Jan 6th Haliburton Lake Trout, late post

Wanted to start this post off by thanking metalbuckle for getting the board up and running again. Appreciate all the work you do to keep this community and resource available to everyone.

Went out Saturday with my cousin and close friend to a lake we had been to before. At the launch for 7:30am, we spotted a friend that Mykola (Nicholas) had introduced us to in the fall who had driven up from the city and was already out on the ice. Eager to get out and test the ice with him we quickly unloaded our gear and set out from the launch.

Our first hole drilled, about 150m from the launch, revealed ~4 inches of black ice. We slowly continued out spudding and drilling until we reached deeper water. The thickness of the ice was fairly consistent but as we neared the main basin the ice was noticeably thinner. Deciding not to push it much further, we set up by the edge of a drop off into 50-55 feet. By 8am, Nicholas had launched along with fellow board member Xiaolu (James) and to my surprise at least 3 other groups of people (more on this later).

As we set up, I noticed a pair of fishermen that had been trailing behind us from the time we had left the launch. I relayed ice thickness to them as we got further out but it soon became apparent that they were sticking very close to us out of convenience.

Around 10am, I marked a fish around 45 feet. I immediately began my ascent and as I neared the ice surface, no more than 3 feet from reeling the lure straight out of the hole, it hit my lipless crankbait. It thrashed below the hole but never made a sustained run. Before I even had the fish out, one of the fishermen that had been following us ran over and watched as I pulled out the lake trout. I took a quick measurement, 47cm, released. To my surprise, I looked over and the same person who had come running over was now set up right beside me, not even 10 yards away.

By noon, the wind had picked up and we decided to set up the shelter. As we were moving our gear inside the hut, my friend spotted a mark dart up from bottom towards my crankbait suspended at 20 feet. Right as he grabbed my rod he felt weight and we had another lake trout on. Measured at 61.5cm, above the slot, he decided to keep this one.

I took a look to see where the pair of fishermen were that had been following us and saw they had once again moved right beside us. 30 minutes later, the snow and wind had really picked up and I watched as they packed up and left. I walked over to their holes and discovered several perch lying frozen to the ice as well a large discarded tangle of fishing line.

1 of 2 lake trout my cousin caught, the other was in the slot range and released.

It was unfortunate having a pair of inconsiderate fishermen ruin a good day on the ice, looking back I wish I had said something to them from the start.

I lost one nice laker, caught a pile of dink perch, my friend Al ended up with a 25" 7lber laker. My friend Paul got a 13" jumbo perch from 60ft down. It was definitely crisp out there!
Great looking trout and a great start to 2024 laker fishing. Sometimes slot lakes are the best producers of consistent size. Fish here average 24".
Great report!

Note admin: looks like the quote symbol is posting as a question mark symbol when the post is uploaded. Appreciate the efforts to get this place back up!

Glad you guys got into some fish as well! I was joking to Mike that we had been catching the same small perch over and over again. That is a great fish, sounds like Al got the largest of the day.

Sweet! Sounds like a good day out other than some inconsiderate fishermen unfortunately. Will definitely have to try for some Lake Trout in Haliburton soon, but have my eyes on trying to target some Rainbow Trout next!

You probably made the right choice by ignoring them, as best you could. Some people just don't get the definition of fishing etiquette. Glad you all caught some fish and thanks for the report.

The best thing was that you caught fish and they did not. But I have experienced this before. The next weekend, you may get them (with more buddies) coming up and drilling a bunch of holes all around where you fished and doing all kinds of things. If they figure it out, you may lose the good fishing if you were on some good structure ...and I wouldn't expect better behaviour if they caught some lakers as well if that was what they did to the perch and the littering. It does sour fishing. The best thing to happen is if they come back a few more times and still get skunked and decide you got the last couple of lakers in the lake and give up. If you see similar in the future, put up the shelter, keep it quiet.

Them seeing us catch does not bother me as much as knowing they were wasting fish and littering. It is unfortunate but all you can do is learn from the experience.

Agree. But I have seen what has happened on some spots on Simcoe and well, I don't go back to those spots. Not just that certain small spots are over-harvested by some (and it seems with everyone they know) but lots of garbage down the holes and on the ice as well (tons of cigarette butts). It just destroys a spot for along time...and esp. if they return year after year until they decide it's not worth it anymore because there isn't anything left to catch. Simcoe can take alot more than any of these small lakes you guys are fishing and there are many more spots. Small lakes can get destroyed quickly so I prefer not to "help" such people find fish. Courteous people who share similar minds about our lakes and are respectful to others, I don't mind helping.

thanks for waiting to post these reports Mike33 and thanks for the error report Mykola. Lots of little gremlins i've been fixing. But I think I got most of them. I will look into the quoting module

I manually fixed it for now, until I can debug this.

Great report nice looking lakers !!

Thanks Sparky, enjoyed your post on your brook trout trip!