Jeff_C

nice catch! the walleye in the 4th pic down looks like a rocket, haha.

That it is... Yet another spoon with teeth marks!

Jeff

Here are a few more pics. The last two are from this morning. Yes, Paul, your fish was bigger than mine! lol

Jeff

We had a great day on Saturday catching lots of fish from varying year classes. The smallest would have been 14-15" and up to 29". (I know of at least one even larger one that won the tug of war battle.) There were quite a few in the 5-7lb range. One angler caught his first walleye and his first pike! Congrats! The cold yesterday just made for rosy cheeks on smiling faces. I will put up even more pics within a couple of days.

There has been lots of discussion around unsafe ice, and this is great. Even where there is 10+ inches of ice still, there are pressure cracks that you do not want to put a machine anywhere near. Seeing as the ice is pretty much void of snow, you probably want to keep your speed down as well when venturing around especially in the dark. If you were to come up on a pressure crack at a higher speed, you probably couldn't get stopped in time.

If you take your time, do your homework, and keep safety first, there are lots of places to fish with great ice that are holding fish.

Jeff

I forgot to mention that the big fish are still swimming!

Jeff

Here are a few samples of some of the pictures from recent outings. With really early mornings, full days on the ice and so much to do prepping gear for the next day let alone trying to spend a little time with your family, posting up pictures and reports has been difficult to find the time for. It was nice to bring my 4 year old daughter out on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours mid-day. She was a good little helper for our “on-ice fish fry”. The fishing has been interesting with some days being better than others, but walleyes are being caught every day. We can't expect to haul them up in great numbers every day of the week. Just getting a decent amount of fish every day and even better results frequently is nothing that we can complain about. Lately we have been staying in areas that have little current to keep lots of ice under everyone's feet. I hope to get a lot more pictures off of Ryan's camera soon and will try to get a few of them posted up soon. I know there are some beauties on his memory card.

Be safe and good fishing!

Jeff

My fishing hot spot... :wink: Lots of ice here!

Ashley Rae was out with us for a day of hardwater walleye fishing on the Bay of Quinte. She caught her first walleye through the ice that day. Correction, she caught her first 5 walleyes through the ice that day! One of which broke the 10lb mark. Here is a video of her day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ttW4QDmxNY

Jeff

As Hodgey said, we aren't competing. It is a great fishery and we just love seeing people catch!

Jeff

You go fishing anyway! And maybe bring a friend or two along.

Here are a few pics from this morning.

Jeff

We hit the ice under the cover of dark and got setup quickly. Fishn hunter (Ian) knocked a homerun out right off the bat! 10lbs 11 oz, minutes later ... 2 for 2 with a 6+ lbr! Fish started hitting the ice all around the group with most being in the 4- 8 range. The biggest of the morning came off of the rod of Fishn Hunter - a beauty 11 lb 13 oz. In the morning, we landed 14 fish! Everyone was having a ton of fun. For the afternoon, we were down to just myself and Ashley. We put another 6 on the ice between the two of us. Two anglers today caught their first ever walleyes through the ice. Ashley ended up with 5 walleye and her last one of the day was 10lbs! Chef Tim treated us to a great fish fry from a couple of the day's smaller fish. It was a great day with lots of memories to take home.

Jeff

We went out this morning with a few friends and started the year out right! Some quality fish hit the ice this morning, some fun was had, and a decent amount of fish were caught. Just look out for the "fillet bandit". Someone is going around and stealing the fillets off of your fish when no-one is looking! lol

Don't worry, all of the big ones were released.

Just got back.

Iced one nice fish about 5 and a half, but that wind was a killer. I'll be back at 'er tomorrow evening.

Good job!

Jeff

Thanks!

The bite was similar this morning. I caught 3 and missed one but packed up by 9:45.

Jeff

The recent rain has made us have to change plans somewhat. But that is how fishing goes. Tournament anglers sometimes prefish and then can't get to their fish. Ice fishing is really no different. Safety is always the first priority but we don't just fish a spot out of convenience either. We set out this morning on good safe ice with fish in the area and although the action wasn't fast and furious, we did catch a decent number of fish. The biggest fish of the day was 11lbs.

