Lake Wilcox Bassin

[Snypa]

For about a year or two I've been fishing this particular spot, and oddly this past spring there was a few bass swimming around, tho the year before I hadn't seen any.. anyways to make a long-story short, I saw some nice sized hogs swimming around one day and it all started from there.. the bass I caught weren't those big-mommas but they sure were a lot of fun to catch.

lures used: berkley trout worm (3/4 of an inch), #12 & #10 gamakastsu's

rig type: texas rigged, about 1ft under a float.

where: south east shore park (forgot the name of the park) just
south of sunset beach. If you have a float tube or inflatable boat, goto the west end of the lake, the fish are more concentrated over there, look for weedbeds. Its interesting to note that a lot of the lake is shallow (1-3 ft deep) while the middle of the lake gets quite deep and goes down to roughly 30-40 ft I think.

weather: the best conditions I found there, is when its sunny, not windy, but just a very slight breeze is usually the best conditions, also sometimes fishing is excellent after a nice rain shower.

time of day: from the early afternoon to dusk are the best times to fish there, if you can wake-up early, mornings are great aswell.

My first personal best GTA large-moutb bass !! ;D Up until this point, my only bass experiance was from small-mouth bass & rockbass lol, so for me this was a milestone ;D

2nd, way smaller, but still very scrapy!!

3rd, by this time I was saying to myself "HOLY SH!$"

All of these were caught within like a hour or two of fishing, that excludes all the sunfish & bluegill that I caught

 

[Snypa]

UPDATE: May 6th, 2007 (a week or two ago)

- Was passing through the area, so I decided so stop by the west-end & south east shore park, saw near shore. Didn't bring our gear with us, but it looked like the local fish are starting to go fully-active which was great to see.

 

[MikeyMikey]

Great report of OOS bass.

Anyways...

It makes me sad to see those empty stomach bass again.

Damn pond bass(s) are in hunger.

Next time. use real worm and fee them? and fat'n them up.




or shall we do some illegal transfer of bass to other pond water?

 

[openfire]

MikeyMikey, don't forget that the ontario record LM bass came out of a richmond hill "pond" 5 minutes away from Wilcox. (Preston)

I have a friend who knows some ponds that have monster bass in them 15 minutes from Thornhill... just waiting for bass season...

 

[MikeyMikey]

MikeyMikey, don't forget that the ontario record LM bass came out of a richmond hill "pond" 5 minutes away from Wilcox. (Preston)

I have a friend who knows some ponds that have monster bass in them 15 minutes from Thornhill... just waiting for bass season...

WHAT!
Will you be keeping that pond as a secret to yourself only?

 

[openfire]

Will I be keeping it to myself?????? Hell NO!!!

I will be posting reports of those ponds the minute I get back to my computer!

MikeyMikey, you know me, I love to share the goodies!

That's the beauty of this site... I can share with you guys and know that only the people who have done like-wise will see the reports.

 

[MikeyMikey]

yes, i would love to fish with you.
i want to see you fish wacky style, because you need that extra patiences to let the bait sink and sit there for a bit. which is do not have..

hmm... i need some mind control to calm myself.

 

[disspatcher]

Openfire...how do you get on Preston Lake??....Do you know someone who lives on the water..there are no public access points that I can find. I used to live across the street from it and have cirlced it a thousand times!
Give it up!!! lol

 

[Snypa]

I have a friend who knows some ponds that have monster bass in them 15 minutes from Thornhill... just waiting for bass season...

Hell yeah !!!

 

[openfire]

Openfire...how do you get on Preston Lake??....Do you know someone who lives on the water..there are no public access points that I can find. I used to live across the street from it and have cirlced it a thousand times!
Give it up!!! lol

You have to parachute in... but then you have to tresspass to get out.

Or you can fly in with a pontoon plane. That would really piss off the locals though.

If you know someone with a helicopter, you can get dropped off and picked up when you're done fishing.

That's the problem with that lake... The lake itself is public, but all the land around it is private... It's a real shame that the government sold all of the land surrounding the lake without keeping a public access point.

 

[Pigurd]

there is a little river channel leading into preston lake... maybe someone can tube in and fish it.

 

[openfire]

Pigurd... that's a good idea!

Let's start a new thread on this topic and leave this thread for Lake Wilcox reports.

