Ad blocker detected: Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.
Hi all, starting the annual thread for the bay. Share reports, news, questions etc all in one place
That said, They (NCC) have moved boulders on both sides of the launch again to allow for more access. For some reason they moved the rocks right where the water line is instead of thew top end of the launch, but we have more access now... The manager of the NCC for that area has also informed me that moving the boulders is now part of the regular Greenbelt Maintenance Contract there!!!
When I stopped by, I also noticed a small hut set up about 100 yards out! Looking at the weather forcast. I'm guessing we will be getting our hut out there a week from Sat! Cheers all, Merry Christmas and stay safe!
CCLad
Hard to tell from the pic but that was Sunday out about 200 yards from shore. 5.5-6” of clear black ice. Got 2 small perch and a small walleye. There were about 6 pop ups out there with me by nightfall. This rain coming up doesn’t seem good for the ice..
Attachments
F5897E11-2B78-43D8-B586-05675F0F24C1.jpeg (2.88 MiB) Viewed 5847 times
I stopped by the parking lot this aft and there were 5-6 pop ups and 2 permanent huts out there. Nothing too far out but obviously there's some good ice, I didnt venture out. Going down to -14C tonight, that will help things along. May go for a fish tomorrow PM, if I do I'll post my findings.
CCLad
Was out last night probably a good km out, was sitting on 7” of ice. Some guy actually drove his crown vic on the ice! A bit premature for driving I think however haha
Got on a decent bite yesterday late afternoon/evening. Was fishing in 10-11 ft, just a bit further out than most of the popups were (about 7 inches of good ice).
Caught 3 sauger and 4 walleye. 1 eater (14.75"), the rest were all in to 10-12" range. Had the walleye for breakfast this morning!
We got our hut set up on the weekend. The three of us fished for 6 hours, 6 rods - Not 1 bite lol. Not a nibble....
We are set up north east of the launch in about 12 feet or so. We will give it another go in that spot and post the results...
CCLad.
CCLad wrote:We got our hut set up on the weekend. The three of us fished for 6 hours, 6 rods - Not 1 bite lol. Not a nibble....
We are set up north east of the launch in about 12 feet or so. We will give it another go in that spot and post the results...
CCLad.
I was also there on the weekend and the fish were not biting. I had several followers on my sonar, but no takers. I was fishing directly north of the boat ramp in 11 feet.
I did get lucky at the end of the day and got a burbot on my tip-up as I was packing up my gear.
Shirleys bay has never produced for me. Spent an entire winter there with a hut in 2018 and fished 3 days a week only because it is close to home. I also took multiple separate trips that winter with my other shelter (pop up tent) to Buckhams Bay, Furgenson Lake and White Lake that winter. Without exaggeration each trip with the pop up yeilded more fish than I caught the entire winter at Shirley's.......I know people are going to pipe in with stuff about location, bait, technique etc...No, Shirley's Bay is not productive and I know what I am doing - I basically did the same thing I did on the other trips with the pop-up.
We are not talking about the mid season lull here with the reports I am seeing for this year already...seems nothing has changed.
However, I am going out tomorrow to Shirley's if only to do an audit of all my equipment and make sure everything is functional before I do some real fishing on my planned trips. This year however Shirley gets one chance...lol - If I get nothing I am done with that location.
My friend and I fished last night 1 perch and a small eye.. Time to move the hut..
With respect to Shirley's bay being poor fishing, I respectfully disagree. We had been seeing a decline in over all catch numbers for our hut for a couple of seasons, though last year, we had one of our better years numbers wise (talking about walleye...) We/the hut ended up with 50 last season and the ave size was a pound to a pound and a half. decent fish....
CCLad
Sure Tim....I figured we'd hear from you..LOL! I guess I have just lost all confidence there and as you know it is important ice fishing. Maybe I am not noticing the subtleties of a take given that I may not be paying attention with no confidence in the spot. Gotta pay attention on the ice! I remember an outing last winter where the gang next door set up multiple tip ups and then turned their focus on beer drinking away from the tip ups....out my tent window you could see the odd tip up drop.....then eventually go back......unnoticed by the party who packed up at the end of the day probably thinking the fishing was terrible! Dont think they cared much actually as they had a blast...
There are a lot of things that affect success rate in fishing Shirley's for Walleye and in my extensive experience there if you don't do most of them properly your success rate will be far less. First and foremost is location, whether you choose to believe that or not. That why Tim is moving his shack now, he knows from experience. If you don't locate along structure, even if it's minor changes in depth in the bay you won't be around fish as much. I've pointed out some of these on maps in years past if you do a search. It so happens that this happened to be spots where there were always concentrations of permanent shacks back in the day too. Just as important is time of day, if you aren't there at the end of the day for the evening run and into dark for at least an hour or more you likely won't catch many Walleye. I would just shake my head in disbelief as I headed out late afternoon to see people leaving for the next hour just as the prime time at sunset was coming on.In my mind dinner can wait. Plus it's a well known fact that Walleye love current so anytime you can find some it will help once there is enough ice. What current also does even more so than normal is concentrate fish close to the bottom, my minnows are always within a few inches of bottom, if your bait is 12" or more up the fish won't even notice it in the murky water even without current. Also quite important is to have a very sensitive setup, my tip ups are always very delicately balanced so that I can even tell when my minnow is getting excited. Walleye are know to be very light biters and some days my tip up will only go down a couple of inches or even all I'll see is my line moving across the hole. My buddies with shacks often used a length of hanger attached to the wall in a long S shape with their spool of line on a nail and a small slip loop attached to the small bend on the end of the hanger, it was super sensitive, even a small minnow would have it bouncing a bit and light bites were easy to tell.
So you can say what you want cjohnson about you know what you're doing and on others bodies of water it could well work but I will never believe that Shirley's isn't good for fishing anymore, it's still a massive feeding flat and the largest spring spawning ground for miles for numerous species, specially with that lagoon. Then there are the rocky shallow areas with current at both entrances to the bay. That would be like saying that the whole Ottawa river isn't productive anymore and that certainly isn't the case. The fact that you say Shirley's has never produced for you tells me that likely you're doing something wrong, even something as simple as fishing too deep, not along structure or not close enough to bottom. But suit yourself.
So like many aspects of fishing any time of the year it can take doing a lot of little things right to have success, like even when jigging it can come down to cadence or how active you move your lure, sometimes less is best.