Here are a few photos of some of today's fish.

Jeff

Probably, but use caution. I will have a better idea by Monday if you want to send me an email.

Be safe...

Jeff

Anything that was less than 6" will be questionable for sure. I don't give recommendations to anyone during the early ice as the conditions can change so rapidly. I'll have a better idea after I go check it out tonight.

Jeff

That all depends on where you go. Adolphus reach is open water. Areas in the eastern end had anywhere from 1" to 6" depending on where you go. The western end had anywhere from 3" to 7". That said, we have had a lot of rain overnight and today, so the areas with less ice will be bad. Hopefully the areas that had more will survive it. I will be out this afternoon to see what is still safe.

Jeff

We hit the ice for a short fish on Christmas Eve morning. Everyone managed to catch some fish. Although the area that we were checking didn't seem to hold as many fish as some of the others that we have been to, we still managed to catch 10 walleye. We will be back out tonight.

So far the bite has been pretty decent. We have caught fish all over the Bay. That is really good to see!

Jeff

Yes. I was in a boat on Wednesday.

We scouted yesterday morning checking out various areas of the Bay of Quinte that had safe enough ice to venture out on. Most areas that we checked were not quite there yet with only 1 to 2 inches. We found a place that had more and we figured that there should be fish there, but didn't have time to actually drop a line.

Today we headed out at first light on the hunt. We were on 4.5 to 5" of hard black ice. Within a few minutes we began to mark some fish but we had to figure them out as they were not aggressive. It didn't take too long to crack the code and we started chipping away at them. They were short biting and stealing a lot of minnows. A few fish were lost and one break off, but we ended up with a successful morning and were off the ice around 10:00am.

Here are a few pictures from the morning.

Jeff

Here is a video compilation from our day on December 8th. Thanks again to Scott from West Lake Willows for having us aboard and thanks to my buddy Joe for the work putting the video together. It was one of those days that we all will remember and having the video to go along with it is just awesome!

Enjoy...

Jeff

can you point out which one is the 15+ in the pictures?

Sure thing. The one in the first pic is 14lbs 15oz (also the one in my right hand on the double shot) and the one in the second pic is 15lbs 7oz.

Jeff

Scott from West Lake Willows invited my father and I and a friend (Maverick) to join him on Tuesday for his last day of softwater this year before he put his boat away. And boy, did we have a great day. Many personal bests were set!

We launched out of Picton at 7:30am and headed to water that had been holding fish. No other boats around when we setup which was a nice change from November. It wasn't long after setting up when a rod fired and not long after that when another one fired. We thought it was going to be a good day and sure enough it was. We stayed in a fairly tight area and the fish stayed until we left at 1:30pm.

The best part is we got every fish on video. Although it is pretty shaky filming, we got it all on tape. When the editing is finished, we will post it here as well.

All in all, we had lines in the water for about 5 hours and finished 17 for 18. Including 3 double headers.

The biggest fish was 15 lbs 7 oz with a length of 33.75" and a girth of 22.5"and the second biggest was 14 lbs 15 oz.

We had a few more over 13lbs and most were over 10lbs.

Enjoy the eye candy!

Jeff

6 of us went out on foot yesterday morning in search of some eyes. Well, we found lots of them. Often we would be marking 3 at a time on the Vexilar. The bite was actually rather slow, but slowly we trickled away at them. One by one they came up and some of them actually came through the hole. A few others got free before making it through the whole, and of course the big ones got away... Here is a short video of some clips from today. We had a lot of fun out there...

Enjoy!

Click Here to view the video.

We were out again today, and perhaps the next video you see will be better than this one.

Jeff

Thanks for the comments everyone... I'll guess I should bring the video camera out and do some better footage.

Jeff

After today's rain as well as tomorrow's, I'm not sure if even where we were fishing will be safe. We were on 5-7" this morning, but we are loosing it fast. I'll be out checking it again soon and we'll have to see.

So at the moment, I would say that nothing is safe.

Jeff