Today marks the end of the season for fishing in my area. This is my first full season fishing in Nova Scotia and it’s been fairly good I think. I always enjoy the challenge of fishing new areas and learning what technique works best for producing fish. I fished in at least five or six different lakes within an hour of Halifax and they were all very similar and had a good population of smallmouth bass. In Nova Scotia you are required to send in a report card with information on all the fish you have caught and I managed to catch well over 100 bass this year. It sounds pretty good, but in Ontario I’ve caught over 100 bass in a matter of days, and they were bigger!
Lately I’ve been fishing for brook trout and caught a few nice ones. Conveniently, I didn’t have my camera with me for any of these catches. I realize yesterday I haven’t got any photos of the trout I’ve caught here, so I decided that today was the day to do it, we would photograph a trout. My buddy Adrian and I headed down to a nearby creek a few minutes from where we work. We stumbled across this creek a few months back while trying to fish nearby lake. The area we fish looks like a ditch at the side of the highway, and thats exactly what it is. There is one small area where the water pools which provides a nice quite place to hangout for brook trout. This photo was one of the smaller trout we’ve pulled out of the ditch, but at least we accomplished the goal of photographing a Nova Scotia brookie!
#2 Mepps Aglia strikes again!
When does your fishing season end?
Well, another birthday has come and gone. I went fishing on my birthday, keeping the yearly tradition alive. Sadly, much like past birthdays, not big fish were caught. I did however get to explore a couple of new lakes, both of which I’ll be revising soon I’m sure.
Our first stop of the day was at Lewis Lake Provincial Park which is a great little area. The park has two small lakes and designated fishing areas. After speaking with another fisherman, I learned that the lake is stocked with trout, and despite is small size is actually quite deep. I fished with my spinner baits while he fished with worms. Neither of us caught anything.
Later that evening I headed out to Long Lake Provincial park. I had been there once before in the fall, and the lake looked beautiful. I can drive to the lake in about 10 minutes, so there really was no excuse to to fish there at least once. I’m glad I went because I caught a dozen smallmouth bass in about an hour and a half. Granted none were very big, but they were bigger then the ones I’ve been catching at other nearby lakes. I lost a good size bass that could have been pushing 2lbs, but the most interesting catch I had all day was actually the smallest bass I’ve ever caught…
Another quality birthday spent with the family.
I’ve been fishing 3-4 times a week for most of the season here in Nova Scotia. I’ve got plenty of fish, at least 50 bass by my count (they make you track that here on your license). Yet, after all of those bass, I haven’t caught one over a pound. My buddy Dominic from work, just got himself a new fishing rod a few weeks back and took me out to a lake he’s been fishing recently. Right away he catches a nice bass, and then another later that afternoon. Meanwhile I kept catching baby bass after baby bass. I even put on a bigger lure, and still got little fish. I’m gonna chalk it up to beginners luck, but he out fished me bad.
I offered to land this smallmouth for him since it’s been so long since I’ve handled a good size fish
We’re clearly not the only ones who love the pike fishing at Little Vermilion Lake in Ontario, Canada. Many of our readers have made the long trip up to the lake in search of trophy pike, and as usual the latest visitors to Little Vermilion were not disappointed!
On this trip, I caught 6 fish that were over 40 inches and 15 #s (Our group of 4 guys caught 10 fish over 40 inches and 15#s.- that was our definition of a big fish). My two biggest fish were both 45 inches and 22#s and 20#s. The others were 41-42 inch range and weighed 15-18#s, which are also very nice fish.
- Tom
More…
Our good friend Martin wrote in yesterday to let us know how his York Bassmasters tournament on Sturgeon Lake went, and much to our surprise given the crazy weather we continue to have here. Martin pulled out a huge win, and some huge bass!
I was privileged enough to draw 2 time angler of the year Don Mahar of York Bassmasters. We started the day heading out to a well known rocky shoal on Sturgeon, while most of the rest stuck to the river leading out to Sturgeon from Lindsay. We landed our limit within the first 20 minutes, a nice hand full of smallies, but nothing large. We kept fishing those rock piles, landing and culling our catches still in search of a few big boys. Eventually, Don had a nice 2.5 lbs largemouth which meant we were in business. Soon after we headed across to the other side of the bay and Don comes up big with a 4 lbs smallie. We had a few more culls along that end and we had ourselves a pretty good bag for the day. There was heavy heavy rain all morning , we were absolutely soaked from the rain. On our way back to the weigh in , we made one last stop along the river, 2 casts in Don lands yet another big largemouth around 3.5 and we headed in for weigh in. We turned out to have 14 lbs and big fish at around 4lbs which gave us 1st place and big fish award.
Second place was 11.5 , with a 3.25 lbs largemouth.
Congratulations on the win Martin, those are beautiful bass.
I’ve had an old fly fishing setup lying around for a couple months collecting dust. I’ve been out fishing several times, but never for more then an hour or two, so I didn’t bother bringing the fly gear. This morning I got up super early just so I’d have an extra hour or two on the water and figure it was the perfect time to try something new.
Let me start by saying this: Fly fishing is not as easy as it looks.
I’m not entirely sure what I was doing wrong, but my fly wouldn’t go any further then 20 feet. Before I head out again I plan to watch a few videos on youtube to sort things out. I think my biggest problem is that I was moving my arm too much. I didn’t catch any fish on the fly, but I did manage to get about 10 small bass on my spinner baits. I spent half the Morning at Albro Lake, and the second half at Lake Micmac.
Last week Martin, who you may remember from a previous trip to Scugog or his Picton fishing log, and I planned a trip to fish for musky on Lake Scugog. We arrived at the boat launch around 11:30pm on Friday and chatted with a few of the locals that were hanging around and fishing off the dock for walleye.
Apparently though, the fishing has been off due to the extremely bizarre weather conditions we’ve been having in this region. Twice now in the past week there have been hail storms, lightning that can blow you away, even reports photos of funnel clouds forming in Toronto’s east end (more).
Since I was so caught up with work in May, I missed all opportunities to go fishing on Toronto Islands for some of the hottest pike fishing in the GTA: this would be my first fishing trip of the year.
We started the morning bright and early, got the boat launched and headed out. It wasn’t long before Martin had a hit and nice 25″ or so Scugog musky. I thought for sure the day was going to be awesome, and not soon after I had a massive strike from a musky of my own, definitely larger than the first. A huge jump, splash, and suddenly my lure was catapulted back to the boat and my musky was gone.
For the rest of the day, we fished with little success, even with my Lakemaid Miss Musky t-shirt for good luck, it couldn’t stop the weather from turning on us. Another storm front was on its way and we decided to head back up the lake closer to the boat launch in case the storm crossed paths with us. Not soon after we had a failure of our trolling motor and decided to head in to try and fix it. We spent a few hours going around Port Perry trying to find some spare parts or figure out what the problem was, but once 7pm started to roll around we knew the day was pretty much shot. We packed it all in and headed home.
Martin will be fishing in the B.A.S.S. opener tournament on Scugog Sturgeon, so wish him luck! If I had known sooner I would have loved to get “Fishing Fury” on his shirt or something as a sponsor but maybe we can pull that together for the next one.
