So Wednesday the 10th I headed up to our place for a planned 2 day fishing trip on Nipissing. Ice formation has definitely been an issue this season but reports from Callander Bay were consistently showing 6 to 8 inches of black ice. Callander is not my usual go to on Nip as i typically get on at Fish Bay and hit the west side of South Bay and the south shore west of there. Well as little as 3 days ago Fish Bay still had pockets of open water so my typical go to was a non-starter.
Thursday morning i headed out around 7 am. This was the temp about 5 minutes out from Centennial Park in Callander:
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Grabbed the auger and set out on foot to do my own due diligence on ice conditions. Popped a number of holes and thickness ranged from 6.75 to 8 inches of clear solid black ice. Based on that decided to sled it. Pic of a hole in the pop-up showing ice colour:
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Sled unloaded and all set up:
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Fishing was never hot or cold per say even at first and last light. It was just steady all day with a fish every 30 or 45 minutes. Ended the day with 12 walleye and 2 perch. Managed my 2 fish in the slot for the walleye and both perch came home as well - they were right around 10 inches:
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Ten of the walleye were between 13 to 15 inches with this being typical:
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Most of the walleye were actually caught on the Jaw Jacker which was tipped with a 1/4 oz jig head and shiner. The two keepers though were landed on a Buckshot Rattle spoon tipped with a shiner:
17 inch keeper:
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16 inch keeper:
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The original plan had been to head out again today but alarm went off this morning and i decided to grab another hour of sleep, eat a monster hot breakfast and then do chores around the cottage until about 230 pm leaving me just enough time to make it back home before the storm hit. Was a great 2 days - caught a whack of fish and got a whack of firewood moved.
