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| Kevin’s 39 incher caught last year |
It’s not like we needed more snow, but more has arrived. Unfortunately some friends and I were out on the middle of Shoal Lake, Ontario when a blizzard hit on Sunday. We were hunkered down in our portables when I decided to venture outside about 1:30 p.m. Visibility was down to about 50 feet and a foot and a half of fresh snow and drifted on to the road already. Not wanting to get trapped down this narrow ice road that a commercial fisherman had made we decided to pack up and head to a safer location.
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| Heading home! |
In our case friend Kevin Siemen and I headed the truck back to Winnipeg since we had already spent a day fishing lake trout on a different lake. We were out after whitefish but heavy snowfall on the lake had restricted ice roads to a fairly small section of the lake. We ended up fishing a spot that had no visible structure even though the depth was right at 45 feet. While the bottom was covered with good sized perch, there was not really anything to hold the whitefish so we managed only two fish that were travelling through the area.
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| Shoal Lake last year in the sun |
Last year in March we had one of our best days ever for whities off a main lake point that stair stepped down in the main lake basin. During the day we caught the fish in about 50 feet of water, but as the sun started to sink the fish moved up to 35 feet and were extremely active. For the last hour before we left we had non-stop action with usually each angler with a fish on at the same time. We caught all the fish on perch colour Northland Buckshot Rattle spoon, a ¼ ounce in size.
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| Nice one! |
As mentioned Kevin and I were out for the lake trout the previous day. Kevin spends about 20 days each winter chasing down lake trout on a variety of different lakes in Northwestern Ontario. The biggest laker he has landed so far measured 39 inches and was caught on a Buzz Bomb fished very aggressively. Kevin said the fish just smoked off the bottom and smashed the lure half way up the water column. Even with a heavy line spooled on a level wind lure, he was in a for a tremendous battle. That’s the thing about Kevin, he is organized and fishes with the right equipment so those fish are very releasable.
We tried a number of different spots this day but only managed to land two fish while losing two more.
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| Now that is a snowstorm!Still it was a fun day and it’s pretty hard not to enjoy catching a fish that pulls so hard beneath the ice! |
