Fishing Reports Nicholas Giuga

Family Ice Fishing on Lake Simcoe – February 2013

by Nicholas Giuga February 11, 2013

Lake Simcoe, Feb 3rd 2013

Temperature: -16
Wind: none
Depth: 6-12 feet

My dad, my brother, and I woke up at about 7 am to go ice fishing on Lake Simcoe. We packed up all of our gear, ate breakfast and left at about 8:45 am. We had investigated a few fish hunt options on Lake Simcoe, including Pefferlaw Fish Huts and Dave’s Fish Huts. We were lucky that Dave’s Fish Huts had an opening due to a cancellation.

They took us out to our hut and we set up. Our hut was great, it had two 4′ x 1′ rectangle holes for fishing, a bucket of minnows, and it was really warm.

We quickly got to fishing. I was using a silver Rapala Jigging Rap; my Dad was using a Slab Grabber; and my brother was using a very small spoon with a minnow. After about 1 minute of fishing, I quickly got into my first Perch and released him quickly. After about 10 more minutes of nothing, my brother and my dad got their first fish of the day; I got my second.

Our hut had very little activity compared to the other huts so the next fish of the day came 5 minutes later.

Since there was very little activity I decided to set up a home made tip up so that I could increase the chances of getting a fish. After about 10 more minutes of nothing my brother noticed a very large fish coming towards us. It revealed itself to be a MASSIVE pike that was easily over 10 lbs! We were all freaking out when it came by but it was not interested in anything; not even the baby perch that were hanging around.

We caught a few more perch, but they were all very small. I was getting really hot inside the hut so I decided to take the auger outside with my tip up and go hole-hopping. There had been some holes left over from some others so I decided to use those first. I set up my tip up in one of the holes and began drilling another while I was waiting. Unfortunately, the ice was really thick, black ice; and drilling it with an 8 inch auger was just too difficult. I decided I would just move around the lake looking for abandoned holes. I came back to my tip up, pulled up, and found a decent sized perch had taken my minnow. I continued doing this all over the lake and managed to catch more than 10 perch. After a while I wanted to start jigging again. I set up my tip up once again; walked back over to the hut; got my rod and walked back to my other line; but no fish. After about 10 minutes of catching little perch, I felt a large tug! Some of my drag was pulled; I reeled up to reveal a 1 lb perch, my new PB.

After that the day slowed down again; and only about 10 fish were pulled up for the next few hours. At 3 pm my Dad let us know that we were gonna head home at 4; so I decided I would venture off to an area that I hadn’t checked yet. I hopped from hole to hole catching about 10 perch in my last hour of the day; and then headed back to the hut. The door was locked to keep the heat in; when I knocked, my dad said “hold on a sec, there’s a big one”. I waited about 5 minutes and the door finally opened to reveal a nice sized herring caught by my brother.