Friday/Saturday Scugog Report

[Ramble]

Here’s the Report

 

Jeff arrived here in Peterborough Thursday night. After some moose stew that had been cooking in the slow cooker we headed over to the Olde Stone for a pint before coming home, and getting all the gear ready. The next morning we were up at 7am made a couple of sandwiches and headed for the Scugog.

 

We walked out off of Goreski’s and stopped at the 1st group, of 4 holes we came too. Having never fished this part of the ‘bog we figured it would be a good start. The walking wasn’t too bad. There was some slush, but it was on the verge of hardening up. It just about supported our weight. By 9am we had the still lines up and we were fishing away.

 

 

It was somewhere around -10 celcius but the day looked like it was going to be a nice one despite the snow in the forecast.

 

 

At 10:30am we hadn’t seen any action after working our series of holes. So we decided to move to another group of holes we could see. They were about 60-70 meters away. I was walking up to a still line to pack it up, when the flag popped off it’s holder and went down the hole. I grabbed the line and set the hook, the fish didn’t budge, and I felt a strong head shake…MUSKY! I held the line and fish went for a run, I could feel the braided line trying to cut into my hand, so I gave the fish a little more pressure. The line went limp…I had lost the fish. I wasn’t sure what happened exactly. I didn’t think I had broken the line…it was 30 pound braided. When the hook came up it was clear what the problem was.

 

 

I won’t be buying those jigs again.

 

I wrapped up that line and we moved to the new set of holes and set the still lines up again. By this time the wind was picking up, but we were dressed for it. We weren’t set up long before another flag went down. I got their 1st and found a very nice large mouth on the end of it. After a picture it was immediately released.

 

 

Jeff and I were sharing some stories from the lodges we work at during the summer, and I was right in the middle of telling him about the 11 o’clock walleye bite at Kesagami, when he hooked up with a fish. I looked down at my watch…5 minutes too 11am.

 

1st walleye of the day.

 

 

 

We went back to fishing and chatting.

 

A short while later, Jeff hooked into another fish.

 

Another nice bass.

 

 

About a half hour later he gets another solid hit, and hooks up with a big bass again.

 

Releasing winter bass always brings a smile to my face. You get them back into the hole and they pause for a minute before taking off. While they are paused the tail sticking out, always makes a good picture.

 

 

As the afternoon rolled around, we were pretty happy with our holes, and punched a few more with the spud. We kept trying different holes for jigging and for the setlines. We figured out what holes had weeds, and we were able to find some edges by making a few lucky guesses. One of the set lines was sitting in a hole we had punched and at about 3pm the flag had a good wiggle too it so we went over to investigate.

 

We were surprised to find a very nice crappie on the other end.

 

 

It was shaping up to be a good day, so we riigged up the setline again and went back to jigging.

 

 

 

The evening was coming and walleye were on our mind when a flag dropped. It was my turn to fight a fish. It was another beautiful bass.

 

 

Another quick release.

 

A short time later and I get a hit on the pause while jigging my yellow Swedish pimple. Another hit, and I get the hook up. A few seconds later and we have another slab for the ice.

 

 

Shortly after that, Jeff gets another strong hit, and lands yet another scrappy bass.

 

The bite was picking up and we were defiantly in high spirits. 5pm rolled around and it wasn’t long before Jeff’s orange Swedish pimple was getting some more attention.

 

 

We kept jigging, and then it was my turn.

In the next 2 hours the fishing got better.

 

 

 

At 7:30pm we started packing up and left one setline in close to us. We were about to pull it up with the flag dropped and guess what…another ‘eye.

 

That was the last fish of the night for us. We packed up and headed home. We had a great day, and came home with a bath tub full of fish.

 

We ended up with 6 walleye. They measured 17”, 16.5” 16”,15”, 14.5”, and 13.5”. We also had 9 crappie for the table. The biggest was 14” followed by 13”, 12”, 11”, 10” 9.5” 9”, 8.5” and 5”. The 5 incher took a treble in the gills.

 

Here are the 2 biggest crappie.

 

Here are the walleye.

 

After I was done filleting fish and eating walleye, Jeff made a phone call, and were all set to go again Saturday.

 

[Ramble]

 

 

Saturday was a different sort of day. We got up at 6am after about 5 hours of sleep we made the drive back to the Scugog. There were quite a few people out for the morning bite, and again we were a little late but did manage a crappie.

 

We punched some more holes, and began the ritual of jigging and checking setlines.

 

 

Sometime later I caught another small crappie.

 

We were having a good time and watched the snow clouds blow in. It was pretty windy all day and it was always snowing to some degree.

 

Sometimes it snowed pretty heavy…

 

And sometimes it was lighter…

 

As the day went on the setlines saw less action than the day before. Jeff hooked up with another bass around noon jigging…you gussed it…his orange pimple.

 

I managed another nice crappie.

 

 

About 1pm the setline nearest me had it’s flag drop, and after a pretty decent fight we had a nice smallmouth come up for a visit.

 

After some more debate as to where the weed edge went, I punched 2 more holes with the spud. One hole was quite a bit shallower then the rest, and yielded a lot of dead weeds. We ended up not fishing that hole much. But the other hole I punched yielded a small smallmouth and crappie in an hour. We had 2 holes 6 feet apart, one with weeds, one without. We finally got it right.

 

We watched the weather and kept fishing.

 

At 10 minutes to 2pm, Jeff’s orange pimple did the trick and we had the day’s 1st walleye on the ice.

 

 

The afternoon plodded on and the closer it was to 5pm the higher our hopes became. Of course there was the odd fish to fuel our excitement.

 

 

About 4pm people were coming out in droves setting up all over the place. We met a couple of fellow OFC’ers who had seen my short report from Friday. They set up near us, in some deeper water.

