Early Winter 2017

Finally deciding to write this post because the poor ice conditions this year are preventing me from getting to my usual mid-late winter spots. I need something to look back on! This post basically summarizes my fishing in the month of December up until I left for North Carolina as seen in the previous post.

After enduring that horrible time of the year between regular and ice fishing seasons, cabin fever had set in and everyone was very anxious to get out on the ice. Day 1 ended up being on Dec. 15th, we were out as soon as we could find a solid 3" of black ice. Fair warning to all, I don't suggest going out on thin ice unless you know the necessary precautions to take. This 1st day I went out with Alex and Carl and we all got into some nice 11-13" Crappie. Highlight was Alex catching her lifer Crappie of course :)

The next day I went back out with Carl to check out some abandoned quarries that he had been eyeing on Google Maps. Unfortunately, they were filled with tiny perch :p Check out the amount of fish on my sonar in the picture below. They day after I explored a new lake with another friend and found huge population of White Perch!

If I remember correctly, I took the next day off and then went to a Bluegill spot with Alex the next day. She caught a giant, one of the biggest I've seen out of Quebec! It also turned out that there was a hot Crappie bite at the spot, I had almost never seen them here before.

This is starting to get a bit long so I'll just summarize two more days in this paragraph; there were other nice Crappie and Bluegill days that I'll omit in the interest of brevity. One of the more memorable days was when Francois came to visit from Quebec City for his first ice fishing experience and also a shot at his lifer Black Crappie. He succeeded, albeit a small one haha. I also met another new friend the next day at the Longueuil marina. We started talking on iNaturalist so it was nice to meet another person with similar interests. Ali also came down from the Townships and we caught a couple of nice Pike and Perch :)

Francois' Crappie