Final ice fishing trip for the season, NE Ontario

With my home lake (simcoe) icing out very early, I had a couple trips planned before I was going to hang it up until December. One was a trip to the Larder Lake derby which I did. Stayed at Cheminis Lodge that weekend, definitely recommend to stay with Dave and Bonnie, very well priced, can include breakfast, lunch, dinner. We opted for the dinners and it was well worth it. Got fed really really well for $30 a meal, had steaks on our last night too. Fishing on larder was okay. Back lakes in that area are the way to go.

This long weekend however i made the trip back up to Kirkland Lake with my dad to fish Abitibi. Our first time was back in December and all the locals we spoke to said to come back April so we did for the easter weekend. First time around we stayed at the Super 8. This time we decided to try something new instead of going back to Super 8 or Cheminis (even though 3 weeks ago we liked it), and stayed at the Prospectors Inn. Same price as the super 8 would’ve been for 2 beds, but here we got a full kitchen with a big fridge, small dining table, couple of couches, big clean bathroom and 2 bedrooms. Can’t beat it if you like to cook your own food.

First day we get to the access and there we probably close to 2 dozen trucks and trailers. Parked on the side of the road, unloaded the sled and made the half hour sled ride in to the Ghost River. The trail compared to December was 3 times wider, but super super bumpy, all of our minnows ended up getting shaken to death ?

Once we got onto the lake, no snow and glare ice and virtually not a soul in sight. We ended up taking a ride around and seems that all the locals were all fishing around the same area. We ended up going pretty far away from everyone, felt like we were the only ones on the lake (good change of pace from the noisy Simcoe, and even Larder from 3 weekends ago).

Now onto the fishing part. We set up about 30 yards off an island in 8fow with over 3 feet of ice! Was very close to needing an auger extension. After about 90 minutes of zero marks, the action picked up at around 9:30am. The goldeyes were everywhere and super aggressive, lots of saugers, ended up landing a few good sized walleyes. Then hooked into a nice 30 inch pike!

Second day was noticeable slower, clear blue sky with the sun beaming. Caught a few goldeyes, my dad lost a big fish no idea what it was but the live scope mark was bigger than the pike from the first day, then landed 1 22inch walleye. All this from 9am until 5pm. With only 1 walleye on the ice, we decided to sit out until sunset bite, and it didn’t disappoint. Goldeyes came in flying, just inhaling our minnows, saugers were out to play and lots of walleyes. Around half the walleyes we saw were just kinda cruising by but other half were coming up and biting. My dad and I both losing a couple big walleyes at the bottom of the hole, and then I even got bit off by something rather large, most likely a walleye as the mark on the scope didn’t look like a pike.. there goes a $15 rattle bait lol. All in all, the sunset bite saved our day and we kept our limit, and probably another 20 goldeyes. After counting, we ended up keeping 54 goldeyes between the 2 of us. They are all in the freezer right now and I’m currently sitting beside my smoker with a few goldeyes from my December trip smoking up.

For those concerned about the number of goldeyes, for ever 10 goldeyes that came in on the scope, 5 would bite and we would only manage to land one cause those buggers we’re just biting the very end of the tail of our minnows or just very quickly spitting them out, even with treble stingers!

Baits of choice were obviously jig and minnow with a stinger hook, and rapala rippin rap style of bait. Caught my pike on a rippin rap and half of my walleyes, even the goldeyes were biting it but not as actively as the jig and minnow. Couple of very small burbot even ate the rippin rap off the bottom ahaha.

This post has been edited by danio1 on Apr 01, 2024 - 04:31 pm

First day was gloomy like this

Couple of the bigger walleyes from day 1, in the 19-20 inch range

The pike! 30 inches! Might try to make some pickled pike or maybe even smoke it ?

Second day complete opposite of day 1, nice and sunny even ended up with a slight tan on the face, the UV must’ve been high or just wind burn ?

Will post some more pics in a bit. The site isn’t letting me upload anymore at the moment.

Goldeye sounds like a blast. Looks like you had to work a bit for some nicer fish, but you can’t beat just getting out for last ice. Well done.

That is great trip and beautiful views! Thanks for the report.

Great report, sounds like it was a really fun trip. Nothing like ice fishing on the Easter weekend!

Nice trip. Glad to hear there was still quality ice there.

Very nice pike and beautiful walleye.

Just googled lake. Looks to be part of Quebec as well. Can you cross over to fish there side?
Awesome catches.

Can’t really comment anything useful tbh. I assume you’d probably need a Quebec license and any other paperwork. But physically, ya I’m sure you could sled over lol

I’m totally adding this trip to my TODO list

Definitely, especially later in spring when southern Ontario is all out of ice. There are hogs in this lake for sure. A local we talked to end of the first day was showing us pictures of a 30 inch walleye he caught that day. High 20s not uncommon apparently. And even bigger pike. I think a member posted here before of an absolute shark he caught out there