Wanted to do some fishing today, but did not want to drive far, so I decided to head up to Heart Lake in Brampton. Its a conservation area that requires a fee to get in, however, as i found out today, was well worth it. They also offer boat rentals for around $15 hour, or $35 for 4 hours.
From the map, it looks fairly small, however, there are tons of lily pads and weeded areas surrounding the whole lake. Excellent hideouts for bass. (Sorry for poor picture quality, phone pics).
So we started at 9:00am (park opens) and immediately started probing the heavy weeds and lily pads. I was using 5" YUM Dinger Worms on a 4/0 wide gap. Took about 15-20 minutes before I felt this guy pull my line.
Looks about 13-14"?? Didn't really have anything to measure it with.
Went about 15 m up the shore from the first area and started casting. At the end of my 2nd cast, just as I was about to reel in for my 3rd attempt, I saw a wake forming fast from the right and heading straight for the worm (only 5 feet from me), then BAM, huge splash, followed by a hard tug, and here I am battling it out with another one. This one was a fighter, running through just about every lily pad and weed cover in the area. 30 seconds later I managed to get him out along with probably 10lbs of weeds.
Ballpark 18-19"?
15 minutes after this one, I caught this guy after about a 30 second fight.
Heart Lake is also stocked with 2000 Trout every year, so my buddy switched over to Berkley Trout worms and started casting off the dock on the southern part of the lake. As they were recently stocked, the trout are rather small, but still good enough to eat. We managed to get about 10 of them, but brought home 4.
This guy had a go at the trout worms as well.
Things died down on the bass side around 12-1pm, and we just kept catching trout, and about 20 panfish until about 3pm before we called it a day.
Total count was 9 Largemouths (7"-19"), 10 Rainbow trout (7-12"), and the 20 or so rock bass/blue gills. Not bad for a lake in the city.
Overall I found that the bass were striking aggressively from about 9am-12noon. They kept biting afterward but the encounters were not as aggressive. I used a variety of baits ranging from Rage tail frogs, SPRO topwater frogs, and Senko worms, however I got ALL of my bass on the 5" YUM worms. Several guys near me were using Coffee Tubes, but I did not see any catches from them. We used wax worms and berkley Trout worms for the rainbow trout. Wax worms got us three trout, while the berkley worms landed us the other seven.
Thanks for reading my report! Hope it suits the standard you guys were hoping for. Happy fishing!
From the map, it looks fairly small, however, there are tons of lily pads and weeded areas surrounding the whole lake. Excellent hideouts for bass. (Sorry for poor picture quality, phone pics).
So we started at 9:00am (park opens) and immediately started probing the heavy weeds and lily pads. I was using 5" YUM Dinger Worms on a 4/0 wide gap. Took about 15-20 minutes before I felt this guy pull my line.
Looks about 13-14"?? Didn't really have anything to measure it with.
Went about 15 m up the shore from the first area and started casting. At the end of my 2nd cast, just as I was about to reel in for my 3rd attempt, I saw a wake forming fast from the right and heading straight for the worm (only 5 feet from me), then BAM, huge splash, followed by a hard tug, and here I am battling it out with another one. This one was a fighter, running through just about every lily pad and weed cover in the area. 30 seconds later I managed to get him out along with probably 10lbs of weeds.
Ballpark 18-19"?
15 minutes after this one, I caught this guy after about a 30 second fight.
Heart Lake is also stocked with 2000 Trout every year, so my buddy switched over to Berkley Trout worms and started casting off the dock on the southern part of the lake. As they were recently stocked, the trout are rather small, but still good enough to eat. We managed to get about 10 of them, but brought home 4.
This guy had a go at the trout worms as well.
Things died down on the bass side around 12-1pm, and we just kept catching trout, and about 20 panfish until about 3pm before we called it a day.
Total count was 9 Largemouths (7"-19"), 10 Rainbow trout (7-12"), and the 20 or so rock bass/blue gills. Not bad for a lake in the city.
Overall I found that the bass were striking aggressively from about 9am-12noon. They kept biting afterward but the encounters were not as aggressive. I used a variety of baits ranging from Rage tail frogs, SPRO topwater frogs, and Senko worms, however I got ALL of my bass on the 5" YUM worms. Several guys near me were using Coffee Tubes, but I did not see any catches from them. We used wax worms and berkley Trout worms for the rainbow trout. Wax worms got us three trout, while the berkley worms landed us the other seven.
Thanks for reading my report! Hope it suits the standard you guys were hoping for. Happy fishing!
