Ice fishing Quebec, pike, perch, trout - February 2020

Due to both weather conditions and an 8 day - mid February trip to Dallas to fish open water in warmer weather, I ice fished less than usual in February. Continuing with my new blog theme, here is what February ice fishing in various regions of Quebec looked like in 2020.

Date: February 2nd 2020
Weather: -3 degrees Celsius, mix of cloud and snow, 15 km/h North wind
Water temp: 1-2 degrees Celsius

Headed out to ice fish for trophy pike with Ari. The lake we chose to fish does not have a big pike population, but there are some very big trophy sized pike in that lake. We took along Ari's 10 inch Jiffy ice auger, not wanting to take any chances with smaller holes. Once you finally get that pike of a lifetime, last thing you need are difficulties with an ice hole that isn't big enough to land it. That being said, the low pike population in that lake typically results in 1 or maybe 2 pike per day on ice if you are lucky enough.

We set our frozen mackerels baited on quick strike rigs, as usual. We then kept 2 lines to jig for perch using my Humminbird and his Marcum flasher, while waiting for the pike to bite. As usual, I brought along a manual auger for me to enjoy, and get a good workout while I fish. I chose my 6 inch Fin bore for this outing, my hands down favorite, and perfect for perch.

Although we caught some perch in that lake before, we were pleasantly surprised the numbers of perch on our spot. We ended up jigging well over 100 perch, with 28 keepers. We released over 90 perch under 8 inches, and a few bigger perch that had visible worm/grub infestations. The perch we kept were clean / parasite free, and ended up making a delicious dinner for the rest of the family.

Unfortunately, no trophy pike came to play, not even any tripped flags. However, the surprisingly good perch ice fishing left us feeling better.

Date: February 5th 2020
Weather: -7 degrees Celsius, sunny, 12 km/h West wind
Water temp: 1-2 degrees Celsius

Headed out for another shot at ice fishing trophy pike in another region of Quebec with my friend Warren. This particular lake yields some real trophy sized pike every season, though most that fish there tend to target perch or smelt on ice. The lake also contains some brown trout, and a healthy population of lake trout, which happened to be closed tp fishing during the winter.  As such, the manual auger I brought along for this outing, was my 8 inch Nils Master. Figured I'd give the newly sharpened cutting head a workout, as well as myself. No sense in risking losing a decent brown or lake trout to an ice hole that is inadequate.

Our plan was similar to the previous outing, I set the pike lines, while Warren jigged in hopes of locating schools of big perch. We fished and placed the pike lines at new spot that I had never been to on this particular lake, so we weren't sure what to expect. Again, the HT polar tip ups were baited with frozen mackerel.

The pike fishing was very slow. About 1.5 hours into the outing, a smaller pike tripped a flag. I gave Warren a shot at it, he hooked the pike. Unfortunately, he lost it near the hole, when the pike ran into the ice and caught the quick strike rig under the ice hole. No more pike for the rest of the day.

Perch were not easy to find either. I did manage 4 perch, as well as a couple smelt, which I kept and froze for pike bait. The nice surprise of the day occurred mid morning. I was trying to tempt some perch into biting with the help of my flasher, when suddenly, they all disappeared. Seconds later, a big mark came off the bottom, and clobbered the mini 1.5 inch Swedish Pimple spoon I was jigging.

Though unintentional and purely accidental, a respectable lake trout put up one of the best fights I've experienced on a jigging rod on ice. Lake trout have a higher tolerance for very cold water. They a faster, quicker and thrive in ice cold water, more so than any other species we have in this region.

A few minutes later, Warren grabbed the lake trout as I carefully maneuvered it's big head up the ice hole. Turned out to be the biggest lake trout I've caught on ice to date, at 28 inches / 7.25 lbs.

Nice mint condition fish, it was released unharmed and in top condition after a short weigh in and picture.

As a side note, I do plan on eventually going down to Vermont or New York state to attempt to legally target lake trout at some point. Some of the lakes there have lake trout weighing 20+ lbs. Though chances at landing a lake trout of that size on ice a very slim, I can safely say that I'll opt for 10 inch ice holes, after seeing how this smaller one just fit in my 8 inch ice hole.

