Fish-Hawk.Net

well, finally made the anual trip to bear creek cottages on lake nippising's south bay. it was simply the greatest fishing trip of my entire life.there wasnt a cloud in the sky the entire 7 days. the walleye were jumping into the boat once we got a pattern and some coordinates down. heres some pics, starting off with my PB walleye at 22 inches , which is a pretty good walleye for nippising standards. it was in the slot so she had to go back, but after thinking about it, i wouldnt have kept it even if there wasnt a slot cuz fish like that are just too rare and valuable for the future of fishing in nippising. sure put up a good fight on my ultralite too

dad with 18 incher

bassboy with another

brother with a nice keeper

another pik

2 15 inch keepers

brother with fish

at the slaughter house

gettin my cook on

first one of the trip for me

sunset

surprisingly, didnt get any bass, and i only got 1 pike. we usually manage to pull a couple out of there but we didnt really target them so i guess if we did, then we would have got a few.
one final thought/question/opinion. not sure if you guys understand how the whole slot idea works, but basically fish between 15 and 3/4 inches and 23 and 2/3 inch walleye must be released because they are the spawning fish. i caught one nice walleye at about 18 inches that absolutly inhaled my jig, and was bleeding really bad. i tried to revive it, but was not sucessful. so basically, i had a belly up walleye on my hands that should be released. i did end up letting it float away so i didnt get in trouble because both my dad and a guy in another boat said i should because the ministry doesnt give a rats butt if its toast or not. so i guess what im trying to get at here, is this: how can you justify throwing back a perfectly good eating fish, that would otherwise go to waste and just get eaten by the gulls and cormerants, just because its in the slot?
-bassboy-

Great trip, awesome that you can fish and have a great time with dad and your brother.

Great report and pics. To answer you question (this is my opinion) about releasing a fish you know is going to die. If there was an exception in the rules for such fish, you just know that there are people that will deliberatly run a hook or something through the gills and claim that it was injured while being caught. So, unless they are caught in the act, they would get away with it; therefore, it is better in the eyes of the MNR to have a few fish die thenl try to enforce and unenforcable rule. Keep up the great reports, and hope your summer is a successful one.

Sweet!

My wife's family and I just got back from a week (July 14-21) at Camp LaPlage on the north side of Nippissing.

Caught my first walleye in 4 years! 23.5 inches, definitely a keeper. We mostly targeted pike and bass. Caught a nasty 10lb sheephead.

So what was your method for walleye?

Cheers,

Trey

I enjoyed your walleye report and pictures.

Glad you and your family had a good time.

Frustrating about the mortally hooked walleye having to be set adrift, but that's the way it goes, and I think it's exactly like Pints put it. There are probably more than a few folks who wouldn't think twice about doing that in order to get away with keeping one that should have been released.

W.

Nice walleye

Great photos and fish - looks like you really got the walleye figured out up there on the big lake!

Insightful comment Pints.