 

After 5 the bite started and the fishing got exciting. The walleye were biting a lot lighter then they were the night before. We felt a lot of taps, and missed a lot of fish. I tired a small pimple and minnow tail and managed one walleye on it. We found half minnows to be the only option for the light bite, and the tail half worked the best.

 

That orange pimple just kept producing.

 

By the end of the night we had a nice pile on the ice.

 

We shut the show down at seven, after I pulled a nice eye off a setline. The bite hat noticeably decreasing, and we were both tired, and satisfied.

 

We stopped by our fellow OFC’ers to see how they were doing. They had a few ‘eyes some nice crappie. Everyone we passed on the way in and a couple of ‘eyes.

 

Once home it was straight to the kitchen and the fillet knife.

 

We had one 13.5" walleye, 3 within a half inch of 16" and one that was a 1/16th of an inch from 18". The 18 inch walleye had some old war wounds from a BIG musky. When I was filleting her, I found a musky tooth between her ribs! There was some damage to the fillet, but it was still palatable. I checked all the other wounds for teeth but didn’t find any. In our 2 days of fishing this 18" walleye was the only female we caught.

 

The three biggest crappie of the day were 13.5" 12" and 11.5".

 

My girlfriend and I are Biology majors, so I asked her if she wanted to have a look at a walleye heart. She had just taken a vertebrate biology course last semester and enjoyed it. After filleting one of the walleye I removed the heart and to my surprise it was STILL beating!! It was incredible. I had broken that fish’s neck about 4 hours before and it had spent that whole time sitting on the ice. We were all amazed.

 

Here’s the video we took.

Walleye Heart

 

Overall we had an AMAZING couple of days. We caught 26 crappie. Kept 14. Caught and kept 11 walleye, caught and released about 8 bass and lost one musky.

 

The majority of walleye came from ONE hole. In total we had 4 holes that produced more then one fish. We punched 10 holes in the 2 days, and fished another 9 that were already drilled. LOCATION is EVERYTHING!

 

The orange pimple caught the majority of fish. The setlines were also an asset. I also tried a host of other baits, from a small blue/silver cleo, to a plain jig with a minnow. The pimples were the best by far.

 

Don’t be shy to use big minnows our biggest crappie was caught on a minnow that was about 3-3.5” long (Setline). The crappie preferred the shiners over mudds whereas the walleye didn’t seem to care.

 

I hope everyone else had a fantastic weekend as well.

 

Tight lines everyone

-Ramble

Edited February 10, 2008 by Ramble On

[young_one]

Excellent report! =) Can't wait to try Scugog when the weather gets a lil better. The heart video is truely fascinating!

[mattyk]

looks like a fantastic time!

[waterwolf]

thanks for the photo-shoot. looks like a lot of fun . bass through the ice is a little sugar on the day . great thing about scuuggy , you never know what's comin' thru

 

the hole next . good to see a great report on a fantastic fishery . thanks for sharin'.

[jediangler]

You guys did better in one weekend than lots of guys did all last season on the Bog.

I liked the beating heart video too.

[steverowbotham]

i am truly jealous

[fatherof3]

great report and cool video,congrats

[trapshooter]

Great report Ramble!! Lots of great pics and info in there. Looks like the Bog is producing pretty well. Lots of bass eh! Congrats on a great couple of days.

[fishindevil]

Amazing day of ice fishing !!!!!. ..great report man,and they sure are some real nice fish there,man you will eating very well for a while now !! congrats,thats the best catch from scugog this year that i know of...cheers

[Ramble]

Thanks, for the replies everyone. I'm not sure what we did to deserve a weekend like that, but I hope i do it again. That was some of teh best ice fishing I've ever had. You never knew what you had and we didn't see a Perch the whole time.

 

I'll never forget that trip lol

 

-Ramble

[Rizzo]

I've caught bass ice fishing before but that is just ridiculous! Can't believe how many you got. Nice report and photos

[Mike the Pike]

Thanks for taking the time to upload all those pics enjoyed them all

[bassslinger]

Outstanding report. You guys defenitely found a loaded weedbed. The fact that most of those fish were caught during daylight hours is even more impressive. Heavy braid, huge snaps. You still bamboozled some crappies....Beauty.

[oldphart]

~~~Thanks for sharing, great reports with Pics

[snag]

Definately a memorable report!

[Reef Runner]

Simply an amazing report Thanks for taking the time to post.

 

Sucks about the one that got away on the broken jig. But looks like the rest of your trip made up for it.

 

 

reefrunner

[Beans]

Super report !!!

 

It felt like we were right there with you...

[Paulus]

Pic Heavy....-yah! As IF. "Pic MEGA LOADED" more like !

 

Awesome report, and great catch! Love those beautiful bass, too.

 

Thanks for sharing!

 

p.-

[Jen]

I was reading your report and smiling the entire time... wishing it were me!

 

WOW what a weekend you guys managed to have.

 

Not only did you catch fish, you had the opportunity to share stories and time with friends on the ice...Sounds like the perfect way to have spent your time.

 

Great Post... I look forward to the next one.

 

Cheers,

 

Jen

[fishermccann]

Great report sounds like you have found your calling, Biology and fishing with a girlfriend who does the same . How good is that!!!!

[hillbilly]

Excellent report buddy, I can't wait to get out and do it all again. look out BOQ here we come.

 

jeff ( the man with the orange pimple) lol

[Moosebunk]

WHOA THERE COWBOY!!! That's some ranching and a half muchacho Dave.

 

Stellar fishing. WTfreakingG. Best ice results I've seen from them parts in some time.

 

In case anybody missed it... that's Scugog he's pounding those fish on. lol.