February 13 to February 20, 2020:

Took a break from ice fishing, headed down to Dallas, Texas to fish for buffs (smallmouth buffalo).
Read more about my trip at:
http://freshwater-phil.blogspot.com/2020/02/fishing-for-buffs-buffalo-in-texas.html

Tuesday February 25th, 2020.
Weather: 5 degrees Celsius, sunny, 10 km/h wind
Water temp: 1-2 degrees Celsius

For my first ice fishing outing since getting back from my week of fishing in Dallas, I decided to try a new spot for landlocked salmon, and rainbow / brown trout on ice. I had been itching to try out a Panoptix sonar at this spot, as fish are far and few in between. Unfortunately, my friend was not able to pick it up before the outing, so we were stuck using standard flashers.

We got quite a late start, drilled first hole around 11 am. We jigged suspended near the surface over deep water, using a variety of lures, and dead sticked some live worms as well. Nothing doing, no fish in sight.

I moved shallower shortly after noon. Eventually found a hole that had an aggressive fish chasing my jigging rap up to the surface a few times. After a good 20 minutes, I switched lures to a tiny 1 inch kastmaster spoon tipped with both a mealworm and tiny birth of earthworm. The aggressive fish came up took the lure on my first drop.

I managed to get a quick glimpse of a big silver fish darting around under my ice hole, but unfortunately it spit the hook within 5-10 seconds. Based on the shape and color, most likely a rainbow trout. Looked to be 18-20 inches long under water, but when you factor in magnification, I'd guess 16 inches or so. Would have been nice to land it, but sometimes, the fish win. That was the only fish I hooked all day, didn't mark much else either except for a few smelt and possibly a small lake trout deeper down towards the end of the day.

That ends my month for February 2020. Only made it out onto the ice 3 times this month, but I did manage to put in 7 days of open water fishing in Texas, and landed some good buffs to make up for it.

As we get into March, I'm hoping to stock up on some eating sized pike and some big perch. A nice trophy wouldn't hurt either. Hoping safe ice holds up until the season ends on March 31st.

Fishing Summer to fall transition - September 2019

September 2019 turned out to be on the warm side, but sure enough, fall finally arrived late in the month. With the water cooling down a good 10 to 15 degrees F, fishing has been sort of inconsistent. Some outings were a lot better than average for both numbers and size, others were dismal, especially for bass.

Starting off with bottom feeders, we managed to land a good number of carp in the mid to upper twenties, mainly night fishing short outings after dark.

Carp weren't the only big bottom feeders that came to play. Eli landed his biggest channel cat of the season.

And his first encounter with a redhorse sucker.

I landed my first lake sturgeon of the season, fishing with my friend Mark.

Moving on to predators, I stuck to my season's topwater theme, and spent a good bit of time trying to land another topwater musky, mainly from my float tube. Though I wasn't able catch any, I did end up with a nice pike with a massive head that exploded on the big topwater musky lure I was casting (Topraider) from my float tube.

I did have better success with muskies while fishing for musky from my friend Mike's boat. In a short 4 hour outing, we managed to hook three muskies. I landed two of them, some really nice color patterns and markings on these St Lawrence river muskies.

The third (and biggest of the day) jumped clear out of the water three times before throwing the hook, I wasn't able to prevent the jumps from the hyper aggressive beast.

Bass were the least co-operative of my target species, I few missed hits from largemouth bass, but I did manage to land another largemouth bass on the Pop R from my float tube.

As well as a few smaller to mid size smallmouth bass fishing with my friend Mark.

With Rosh Hashana coming up and the high holidays all in October this year, I will be doing significantly less fishing than I've got accustomed to over this past summer. Still hope to get in a few good outings, and maybe some monster fish if I'm lucky enough.

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova!

2018 fishing season highlights

Looks like it's about that time of the year again. Just about ready to stow away my fishing gear and get ready for the ice fishing season, which will likely arrive earlier than usual this year. As usual, I'll run through some of our season highlights in pics with narrative.

