Ice Fishing Season Rundown

It’s that time of year again where my winter ice fishing season has now come to an end. What a season it was with lots of fish caught and many new lakes fished. I had the opportunity to fish with a lot of good friends and family members this winter and I really enjoyed that. It’s awesome when you can do something you truly have a passion for and share it with so many others. I especially enjoyed fishing with my cousin George “Coldfront” Potter where it seemed we were fishing every weekend for the last three months and some …wow, we can’t complain can we George?

Well I think it’s only appropriate that we thank our lovely and most understanding wives Erin and Michelle for putting up with this extreme fishing nonsense that George and I take part in ….we love you very much.

Well this winter thankfully was much better than last year as we had some much colder temps and a lot of the lakes were able to freeze on a more consistent basis. Even the mighty Lake Simcoe froze this year which was a welcomed change as last year the main lake basin never froze up for safe travel conditions.

My season started of January, first with George and myself hitting Lake St John for some early season walleye and pike. We fished that lake for two weekends then it was a trip to North Bay where we stayed at Tama Kwa Vacationland on Lake Nipissing. If you have not ever stayed at this resort I highly recommend that you do. The fishing was spectacular and the accommodations were nothing short of first class.

The following weekend had us staying on my home lake in the Parry Sound district at one of my good friends Joe Traccito’s cottage for some back lakes fishing for crappie and pike. What a great trip this was as my cousin caught his personal best pike through the ice at 20lbs and we caught numerous crappie. Glad we got out and tried some new lakes.

Now that February was upon us Lake Simcoe had solid ice on her and this is where I spent a great deal of the month as I took full advantage of fishing some big lake trout. This is where I had the opportunity to fish with many different friends and fellow anglers that I had not fished with before as we used Lake Simcoe as a common meeting ground. Lake Simcoe was on fire this year and just between the people I fished with and myself we released close to a hundred lake trout for the month of February. Not too shabby I must say considering I got out about seven times. What a great fishery we have so close to us southern anglers. Thank you Simcoe.

Seeing that March was fast approaching and Simcoe had been so good to me, fishfnatic.com decided to host its first annual Lake Simcoe ice fishing tournament which turned out to be a great event. We had about fifty people that came out to support the tourney from all over Ontario and 34 registered entrants that took part in the derby. Congrats to Scott “Crappiekiller” Anderson who took home first place in the event. I would like to say a big shout out to all who participated in this event and look so forward to seeing you all again next year ice permitting.

Well now seeing that March is one of my favorite times to fish, I had to put forth a drive to finish out my ice fishing season. What a drive it turned out to be. We made one more trip back up to the cottage for some big pike and made a couple pit stops along the way staying at the FishinMusicians cottage near Lake Joseph. This was by far the icing on the cake as we had some great laughs and even better fishing as we hit Lake Joseph and surrounding area lakes that did not disappoint. Let’s just say we had some hot eats and cold treats as some of our fish fry’s were epic moments on these weekends. This about sums it up as I was able to get out one last time on Lake Simcoe before it closed and have now packed away my ice fishing gear till next season.

Thanks for a great winter season Mother Nature. Looking forward to what you have in store for us next season.