Cold Spring Gators!

I headed out in the kawarthas today for an optimistic day of pike fishing! The lake I was going to fish has been producing some awesome spring pike fishing, with 30+ fish days, fish up to 37 inches caught and 40 + inch fish seen! When I say we headed out optimistically, I mean just that. Yesterday I left from back near Orangeville and there was more than enough snow on the ground. The best pike fishing was over a week ago when there was somewhat stable temperatures. This morning we saw temps around 43 degrees and that is 10 degrees colder then the last time we were out. They slowly warmed up and reached about 47 degrees by the end of our day. We worked our butts off all day to try and figure something out, but unfortunately we had very little to work with. We started shallow in the morning then worked from 15 feet to 4 feet for the rest of the day. Two small muskies were caught on a white swimbait, including one with these odd looking white patches (see photo). Most diseases or viruses that come to mind have lesions that look much different. If you have seen this before, or know for sure what it is, let me know. Otherwise I will be passing it on to some colleagues in the MNR and I will post the results. We switched between swimbaits, softbaits, jigs, and jerkbaits throughout the day to try and get a bite. Jerk baits have been the ticket out there and today was no different as they got our only pike. When water temps are low it is important to experiment with long pauses and less aggressive retrieves as they give pike a chance to find your bait and make a commitment. It was a tough day and we did not catch any monsters but still got some for the fryer :) The basic ingredients we were looking for will work on many different bodies of water in the spring for locating gators. First off, we spent the day looking for the warmest water possible as it tends to collect bait and predators in the same general area during the spring. Stained water is always nice for working aggressive baits like jerks and that was also something we looked for, not that we didn't get bit in clear water as well, but the dirty stuff helped during a slow day. We also looked for any new healthy weed growth and any type of baitfish. These seem like obvious things but it is important to be aware of all of your surroundings to help put the pieces together in a day and it's easy to get excited about being on the water and hucking baits that you forget to pay attention sometimes. What kind of bait are you seeing? How big is it? What kind of weeds are you catching the fish around? Asking yourselves questions like these will help you figure things out quickly and put more fish in the boat!