2018 was another fun and informative fishing season, although I was thrown more "curveballs" that I imagined. From losing spots due to construction and closures, to extreme weather conditions, this season put me to the test a bit more than what I'm usually used to.

As always in fishing, perseverance paid off, and the entire family as well as customers and friends landed some big fish.

Starting off with predatory species, as they embody sport fishing a bit more than bottom feeders, although I do enjoy them all equally...

Bass:

Largemouth bass were my target for this species, the vast majority of time chasing bass was in areas where they are the dominant species. The kids and I all landed some nice largies to kick off the bass fishing season, fishing the Quebec bass opener at Mijocama for the 16th season in a row.

I landed some nice largemouth both from shore, and from my new float tube as well.

While I didn't target smallmouth bass too much, I did manage to land a few quality smallies as well.

Northern Pike:

Spent a lot less time targeting Northern Pike this season, but on the few days that we did, the action was good.

 Some more trophies were landed during trips to to Mijocama, and then at Le Domaine Shannon in July:

Walleye:

Another neglected sport fish species this season, the 2 landed by Avi and I were incidental, while targeting pike.

When I finally did get around to targeting walleye late in the season with my friend Mark, I did just fine under his guidance.

Musky:

I normally don't target muskies much on my own. My friend Mike took most of the musky season off, and by the time I was set to get out with Patrick, he had sold his boat for the season. However, I did manage a couple smaller muskies while targeting other species.

My first musky came shortly after the season opener, I was targeting bass during one of my first ever float tube outings. Casting a buzzbait on a light rod, the musky put up a great fight, numerous jumps, and towed me around until I subdued it and landed it by hand.

Probably my most enjoyable catch of the season.

Carp:

This had to be one of my toughest overall season fishing for carp. The late start to spring, had them sort of lethargic until mid May. The extreme heat and lack of wind we experienced most of the summer was bad enough, but almost every group that I took out all season ended up booking on the worst possible days weather wise, extreme heat, with no wind and mirror like surface.

Still, we managed to save face and land some decent fish, but nowhere near the quality and numbers of seasons past. My 2018 carp picture gallery can be viewed by clicking:
http://www.freshwaterphil.com/carp-fishing-pictures.cfm

My 2 notable catches of the season, cam 2 days apart. My biggest carp landed in 2018 was 31 lbs.

Less than 48 hours later, I took my childhood friend and his kids out for some carp fishing, while they were visiting from NY. First fish of the day, was a stunning mirror carp, just a touch under 20 lbs.

I finally stumbled onto a new spot late in the season, plan to try it again during peak season next year.

Sturgeon:

Our windiest and coldest October destroyed most of my sturgeon fishing plans, with both Mark and Patrick trying to play catchup for the crazy amount of bookings they had to cancel due to weather. Luckily, I did manage a few hours fishing sturgeon with Mark in September, and landed a couple nice sturgeons.

Other freshwater species:

Managed some incidental channel catfish while chasing carp, nothing over 10 lbs though. Some decent perch, sunfish, and small trout as well.

Ice fishing:

I particularly enjoyed my 2018 ice fishing season, exploring more lakes than ever before, landing some nice pike..

Found some good jumbo perch spots, as well as some largemouth bass:

I spent a week in Hawaii, fishing the Pacific ocean for the first time ever. As guides for big game species were too expensive for my liking, I decided to do it all from the shore on my own. Extremely rewarding, and not a trip I'll forget any time soon, read more at: 

http://freshwater-phil.blogspot.com/2018/08/shore-fishing-adventure-in-kauai.html

And last but not least, my first season fishing out of my new float tube. Great way of combining a good workout on hot days with good fishing. Read about my outings at: 

http://freshwater-phil.blogspot.com/2018/06/canada-float-tube-fishing-season-1.html 

All in all, another memorable fishing season in the books. Thank you all for following my adventures online. Thank you to my customers for putting your confidence in me as your fishing guide. Thank you to my family (especially my lovely wife) for putting up with my fishing addiction. And most of all, thank you dear God, for giving me the ability to pursue my dreams.