North Frontenac Report

[Fisherman89]

Got out yesterday on a lake that I had success on this past summer and wanted to see how it was for ice fishing.

The weather was excellent (+2, overcast, and no wind). The ice conditions at the launch were not great, with the very soft ice at the shoreline I ended up with two soakers right off the bat! (I need to invest in some proper rubber winter boots) But once past the launch the ice conditions were decent, there was a mix of slush and snow on top of the ice, but the ice itself was great (9" clear/black with another 3-4" of cloudy ice on top).

I headed out to a mid lake hump that I found in the summer (starts in about 20' and goes all the way up to 4') and started drilling holes around the area trying to find the edge (having livescope would have made that a breeze, maybe an upgrade for next year ). I ended up setting up just off the edge of the hump in 20' and had a tipup set a bit shallower in 16'.

Caught a small pike and fallfish right after setting up (around 11:30 AM) and then nothing for about 3 hours! I was marking a lot of small perch, but they weren't biting. Around 3PM I had a big mark come in and it crushed my 1/8oz VMC Tumbler spoon.

After a dragged out fight (I only have 6lb test on my finesse walleye rod) I landed this 32+ inch pike.

pike.JPG (144.74 KiB) Viewed 1008 times

The pike was missing a chunk of its upper lip, maybe from a previous catch?

pike_mouth.JPG (130.06 KiB) Viewed 1008 times

At 4PM I moved my tipup closer to where I had setup my pop-up in 20' and was hopeful that walleye would move in. The bite window for walleye was short lived, at about 4:45PM I caught two walleye back to back on a Frostbite Tantrum rattlebait in the Goldmine colour.

One under the slot at 15".

walleye_15.JPG (221.01 KiB) Viewed 1008 times

And the second one an 18.5" keeper

walleye_18.5.JPG (210.94 KiB) Viewed 1008 times

At 5:30PM my tipup flag finally went up! I landed this chunky 22" walleye. After a quick measurement and photo it went back in the water.

walleye_22.JPG (173.46 KiB) Viewed 1008 times

After that, I didn't have any other marks on my sonar. I packed up at 7PM. Even though the bite wasn't really hot, I was happy with the outing and I'll hopefully be heading back there again this season.

I'd be interested to hear if others are having luck in the area. Cheers!

[Bear]

Wow, fishn North Frontenac and not targeting trout, Nice Pike and Walters. Sounds like a fairly easy to access lake , i'll need to do some research. I have a seasonal camp on Palmerston , ice fished a couple lakes in winter for trout with little sucsess

[smitty55]

Wow, fishn North Frontenac and not targeting trout, Nice Pike and Walters. Sounds like a fairly easy to access lake , i'll need to do some research. I have a seasonal camp on Palmerston , ice fished a couple lakes in winter for trout with little sucsess

Used to do fairly well ice fishing for Lakers on Palmerston, I was really disappointed when they closed the winter season. We used to take long weekends at West Palmerston Cottages. Pretty sure I was the last vehicle on the ice that year, there were dark areas where the ice looked bad in front of Tamarack Island that we drove around and there was like 10ft of open water getting off the ice at the launch that afternoon. Don't even know if they still stock it anymore.

[Bear]

If I remember right the last year it was stocked was 2002, still catching clipped and tagged lakers