Living in the G.T.A. I feel that we are blessed with endless possibilities for year round multi species fishing.From huge Great lakes steelhead runs that can last all winter into spring, to a new opening day almost every weekend untill July. Whether you enjoy huge early season pike, mid summer topwater bass or late fall walleye, Southern Ontario has something for everybody. For my first on the disscusion board I thought that I would report on some early season pike fishing. I apologize for posting three weeks late but I guess that its better late than never.
Each year as the steelhead runs taper off and I have had a chance to do some walleye fishing in the Kawarthas, my friends and I look forward to heading up to the Muskokas for opening day pike fishing.( 3rd Sat in May ) We had four days to fish our favorite pike lake this year on opener and what a weekend!!!!!! The fishing was dynamite right from the start.
Every day we saw different weather conditions. Hot, cold,rain & wind. We started in our usual early season spots ( shallow,south facing bays) but we soon realized that the big fish had moved on. It was time to change our gameplan. moving to deeper water (10-15ft )we had our first good hookup. A huge female bruiser in the 20# range. After a good line peeling battle and under the boat bulldogging,my buddy had this beauty subdued at boatside.........so we thought. I offered to land my buddies fish. (his biggest pike to date )Not knowing that this fish still had lots of spunk,she did one last thrash at boatside and spat the single treble spoon right at me. Big fish lost."sorry Paul!"
Even though this monster fish was lost, we told Paul that there would be more biguns to come. At least we learned from our experience. This fish helped us formulate our game plan for the next 3 days. Concentrating on points and dropoffs close to deep water became our new plan of attack. All in all we had a great weekend. We boated close to 25 fish (pike) each day with a few monsters mixed in.
Early season pike fishing is something that I look forward to every year. Each year may present different conditions, but adapting to these conditions is what makes this type of fishing a chalenge.
Mostly all of our fish came off suspending jerkbaits (jerk,jerk,pause......BANG!!)I love that feeling. But the odd fish responded to spoons, in-line spinners & spinnerbaits. Hers some photos of the better fish landed on our trip.
Untill next time....................
