12lb walleye from Bay of Quinte - Caught by Kyle Billingsley

My cousin Kyle has been hard water angling this winter.  I recently became aware that he hooked into a huge of Bay of Quinte pickerel. I don’t have many details yet, but his wife tells me he was jigging for the behemoth that weighed in at 12 lbs! Great job Kyle! Thanks for the photo Di.

Muskoka Outdoors visitors – I would love to post pictures of the fish you have been catching through the ice this year. Email them to me using the Contact  link below.

These pictures shows that at least one huge Lake Trout and Pickerel have been caught and still swim in Lake Muskoka 2009.

New friend and co-worker, Erin, shared these 2 fish photos with me. She caught this beautiful lake trout this spring in Lake Muskoka. Specifically (and it was all she would share with me), she hooked into this lake trout at “The Kettles” while using a jig head and minnow.

Before I could post the Lake Trout photo, Erin excitedly told me, at work, to look at the cell phone photo of this 14lb pickerel she caught last night. It was also netted and released in Lake Muskoka. The exact location still remains a ’secret’ to Muskoka Outdoors. The pickerel fought for over a half-hour on Erin’s old and ‘questionable’ fishing line. Erin claims it was luck – but I say it was skill. Great work Erin!

I am still waiting for the details about the photo, but Brad (a good friend) is showing us his nice walleye caught in an undisclosed lake. Nice work B-Man!

Got a fish picture you would like me to post? Email it to me and I will do my best to put it up.

I am out fishing with the boys tonight and I just caught a monster pickerel (walleye)! We took a couple of photos and measurements and released it quickly. We would have weighed it, but we did not want to take the extra time to do it. It needs to spawn and let someone else catch it.

A pickerel this big in Vernon Lake is RARE. Catching any pickerel here (walleye) is unusual!

We measured it at 25.5 inches with approximate weight at 5 to 7 lbs.

It was a dark fish – as the photo shows. For those of you who like details, we were trolling in 20 feet of water. I was bringing my line in as a courtesy for the guy beside me who thought he had a fish on. When I brought my lure up to the boat, I placed my rod down to grab the net for the ‘incoming’ fish. The fish turned out to be a chunk of weed. As I picked up my fishing rod to cast out again, this pickerel inhaled the Rapala Taildancer right at the boat – beside the running boat motor! A nice fight followed and that brings us to the top of this post.

Below, is the diving Rapala Taildancer (colors same as picture) that I caught the pickerel on. It was a new spring addition to my tackle box an it is quickly becoming my ‘go to’ lure when the fishing gets slow. In Lake Temagami, I caught some nice bass and pickerel with this guy. I kept up with the live bait guys in the boat with a 1:1 ratio. Out of the box (and on regular monofilament), I could get this lure down to 17 + feet. That was with large amount of line in the water during a troll.

Think about adding one to your box. Apparently, this pickerel (walleye) wanted it bad!

Hey everyone! I just got back from Lake Temagami in northern Ontario. The guys and I had a great time and I will share some more details on another post. Here are some pictures of the fish we caught. It was pretty much a 50/50 split on live bait vs. artificial. I caught most of my fish on a deep diving silver rapala, while Dave caught his on a golden spinning rig with a live minnow.

I can’t put my finger on it yet, but the sunsets on Lake Kipawa are different then any I have ever seen. The sky seem more brilliant blue at that moment before the sun hits the horizon. The fishing is also fantastic because the lake lets you target (what are in my mind) the big 3 fish species: pickerel (walleye), lake trout and pike. For more information on Quebec’s Lake Kipawa (because I want to get to my story) visit this site . To check out some of Quebec’s other adventure packages visit Quebec Maritime’s website .

For two years, the guys of our Triple Fishing Club ventured to an island fishing lodge in Lake Kipawa. This lake is so big, that it took us a couple of years to fine-tune where we should fish. Fortunately, some of the best fishing spots for us were 30 second boat rides from the cabins.

This was the case on the night of the caper.

Dad and I anchored in rocky bay right across from the lodge. I think we picked it because the fish finder showed great rock structure and a steep drop-off just a few feet from shore. We had visions of lunker lake trout swarming our lures and bait.

For one of those rare moments, our plan worked out.

The lake trout started biting and I think we could have called it a frenzy. Our presentation consisted of hooked herring and Berkley Gulp jigs. Somewhere between our 4th landed trout and a lure change I noticed smoke coming from the back corner of one of our cabins. I pointed out the smoke plume to dad and he grabbed his binoculars to confirm what we were seeing. We both went through mental checklists in our heads to remember what we did with the stove when supper had finished.

Another trout hit my lure and I quickly brought it in as dad tried to reach the rest of the gang on the radio. We were hoping that they might still be on shore with a radio.

No answer.

At that point, we knew we had to go check it out. I have to admit – it was a tough decision to make. The right ones usually are. So, we raced over to the docks with imaginary sirens blazing. As we docked and ran to the site of the fire, we were relieved to find that the fire was just the lodge owner burning some leaves. From our fishing angle, it looked like the fire was coming from our cabins. After having a good laugh with the owner, we hurried back to our fishing frenzy location.

As you would expect – the fish were gone. The timing of the whole chain of events made me wonder if we should return back to the camp to make sure the lodge owner was not being held hostage by a school of ’special-ops’ trout.

Fire missions aside, we had some great fishing moments on Lake Kipawa. We found a spinning rig with a minnow or Berkley Gulp bait worked for both Lake Trout and Pickerel. If you can bring some live leeches to the party – you will virtually guarantee yourself some fresh pickerel in the pan. Take one night to do some after dark pickerel fishing. Not only will you see a great sunset, but you may get lucky (as we did one night) and see the walleye school into the bay we were fishing in.

Don’t fall for the burning cabin trick…