Southern Ontario has some remarkable bass fishing! I love fishing our home waters from the day after our season opens (3rd or 4th Saturday in June) until it closes November 30th.  During that period of time all the bass I catch, are live released – to help sustain our local fisheries and to provide the same joy I had for other anglers lucky enough to catch those same fish.  Yet despite these great opportunities … we are still missing out on some exceptional catch and release fishing experiences, and that is why I like many other Ontario anglers, make a short trip south of the border into nearby New York in the spring.

For several decades I’ve loved musky fishing but it’s only been the last ten years that the mighty muskellunge has become such an integral part of my career as a resource management technician in Ontario. Every spring for 2-5 weeks I’m trapnetting up on Gloucester Pool near Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay to capture enough ripe female and male musky for an egg collection. We fertilize the eggs on the boat and they are then delivered to the musky hatchery at Fleming College in Lindsay Ontario. Here the eggs hatch, and fry, then fingerlings are cared for under the watchful eye of the hatchery manager and musky whisperer-Mark Newell. When late fall comes,  I stock all those 8-12 inch muskie into Lake Simcoe, an hour north of Toronto Ontario with help from good friends at Muskies Canada. We also electro fish for them as part of our ongoing monitoring work in Lake Simcoe. This is all part of the Lake Simcoe Muskie Restoration Program.

This annual event with a $10,000 guarantee first place prize, takes place in Cooks Bay out of “Keffers” off Raynards Road in Keswick. Cooks Bay is one of the most heavily fished areas of the lake … and other than the occasional pike angler, almost all the angler effort is targeted towards yellow perch.