Georgian Bay Ice Fishing Trip

[Aaron Shirley]

I was up north on Georgian Bay for our annual New Years with friends, and I had to take my ice gear up with me, as there was finally ice this year. Our friends Janet and Wayne has a young son Ryan that always like to get out fishing when he can. I usually take him out fishing in the boat in the summer when we get together, but he had never been ice fishing before. I had never ice fished this area before myself, and I took Ryan along to try ice fishing for his first time. My expectations were not high, but I was excited to try a new spot on the ice.

 

I took up mostly walleye gear, but unfortunately, the area I wanted to target didn't have safe ice. As a matter of fact, the narrow areas to get out of the shallow sheltered bay we were on was open water.

 

I decided to walk out a little at a time for safety reasons, checking the ice every 50-feet or so. It turns out, it was safe across the entire bay up to the narrows with about 6- to 7-inches of ice. We only had 9-feet of water in the entire bay, so we put out different spoons and started fishing while watching the sonar. It didn't take long after jigging before we noticed fish moving in on the sonar, then the nibble of perch.

 

I got Ryan set up with the Humminbird, and showed him how to use the electronics to trigger the fish to bite. As I was trying to set up another hole for myself, Ryan got into a bunch of great jumbos around 10".

 

Ryan proudly holds up his first fish caught through the ice on a Little Wolf spoon

 

Ryan on an ice fishing roll

 

 

 

The snow started to fall heavily at times, but it made for a beautiful picture out there surrounded by great Georgian Bay scenery.

 

Ryan intently watching the sonar trying to coax another bite

 

We got into lots of perch to keep us happy, although we had to keep moving around and drilling holes to keep getting bites. We would get a handful of fish, then have to moce 50-feet and repeat. The size of perch were all over from almost the size of the spoons to 12" long. We got all our perch on the smallest Williams ice jig and Mepps Little Wolf spoons. We didn't try bait, as we didn't have any, and obviously it was not needed.

 

We got around 50 perch in the 2-hours we were out there, so it was good fishing. We kept a dozen jumbos to fry up New Years Eve, with the largest one around 12" long.

 

I got this nice jumbo, the largest one of the day for me

 

Although we were only out for about 2-hours, Ryan really enjoyed the ice fishing experience. We'll definitely try the ice fishing there again if there is good ice next year

 

Good fishing!

 

Aaron

[trapshooter]

Nice report Aaron. Good on ya for getting the young lad out for his first ice fishing experience. I'm sure he's hooked.

 

Cheers,

ben.

[Joey]

Great report Aaron. Some nice big perch there.

 

Joey

[mcallister.grant]

That's an awesome report!!! I love to see the lads on the ice with you.. What's even better is that you had no idea what you were getting in to and BANG... 50 Jumbos!!! Ca't get much better than that for a spur of the moment trip!!! Well done!!!

[sonny]

nice report and even better getiing into some fish on a new ice spot!!!,,,btw what humminbird were ya using??

[Mike the Pike]

Thanks for the report Aaron.NIce of you to take time to take a young man fishing looks like one satisfied boy

[fatherof3]

good report and congrats on the catch

[solopaddler]

Looks like a blast, nice report!

[addict]

nice work keep the young ones hooked on fishin gotta love it.

[Hooked]

Great report and I'm sure a day Ryan won't forget. Which is what counts here. I'm sure you will be hearing stories from his dad how often he wants to head out ice fishing now. Good stuff.

[bassfanatic25]

Great Report...Awesome Pics!!!!

[Aaron Shirley]

Thanks everyone. It gave me a lot of satisfaction taking him out and getting into fish. It couldn't have gone any better for him. All 50 were not jumbos, we had smaller ones mixed in, but a great 2 hours of fishing with some jumbos

 

I use the Humminbird Matrix 87c combo (with GPS) (discontinued now and replaced by the 757c combo). I thought it was the 787c2 combo that replaced it, but I was mistaken... the 787c2 is a bigger upgrade to the Matrix 87c and newer 757c combos. The Matrix 87c and 757c are great units, and I don't need a better unit for sonar capabilities with GPS. The 747c model has the same sonar properties as the 757c, but without GPS.

 

The only reason I want to upgrade to the 787c2i combo, is for the internal GPS receiver, as I use the unit on the ice, my 12' tin boat and the bow of my big Lund ProV... and it would be nice to have the hydrographic charts with GPS everywhere without having to unmount the GPS receiver from my boat every time to put it in my portable Humminbird box.

 

Good fishing!

 

Aaron