I added some leveling ballasts to my canoe after flipping it on a small lake in late October. The extend out about 3 feet each side of the canoe,
and make tipping it much hard to do.
I use it for carry on access only lakes where using my baby 12' Lund can't be launched.
Note the c-clamps holding the boards for seats. Normally there are 4 of them. One on each corner, but the day I flipped it, there were only two holding the seat there, and one of the c-clamps was loose. As I shifted my position to grab the net for a fish I had on, the loose c-clamp fell off and the seat tipped into the canoe and with me falling into the canoe on that side, over I went. I felt like such a maroon knowing that it was the 2 c-clamps
holding the seat in position, and one was loose. Had there been 4 instead of 2, and all of them clamped tight it would not have happened. It was
shortly after that that I bought leveling floats that extend 3 foot out on each side with buoy floats about a foot long. They sit a few inches above the water. If the canoe tips a little to one side or the other, the floats take over and stop a possible flip from happening.
This Coleman canoe also has a small motor mount for my Minn Kota 3 hp electric motor. It is also lined with foam for stealth as dropping a net or sinker into a metal canoe can make enough noise to wake the dead, let alone a wary fish.
Our pond has some very nice sized hybrid bluegills, as well as perch, red-eared sunfish, and LM bass. In this pic you can see 12 or 13 hybrids looking at
the Zeigler's floating pellets I toss to them daily from April through October.
I buy 15 to 17 bags of Zeigler floating pellets fish food early spring and feed them daily from April 1st through the end of October or until the water drops below 50 F late fall when their metabolism slows.
I also buy two gallons of fat head minnows each spring to keep the perch happy, and again plant 2 more gallons of them late fall to get them through the winter. When traveling back from the hatchery with these, they put a half gallon of them in each of pure oxygen infused bags for the one hour drive to get them home to our pond.
All of the fish in our pond are catch and release. I can usually twist the small jig I use to catch them out of their mouth with forceps as the barb on the end of the hook has been flattened out with some pliers. If I do have to handle them, I wet my hand first so as not to disrupt the protective slime on them.
In this pic you can see the Lil Nipper jig made by Lindy/Little Joe I use. No bait, just the jig with some light jigging action on the retrieve.
I only fish the pond once or twice in the winter, more to assess the size and health of the fish. Here is a nice jumbo perch that was carefully released. She was an obvious female filled with eggs.
Good on ya. Glad you were rewarded.
