Trophy Ice Brook Trout TV Show Pre-fish in Haliburton, ON.
Posted on January 15th, 2010[singlepic id=769 w=320 h=240 float=]I had planned to do a trophy brook trout ice fishing show since the fall and waited patiently for the temperatures to drop. My main contact was my good friend Karl Dickob who operates Kinmount Fish Farm, and who is also the President of the Ontario Fishery Enhancement and Aquaculture Associtation. For the last 30+ years, Karl has raised a variety of fish and has worked with many landowners that have ponds and access to private lakes, and also had stocked lakes for Municipalities, Cities and Cottage Associations. Karl is very knowledgeable with regards to aquaculture, and he also is a wealth of knowledge with regards to some of the top fishing lakes in the province of Ontario. On this outing, Karl took me to one of the many back-lakes that have been stocked for many years with brook trout. He really encouraged me when he told me that he had been there in the fall and walked the shorelines and saw dozens of 3-4 lb. brook trout cruising the shorelines looking for suitable spawning sites. After driving down some active logging roads, we finally arrived near the lake. I was equipped with a Yamaha RS Vector GT Snowmobile, an HT-Enterprises , one-man portable shelter and all of my ice fishing gear.
We got to the lake. I cut about 4-holes covering water depths from 7′ – 15′, to start. The lake was covered with about 3″ of snow and it only had about 4″ of clear-blue ice. I used the new Rapala Fin Bore Micro Drill in the 6″ size. My tackle consisted of Rapala Flash and Bore Silda spoons, Lucky Strike spoons, Blue Fox Lil’ Foxee Jigging Minnow and Jigging Rapalas. I was anxious to tests several new TriggerX soft-grubs. We immediately started catching smaller 7″ brook trout that Karl had stocked in the spring. I started moving around with the sled/gear and started cutting more holes a few hundred yards away. Again I started to immediately catch smaller brook trout. Over the next 4-hrs., I had moved about 1/2 mile down the lake and continued to cut more holes. This time I was pretty close to shore and cut some holes right in amongst some trees that had fallen in the water, and all around them. Bingo, I caught my first decent trout! The pre-fishing paid off. My strategy for the next day was to fish closer to shore and to work my spoons close to the bottom.
