Feb 25th Muskoka, Mixed bag

Got out for a day trip with fellow board member Mykola and another friend. On the ice by 7:30 we were marking fish at our first location in around 38’-40’. Wasn’t long before Nicholas had iced the first two fish of the day, consecutive smallmouth bass, both released promptly. Moved to deeper water in search of some lake trout and caught a few smaller ones. Had one up high that I missed twice about 10’ under the ice. Later in the day we set up off a drop off in 45’-55’ that had been productive in the past. Most of the activity was on bottom. Mixed in the schools of rainbow smelt were some whitefish and our friend was able to land a nice one on the meegs. Overall the fish weren’t very active but still a great time out regardless.

The whitefish:

On the meegs:

Rainbow smelt living up to their name:

Very nice and productive trip for sure

Nice report!

Awesome! Must have been great to be out there.

Resisted the temptation to set up the tent, allowed for more movement. If we stayed in laker grounds we would have got a pile of small ones, while holding out for a bigger one. The hunt was for whitefish, and we found one, I missed a couple that were surely whitefish as well. Beautiful day!

Great outing guys! I'm hoping the ice holds for the weekend. One last kick at the can would be nice.

Prepping the rainbow smelt:

Fried smelt with a cold cider on the side:

It’s February after all…usually slow. Good outing anyway guys and funny about the smallies, my cousin was out yesterday and caught 4 smallmouth in a row in 45 f.o.w…. Weird

Nice and as Drew said, it's suppose to be February although it really feels like mid-end of March. And tomorrow's rain is not going to help any. But hopefully, a cold Wednesday night into Thursday will help to keep the ice to at least this weekend. Can't wait to see if I can find some smelt runs up here this spring after ice out...which maybe much earlier this year. Did you happen to notice is the gonads were well developed in your smelt? Just wondering if they already know and are already gearing up for an early spawn.

Oh I just noticed that you kept the head on. Do you just remove the gills and guts? I see that some cut the head off and then pull the guts out. If the head is not cut off but not clean through the esophagus, you can sometimes, pull the head off along with the guts - it's the way I have learned to clean them.

It’s been a weird winter for sure, definitely feels like mid March right now. Three of the female smelt had roe, I’m not sure how far along they were in their development. Milt sacs were present in the male fish as well.

As far as processing the smelt, I debated removing the heads with Nicholas but decided to leave them on. I cut from the vent up to the gills and removed everything. Glad I did, the heads were delicious!