 

[efka]

i read on their comunity website that if you dont live there, you can fish with one condition... if somebody who lives there is with you.
dont know if its true

 

[toober]

29-july-2007: Wilcox Bassin'

Went out to Wilcox this morning... beautiful weather for fishing, a few puffy clouds in the sky, but mostly clear... not too hot, and a nice breeze blowing in from the south. I launched from "Sunset Beach" in my new (used) mini-pontoon boat.

Since the breeze was blowing towards the north shore, that's where I concentrated all my efforts. I paddled north and then west along the shoreline without much success. However, the yellow highlighted area below was holding at least a few fish.

After an hour or more with no luck, I suddenly caught two nice largies within 5 minutes of each other. Both were 15 to 16 inches long, and were taken on a silver/black jointed Rapala minnow.

Bass 1

Bass 2

Another view of Bass 2

I didn't catch any more fish again for a while. I paddled south into a big weed-bed and tried a variety of baits, including Openfire's favourite (Gulp) and a couple different Senko-style baits... no dice. Maybe I'm not fishing these things right, because I rarely have good luck with them.

Anyway, after another hour or so, I paddled back into the yellow area and tried out a recent lure acquisition... a weedless chatterbait with a soft-plastic crawfish threaded on. On my second or third cast, I got my third and largest (17to 18 inches) fish for the day. (Sorry about the crappy pics.)

Bass 3

Another view of Bass 3

After that, nothing. So, that's the Lake Wilcox experience for me, so far... nice fish, but not a whole lot of action. I'd like to try some other areas in the lake, like maybe towards the west end as suggested by Snypa in the first post on this thread.

By the way... now that I have two personal watercraft, maybe someone would like to come along in the future and try one out? If so, send me a PM and we'll try to hook up.

toober

 

[openfire]

I paddled south into a big weed-bed and tried a variety of baits, including Openfire's favourite (Gulp) and a couple different Senko-style baits... no dice. Maybe I'm not fishing these things right, because I rarely have good luck with them.

Those baits are effective when you've located bass, or when you're throwing into a spot that is likely to hold bass. They're not good for covering water. Also, you don't have my techniques...

To anyone else reading this, after scouting this lake numerous times, I can say that you pretty much need a floating device such as a tube or a boat to fish this lake as all accessible spots from shore are way too shallow. Might be worth PMing Toober if you want to fish there.

Toober, there are some pretty deep spots in this lake. I wish I could find the topo map that I saw last year for this lake.

Also, the yellow spot you outlined holds pike from a report I saw last year.

 

[toober]

Thanks for the info, Openfire. Maybe I'll rig up rod holder so I can bring along another pre-rigged rod(s). That way, I could keep one rigged for searching out fish, and then quickly swap to the other after finding fish.

I'm actually thinking about trying out Haynes Lake next. I could probably cover the whole shoreline in one outing there.

Seriously, if anyone is interested in trying out the tube experience, drop me a pm.

toober

 

[openfire]

Hey toober, if you really want to get into big bass (numbers and size), I would skip Haynes and take the tube over to Heart Lake in Brampton. I haven't been there recently only because I don't feel like renting a row-boat by the hour. BUT, if I was a toober I would definitley give this a try.

*end thread hijack*

Back to Lake Wilcox talk.

 

[toober]

Openfire... I went to Heart Lake, almost. I was getting ready to pay the $5 fee to go in, when the girl in the guardhouse noticed my pontoon kickboat in the back seat of my car. She informed me that the park rules prohibit inflatable watercraft... so, I turned around and left.

toober

 

[openfire]

Openfire... I went to Heart Lake, almost. I was getting ready to pay the $5 fee to go in, when the girl in the guardhouse noticed my pontoon kickboat in the back seat of my car. She informed me that the park rules prohibit inflatable watercraft... so, I turned around and left.

toober

Aww man that sucks. Me and a friend use to rent a rowboat for an hour or two and murder bass left right and center in Heart Lake years ago. That's too bad you can't take the tube in.

Back once again to Wilcox chat.

 

[Snypa]

Aww that sucks.. I remember seeing on the news years ago that someone that drowned there (I think..) and that may be the reason why they had changed the rules for that particular body of water.

Toober, I've heard ppl off catching pike from the north-west shore in the past, maybe when it gets colder u could try wilcox or during early/late spring time, maybe even musselmans too, you might catch a pike or two