Lake Herring pre-fishing for TV show on Gull Lake, Minden, ON.
Posted on February 19th, 2011[nggallery id=418]I had just received some fish images from by good friend Karl Dickob who is the President of the Ontario Fisheries Enhancement and Aquaculture Association to let me know that his friend Al Weaver was catching both lake herring and whitefish in good numbers. Perhaps some of you remember seeing the last blog-posting I did showing his catches. Well, I decided to go up to pre-fish and to shoot a TV show on Fri. As you know, the weather was cold, but calling for up to 10C with rain on Fri. We decided to go for it anyway. On this trip my friend Cliff Zaturski and his friend Ed joined us to see what fishing for lake herring would be like.
We ended up setting up by 8:30m and the bite was good, but short. Most of the feeding herring were in 40-60′, but suspended between 10-20′ below the ice. The herring were around most of the morning, but ended their feeding quickly and were schooled up near the bottom. We had the odd hit after 9am, but the main bite was over. Karl and I decided to head north of Haliburton, ON to check out one of the trout lakes he had stocked wiith rainbows and lake trout over the years and Karl ended up catching a nice Haliburton lake trout which he had stocked as an 8″ fish about 4-5 yrs. ago. All of the herring were caught on small 1/16 oz. jigs tipped with a small piece of minnow fished with the Rapala Ice combos and the Sufix Ice Magic line. The Humminbird Ice 55 sonar was invaluable to locate the suspended herring and to catch them!! If you like the idea of a challenge and you like to eat fish, herring are great sport on light line and they taste great! Looking forward to doing the TV show tomorrow.
