Presented by Garmin
This was by far the toughest shoot this season, not fishing-wise, but conditions-wise.
You wanna’ talk about a heat wave, well this adventure was right smack-down in the middle of a monster. It’s trips like this one in which those that say “man you have the best job in the world…” don’t realize just how nice an airconditioned office and house really are!
Oh well, the show must go on!
Steve Niedzwiecki joined us on this as he’s always gung ho to come along. Unfortunately for him, this was a doozy in the hot weather department.
Now, you may be looking at the image above and thinking it couldn’t have been that bad but, that was the early morning of the last day. The heat finally broke as we were leaving. Go figure!
As far as the fishing was concerned, we’re sure the high pressure of the heatwave certainly affected the fish, especially the big Walleye. Those are times when we would normally pull out the night fishing gear and carry on. But since we can’t shoot effectively in the night, daylight is all we had to work with.
All in all we caught lots of fish and even got into a couple of JUMBO Yellow Perch, some of the biggest that we have ever seen!
Our goal was to catch a big Quantz Pike, which is what the lake is known for. Along the way, however, we felt compelled to hit on any Walleye that were in our Pike path.
GARMIN MOMENTS OF THE QUANTZ SHOOT
TRADITIONAL SCREEN
FISHING CHART/TRADITIONAL COMBO SCREEN
Above are two different screenshots from our portable Garmin unit of what we believe were Walleye. In the first image, you see that big “hook” at the top of the drop-off. This fish is close to the bottom and is surrounded by all kinds of clutter. It looks like baitfish, zooplankton and a whole lot of other stuff. This fish didn’t even move when we tried to catch it. The situation/environment was simply “too crazy” in our minds.
The bottom screenshot, however, has a single fish that was in a nice clean and clear environment. This is a much better situation to present a bait in and in fact, this was a Walleye that bit a jig.
Two very different scenarios, two totally different fish attitudes.
FISHING CHART SCREEN WITH QUICKDRAW ENABLED
This screenshot shows our #1 Pike area of the shoot. Using the Quickdraw feature on the Fishing Chart page, we were able to draw the outline of a long, extending point which was covered in cabbage weed. When you find cabbage weed in northern Ontario, you find Pike, plain and simple.
Although the Quickdraw feature couldn’t distinguish the weeds from the bottom, it did show the subtle rise or depth change EXACTLY where the weeds were located. This makes executing a presentation so much easier and more efficient than just random casting.
Of course, when we would see either an open area, a thicker weed clump, a piece of wood or rock, or of course, encounter a fish, we would immediately waypoint the exact spot. That way we could hit these high percentage areas of the weed bed either later that day or any other time during the trip.
Mapping and waypointing are crucial in pretty much all fishing scenarios.
WHAT WE USED TO CATCH EM’
Northern Ontario Walleye LOVE Yo-Zuri’s Crystal Minnows
For the Walleye, our best presentation was trolling Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow Walleye Deep Divers as well as casting jigs and plastics of various shapes and sizes but with fluke styles being the most prominent.
This was my soft-plastic Pike presentation (with a leader of course)
For the Pike, we varied between some Yo-Zuri hard baits as well as some, natural baitfish patterned soft jerkbaits on a weighted swimbait hook. All Pike presentations included a heavy, homemade Yo-Zuri fluorocarbon leader.
With the aid of a cutter/crimping tool, it’s easy to make good, reliable Pike leaders.
The highlight of this episode was tying into a monster on the last day… exactly what we were waiting for… kind of!
