in the lead fishing flooded structures like rail beds and road beds, and I think one guy even caught a few Walleyes in the basement of an old farmhouse foundation..... he found that stuff from old RM maps he figured no one else had access to, and topo maps that were now 8-12 feet under water.....just freakin' neat!

Water...the flow of it and geographical make up of it, has fascinated me since I could stand on a stool at the kitchen sink and play in the water. My Mom has always mentioned Mike's favorite "toy" was the kitchen sink......guess it's just imprinted on me from an early age to be near water.

 

Discussing the geographical origins of MB lakes reminds me of when I surveyed Moose Lake. After looking at the data, Craig asked me if it was an impoundment, as there was virtually no smoothing of the lake bottom. I thought it was a natural lake, until I asked the owner of Silver Birch Resort about it. He said the lake was two sloughs prior to the outflow being dammed about 45 years ago. I could also never figure out how the 17’ deep pit was formed in the NE corner of the lake and the trough that runs around much of the lake perimeter. It turns out it’s an old gravel pit and road bottom.

Every lake has a story. What was once there can explain why the fish are or aren’t there either.