Nipissing Bungalow trips, season recap

[Toony]

Very jealous of you folk who live on or near Nip. Its a 3.5 hour drive for me (No I do not live in Toronto). I want to retire near that body of water.

I did manage 4 bungalow trips to Nip for me this year tho. 3 solo trips and one with my brother. I've made it fishing 21 days this winter and 15 of them were on Nip so far.

I've mentioned in the past I love Rob's 5 Star because I have good history catching there.

In early January at Rob's 5 Star - 16' water and COLD!!!- I crushed it. So many good sized walleye I lost track. Might be my best walleye trip ever.

End of January at Rob's 5 Star- 16' water - Was pretty slow. I actually left a day early to fish lake Simcoe instead

Mid February at Lake Nip Ice Fishing Charters - Very slow fishing. Mainly perch with the odd walleye. Think we were too deep. 30' at Loneley Island. I won't be back with them. (Accommodations were fine but every point of contact with the operator was stressful. I appreciate its a hard business but I really don't need to get b####ed to about how bad the help has been this year every single time I interacted with them. Had to hound them for bait and to get a ride off the ice too.)

This past week I was up at Rob's 5 Star from Monday - Thursday again.
Fished 14' water. i do not have transportation so I fish in and around the hut. Marked walleye all day long every day but the little buggers didn't respond for the most part. Things picked up first thing in the morning and between 5:30 and 6:30 pm as expected. Those were still fun times.

Thank god for the perch. I would catch one every 1.5 hours or so to fill the day and wake me up. I fish Simcoe all the time. I gotta say the perch on Nip are generally bigger on average than on Simcoe, but Simcoe still produces bigger overall size slabs. Everyone I caught this time was a jumbo pretty much tho.

Thursday morning it was like the heavens opened up. Dropped a line at 5:30am. By 5:40 I had a 20" walleye. Lost it in the hole but it was too big to turn so I could easily pick her out. The next 2 hours I had another 4 good sized walleye and a ton of bumps, chases and nudges. After 3 days of it being slow it was awesome! Great way to finish the trip.

In total I'd say I caught over 25 perch.
I caught about 14 or 15 walleye. 4 in the slot. One over and only 2 of them I'd call small.
2 small pike
2 Cisco - one giant!!!
Nothing spectacular so no pics.

Probably caught an equal number of fish on the deadstick I love my Finicky Fooler) as I did on anything on my jigging rod. i wash everything in the tackle box trying to get their interest but just didn't see anything that worked better except that it seemed full minnows were the key. I only caught a couple fish with just minnow heads on.

I've still got 2 days booked on Simcoe this year but my Nip days are done (i've already booked my time off for my 3 trips next year!)

A personal note to Kokemachine. Your Minnow Clappers have become a go to confidence booster for me. Caught many a walleye on your lures this year. I'll be ordering more. Thanks.

Elbows Up!

[floater]

I hear ya on the Lake Nip Ice Charters. Guy kept yelling at the younger guys who were just answering out questions.

[kenster]

Surprised i've never seen any reviews for Pearraults as i believe they do very well with the perch and walleyes.It was good out that way this year

[floater]

Peraults used to be Grump and Grumps and then the Reeds bough the business. Those two ran a great operation and we went back for 16 years. Until Perrault took over. Now we go elsewhere.

[Toony]

I booked with Perraults 2 years in a row for first ice and both times the ice was delayed. I was going to do 2 day fish and stay in a hotel for the night. I then found my usual place and just never went back to booking with them.

I remember great communication and he was even going to help me out with bait so I've got nothing bad to say about the operation.

[Northhunter]

I prefer to be deep than shallow. Those 10-20' flats can be fire early season, but the bite tends to get lighter and move out as the season wears on.
We just did our wknd. We didn't count fish. Maybe 30+ 'eyes. 3 legal, one 21.5", one 24.25". About the same or better in perch. Kept 16. 27fow below the ice.

Rob's have had theirs. Whole thread on here got canned last year or the year before (sponsor?).
I know because my post got fired off into the sun. We were repeat customers.