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Hey all, I'm aiming to walk out from Port Bolster Saturday morning and most likely going to be solo. Send me a PM if you're looking for someone to walk out with (safety in numbers and all) I have all my own gear and a one man flip FYI. Good luck on the ice this weekend all! Dutch

Good morning everyone! This is my first forum thread so to keep the story short.... This past weekend I was out fishing with my father out of Lefroy for perch! (Unfortunately no luck, But still beats a good day at work ) Ice conditions were great with over 16" of ice where we were setup. After our trip had concluded and I had offered to buy coffee from our local Timmies for the family (back in my home town of Mississauga) I had noticed that I had lost my Drivers License and Debit Cards! After frantically searching every inch and every pocket including my fathers, I had to admit to finally loosing my cards somewhere out on the lake. As this happened on Sunday, the following day I filed for new cards, with the impression that the cards are swimming somewhere amongst the fish! But to my surprise, on Wednesday February 4th, a strange envelope had showed up in the mail! Assuming it may be work of my girlfriend for the upcoming Valentines, I opened it expecting to see hearts and kisses only to find a Silver Holiday Greetings Card! Upon opening the card further, I read a delightful message from what I am assuming is another fellow angler and both of my cards attached! I would just like to say a special thank you, to whomever took the time to write up the message as well as mail me back my cards. It is the Lake Simcoe community which allows for all anglers to have such a great Ice Fishing experience although the only thing they may catch is a cold!

Hey guys, Got a chance to hit the ice yesterday. I'm glad we did, since it was a beautiful day, very little wind, and the sun was out pretty much the whole day. Was able to catch a lot of different sized perch. Ended up catching a couple decent ones. Before we packed up for the day, we stumbled across a school of herring on our flashers and for fortunate enough to land 2 of them. Never caught them before, they are a pretty amazing looking species. Here are a few pics, I enjoyed the perch for lunch today. As for the herring, they are nicely being pickled. (Figured I would research how to prepare them best and this seemed to be a great solution) Happy fishing everyone, dress warm.

I got out to Lake Simcoe recently with some TonyB and friends for a good group of six of us. One of the nice things about ice fishing is the social aspect of being able to get out in larger groups, and sometimes meet new people. You can't do this in most fishing boats. We headed out slowly just as it was getting light out, making sure to check ice conditions as we went. We got to an area that looked good in 100 feet of water and set up without a soul around. Before we knew it we were completely surrounded by hundreds of anglers and our sonars had a lot of interference. The fish must have been in the area recently with the amount of anglers there. We tried all kinds of things with only a couple bites and lazy looks on sonar to show for our efforts after a couple hours of daylight. We had to move... but where? Everywhere we looked around us had quiet anglers not getting much. Without any clues as to depth or location, we had to make a big decision. We thought about two things; moving shallow or deep away from everyone. Nobody wanted to make the call in our group at first, but we eventually decided as a group to make the trek out to deeper water well away from any anglers. We moved out to 123 feet of water and looked on sonar. We immediately saw several fish on sonar at once and we spread out and set up. It didn't take long and Johnny got into a nice laker. Once we were all set up and jigging, the action was fast and furious. It was non-stop action one after another! My tip-up line with an emerald shiner and jigs were both taking shots, although jigging was by far the best approach. It is so much fun watching fish teased into biting on sonar. It never gets old! A jig and pause worked well at times, as did reeling up a foot or two and pausing, then reeling up again and pausing. They hit on the pause and you can totally read their behavior on sonar to realize which approach would work best on individual fish. We lost a few absolute beasts that pulled almost all our lines out at times making for an even more exciting time. These are the days that we live for. Pure adrenaline action-packed fun where everyone in your group is hammering fish!!! Sadly, I had to leave midday, even though the action was still hot. That was a very tough thing to walk away from, but I am a man of my word and family comes first. It was ok, I got more fish in a couple hours than many full days spent on the ice at times. I was content, and we all had an absolute blast. The heavy snow and mild weather this week will spoil the ice. We only had approximately 3.5- to 4-inches of black ice on the weekend, so it will not be safe for a while. Make sure you take all precautions when you think it is safe enough to venture out. Wearing a flotation suit and carrying ice pics is a good idea. So is a buddy system and a floating rope. Enjoy the photos These are from my phone. My wife broiled the whitefish I brought home for something different, and it was great! Much healthier than frying it in oil as well Good fishing! Aaron

Hey everyone, hope your new year is starting off well. For the last couple weekends my wife has been off doing things with her sister so I've had a free fishing pass. So of course the weather last week had to jump to 15 or whatever and melt all the ice on Simcoe . I thought it was going to be the same for today but checking around it looked like things had solidified pretty well up to this morning so I threw the clam in the truck and headed out to get some fresh air. Man it felt nice to be on the ice again. The ice was fine when I went out, 4 to 5 inches once you got past the broken up stuff at shore but I gotta say coming off at 1pm there was a lot of water on top and I'm glad I didn't stick around longer. Anyhow, there was lots of guys out though no one using sleds or atvs which was good to see. The bite was great for the first couple hours (I got on the ice around 8:30) but really died off around 11 or so. Mostly dinks but luckily I managed enough for tonights dinner. Of course being the first trip of the year I forgot to bring a bucket/minnow pail so I just went artificials today. Typical mix of dinks to keepers - probably 10 to 1 or so with one really nice girl. Pretty much all came on a perch pattern jigging rap (see the pic below). Great to get out, weather looks like it should lock everything up this week so hopefully there's a few more trips to be made - really looking forward to the Tyler event again this year and going after some whities. Here's some pics from the phone - have a great weekend everyone. FB_IMG_13586069650237398 by Sean Maurik, on Flickr IMG_20130119_100623 by Sean Maurik, on Flickr IMG_20130119_114351 by Sean Maurik, on Flickr IMG_20130119_183715 by Sean Maurik, on Flickr IMG_20130119_184313 by Sean Maurik, on Flickr EDIT: I uploaded a panorama of the lake - you can't embed it but if you want to look: https://plus.google.com/photos/105951357550051946157/albums/5835275157333296033/5835275161988387010