Fishing the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands might not be what you picture when you think river fishing.

In many ways fishing the St. Lawrence River, which acts as a natural border between the United State and Canada, often resembles lake fishing more than river fishing. As a matter of fact, the river has a lake in the middle of it, Lake of the Isles.With its seemingly endless supply of islands, coves and canals, the St. Lawrence has something that fits just about any fisherman's tastes. Whether it's pulling smallmouths off the rock shoals around islands, or lugging largemouths out of weed beds, there's something for everyone.If you're into the toothy variety, you can head to deeper canals and you might be lucky enough to land some northern pike. The muskellunge (muskie) is on the rebound in the river after viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS, affected much of the area's muskie population about a decade ago. A recent trip to the river even revealed gar fish moving through a section deep in a channel off the main river.Personally, when I go to the Thousand Islands, I'm looking for bass … largemouth bass. I just got back from a short trip with a couple of friends where we spent the vast majority of our time fishing weed beds, grass lines and docks hoping to roughen up our thumbs on bass lips.While I was throwing everything in my bag, my one buddy didn't change bait once, and the other guy didn't change much either. We fish with all-artificial bait, mostly rubber worms, but occasionally one of us will tie on a rubber frog or a grub. Actually, we'll use anything for a possible advantage and bragging rights.While this year's trip didn't produce the sizes we boasted last year, the numbers may have been higher. There were stretches on the trip where we'd go several minutes with at least one of the three in the boat landing a fish. Of course there were also times when nobody was catching anything.Bass season on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence River opens each year on the third Saturday of June, and that could mean any type of weather. The temperatures can cause you to sweat or shiver depending on the year, or even day. Fishing on a beautiful sunny day can quickly turn into racing back to the lodge to beat a lightning storm.Regardless of the weather, our skipper can usually point us in the direction of fish. Robert Miller of Tamaqua has been fishing the St. Lawrence River for 137 years, or at least it seems like it, and he's normally at the helm."It's late afternoon and a storm's coming in from the west, we'll head to the west side of Yeo Island and fish for smallies," Miller might say.The Thousand Islands is actually made up of 1,864 islands, and Miller knows a bunch of them by name, and in which conditions to fish them. Whether it's the nearly 1,300-acre Grenadier Island, or some of the smaller islands that picked up their nicknames from fishermen over the years, Miller usually knows when the fish are hitting.To be considered one of the Thousand Islands, there must be at least 1 square foot of land above the water line year-round and at least two trees or shrubs. There's Gull Island, Duck Island and Goose Island. There's even an island named after their droppings.After several trips across the border I'm beginning to learn my way around the river, and I'll keep learning the third weekend of June, every year.