May 25^th 2019

Aiden, Richard & Bruce dusted off the cobwebs today with a variety of different fish. They managed to land pike, walleye, perch and a bunch of bass that shouldn’t have been there! After pulling up to a walleye shoal I was a little disappointed to see that the pre spawn smallies had taken over. We eventually had to move to an alternate location!

A short half day ended abruptly when the early afternoon winds went SE and got big. It pretty much shut the fish down where we were. The last hour saw us just picking at them and they were barely hooked too! By 2:30 we packed it in and headed back to the ramp where my valet was waiting with the trailer already in the water. It’s always nice when you don’t have to fight the waves to get the boat on the trailer with the wind blowing directly into the launch. Thanks Don!

All fish survived as everything was released to fight another day!

May 20^th 2019

Christopher & Dave joined me a little earlier than expected today. They were supposed to fish the afternoon, but the forecasted high winds saw us rescheduling our start time to 10:00 instead. Good thing too as the winds saw us running back in big waves by 2:00.

Plenty of quality walleye & pike were landed by both but the first couple of hours, in calm conditions, were the best. They were also the easiest, as we ended the trip in three footers! Overall it was still a great day! We might have had to cancel, if we were to start at noon! Over 30 knot gusts would have made it unbearable to say the least!

May 19^th 2019

Mark & his two daughters were with me this afternoon, for their first experience at fishing. Both Olivia and Elena managed to land loads of pike and had a blast catching them. They even managed to bring in a nice keeper walleye right under the wire, before we called it a day. Luckily they had booked only the afternoon to fish as the morning would have been unbearable. Lots of rain and another big east wind finally stopped in time for their 4 hour trip. I guess the gods were shining on us today!

May 13^th/14^th 2019

Peter & Keith were with me for two days and expecting to catch pike and walleye. I didn’t disappoint as the first day had them boating plenty of both. The second day however, Peter was the only one that made it out. A personal issue had Keith bailing, leaving all the fish for Peter. He definitely took advantage as even more fish were landed and he didn’t even have to share! With water temps barely 48 degrees and absolutely miserable conditions on the 2^nd day, we really had to work for each and every bite. Although not easy, we made it work and great numbers were boated by Peter on this wet, windy outing!

December 30th 2018

After several cancellations last week for ice fishing, I was finally back out today. Between bruised ribs from a bad header on the ice and crappy conditions, we all decided to postpone the outings! Today however, I had Francisco and 3 of his friends from Rio, looking for a Canadian experience. What could be better than ice fishing?

Still hurting from the recent rib beating, I requested the help of my old buddy Keith, to aid with the drilling. In fact, he managed to drill about 99% of the holes, allowing me to focus more on the rigging and instructions with the others. The K Drill and Ion X both preformed perfectly!

Although it was a beautiful morning with only a slight north wind, the air temps were in the single digits and farenheight! It was downright cold, especially if you were from Brazil and use to the heat! I felt bad for them and decided to set up the shelter so they could at least fish in the comfort of a heated tent. In fact, two of them remained there for the first couple of hours while the others braved the outdoor cold! Orientation was done from inside and several panfish were taken in the process. They now had the info needed to catch fish on their own!

I decided to set up a bunch of deadlines for bigger fish and prepped 8 polars. This would at least give them a better chance at catching pike! In between any tripped flags, they would also enjoy action from bluegills and other panfish as well, while watching their fish on flashers. It definitely makes fishing much easier!

Sometime in the afternoon after they had all landed bunches of smaller fish, we finally had a bit of action on the deadlines. Francisco was fortunate enough to bring the first pike on the ice after quite a battle. This thing may have been skinny but it was definitely long and strong! Several pics later it was returned to the water to grow!

Not long after, another flag tripped and an even bigger pike was landed by one of the others. This one was about the same length but much heavier due to the thickness. More pics and another quick release and unfortunately that was the last bite for the polars. The ban of live minnows has caused fewer fish here in Quebec and practically eliminated the walleye bite! We only had 4 flags go off and the other two were stolen dead baits. At least we scored 50% with the hits!

By mid afternoon I could see these guys were getting colder and I knew it wouldn’t be long before they called the day. By 2:00 they had seen enough and I packed up everything and readied to leave. By 2:30 we were on the road and headed home!

The group today had experienced something they had only read about before and fended quit well. Everyone had caught a good number of panfish and a couple of quality pike were brought through the ice too. The best part about today was that nobody got hurt! I had instructed Francisco to make sure that they all had ice crampons and he had done just that. Speaking from experience, don’t cheap out on foot protection! I recently purchased a good pair and paid more than I normally would have. I won’t make that mistake again! You get what you pay for!

Overall today couldn’t have gone better than it had. A good number of fish were landed by everyone and they experienced one of Canada’s favorite winter pass times. We love anything that involves ice!!