Question inland laker dudes!

[Northhunter]

Been hitting new lakes all season. Started hitting the ice around christmas, going out about every weekend. So far we've fished one we "discovered" last year, and hit another new (found this year) a 2nd time. Everything else has been a new lake every time out. So far, so good. It's a lot of work, but we're not slowing down... it's been too much fun!

 

We have another potential one picked out. A little bigger, a little harder to get to. If anyone fishes it once the ice hits, it's news to us. We're usually after splake or specs, but this one holds lakers... Northerns, whitefish, herring and ling as well (supposedly). It's about 3km long, averages maybe 300 yards wide. Never seen the lake in person.

 

To those of you who have experience targeting lakers through the ice in new territory.. where would you start for location? What do you look for? We don't have any depth data for the lake.. usually just hike in, start drillin' holes and see for ourselves... but we're used to pothole lakes. Don't want to do that for 3 hours on this one. There looks to be a couple rock ledges that drop into the lake - try those? Try shallower on a lake this size? Looking for tips so we can maybe try and determine if this one's a keeper in a day or two... some of these smaller lakes just don't produce that well. Harder to tell through the ice sometimes.

 

Note: I know I'll get "move if you set up and don't get results in 30mins, an hour", etc. But we'll be hiking in, and Simcoe this is not. We keep moving if we don't like what we see, but might try 2-3 spots in a full day on this one.

[DRIFTER_016]

Do you have an electronic topo map you can post? It makes it easier to determine where to fish.

Not as good as a depth map but better than nothing.

 

This site will allow you to zoom in on the area and save the map for us to see.

 

Canadian Topo Maps

[Eazy]

That's mostly all I target during the winter months..............and believe it or not, my biggest fish are caught at depths not exceeding 30ft.! Look for points, or as you mentioned before, rockfaces. I have found big Lakers to be especially fond of white tube-jigs tipped with a 2" dace minnow..............for deadsticking I've been using the Bay de Noc Do-Jigger as a flasher with the treble removed, snell hook then attached with a nice big lively dace minnow! Hope this helps!

[Dano]

I would key in on or just off any mid lake structure/humps with deep water access I could find, saddle areas can be productive too. Trout will also use a fast/very steep drop (read cliff) into deep water to trap forage against to feed on. The depths you fish will depend on the depth of the lake I would think, but I have seen lakers caught in 8' of water while jigging for walleye! Good luck, I hope you post a report.

[Raf]

look at the topography of the land, it will often give you clues as to what's under the water. flat beach, typically maens shallow water out from that beach. steep rock face, the opposite. points, neck downs, islands should be pretty obvious. hopefully you've a graph!

[Northhunter]

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I've got a pretty good starting point, although that could change with the first hole drilled.

 

Drifter - I do, but would rather not post it. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but this place gets a lot of traffic. Even with names and roadways taken out I fear someone will recognize it and there goes our potential hot little secret.

 

We're a couple guys trying to find lakes for ourselves. We don't tell anybody when we hit it good (or bad), and if we do... no names. We started doing this last year (packing into these places)... one of the reasons we're hitting so many (besides the fact we enjoy it) is to get a stockpile of places to go. If you hit up a lake once in a season it doesn't draw much attention to it, and it doesn't bother you much to leave it alone if you have a few others just as good (with a bunch more pegged to be scoped out). It's bad enough we leave tracks in the snow... we've had trouble with people following them in, etc. I was pretty well stalked by a vehicle as I walked out from an unseen lake last year. The people up where we do most of our "venturing" are... well, different. lol

 

We found a good one last year (stocked). First ones to check'er out on ice. When we hit it a 2nd time about a month later we were still the only ones to try it. We pulled 60 fish in those two days, but they need a couple years. Someone got curious after the 2nd trip, broke a trail in with sleds. We don't think they hooked into much (time of year, where they fished). Problem with the lake is now it's going to be a covert operation to fish it. It'll get hit hard and cleaned out if anybody catches on.

Happened to us before with a "lake" we stumbled upon moose hunting. It don't take much.

[BassAsin]

i can definatley relate to what you feel about the paranoid part. i am the same way a lot of snowshoeing but when i walk off the beaten path i walk on either side just out of sight before i put on the raquettes, looks like a moose track and many people dont even notice. i also leave a large part of "my" speck lakes alone all winter long so i dont leave a track into them. although i just found out that 2 people i know found there way into one of my 2-7 lb speck lakes thank god they snowshoed and didnt put a track in by sled or they just dont know theres a trail into there!

 

Matt!