Lefroy Ice Report - Monday Feb 18th

[Snypa]

Been itching to go icefishing thru most of the winter (I shoulda planned more trips), finally had the chance to get out there and also gear up on a nice little Frabill Fin-S ultra-light combo at Lebarons a few weeks ago, and also got to try out some ice baits that I've been jonesin to try + a few of my own. Booked a hut out of Lefroy with my neighbor & his grandson, I personally wanted to go with another operator out of Keswick (better perch action), but my neighbor convinced me otherwise since Lefroy was a little more deeper! Keep in mind that the water around lefroy doesn't have as much perch in numbers as the east side of cooksbay. Anyways, the week earlier we went to Lebarons to get proper gear etc, 3-way spreader, a couple ice baits, a ultra-light ice rod, and also my new sports liecense for this year. My neighbor wanted to fish early, so we planned on waking up at 5 am, and getting on the ice by 6-7 am, which is what exactly happened, got there at around 6:30 am, bought some minnows from the local bait shop and made our way to killarney rd to wait to get picked up by the ice hut shuttle. Arrived at the hut, heres some pics just after arrival:

southeast view to cooksbay

west view behind us, Lefroy shoreline

they gave us a 6-man hut instead of a 4-man !

getting rigged up ! live minnows, north fox lil foxee, rapala jigging glow minnow and some hand-tieds

good heating, it turned into a sauna by about 11 or 12, had to take off the jacket

By about 7 am, got all setup & fishing within minutes, we were on 35 fow, on this shelf where the water goes from 20-40 fow. At first we weren't getting any bites but then about 30 minutes later the school came in, my neighbors grandson (Jordan) ended up getting the first fish of the day on a artificial (silver lil foxee, that I let him borrow) it looks exactly like the type of minnows we bought. And then my neighbor (George) and I started getting bites on the live minnows. He missed one I missed one, and it went on for a little bit and then died out. For the rest of the day this happened about a few times, and as we found out later from the operator & other fishermen that rented huts, that all in all, it wasn't a fish catching sort of day.. but we had fun anyways Ended up catching a few perch in the morning + a decent 8-9 incher.

mr.minnow

having good times

extra fillet scraps, left is a female full of eggs, right is a male with the big air bladder

mmmmm crispy perch + tartar sauce + a little squeezed lemon on top ! it tasted soo good, I gotta do this more often !

Here's also a couple vids I took inbetween fishing, wanted to take some close-up footage of this ice jig I was working on + testing, sure its not aqua-view recording but it still demonstrates it from a fishermans point of view Also took a quick vid of the 3-way spreader in action aswell, enjoy:

trying a jig out:
http://senseibaits.blogspot.com/2008/02 ... e-jig.html
short clip of the 3-way spreader, can almost see the bottom
http://www.vimeo.com/710726

[video]http://www.vimeo.com/710726[/video]

 

[openfire]

Very nice report Snypa. That's our first official ice fishing report!

When you rent the hut for the day, what time does the shuttle come back to pick you up?

Also, do people mainly target perch only in that area this time of year?

Thanks for the report.

 

[Snypa]

Thanks Openfire You can schedule it with the operator, in our case the owner of the local baitshop (Vitto @ Luv2fishsimcoe) http://www.lovetofishsimcoe.com/ they had a very large selection of ice rods & tackle which was great to see. For the shuttle, he just asked us would you like to get picked up 12-1pm midday or more towards 4-5ish, and we choose 4 to 5 pm, but as the day worn on, we started getting tired around 3-4 pm and decided to call it a day. We noticed the guy shuttling some other people, waved him over, and dropped us back off at Killarney rd. where we parked. All in all I had a really good time, we were there for a full-day, got a 6 man hut from like 6-7 am till like 5pm for $35 per adult, and from what I remember, kids under 12 pay half price or maybe it was free.

As for what else they were targeting, they also had huts (for $45 per full-day) strictly for whitefish & Lake trout, in-fact they mentioned they were marking a lot of them in deeper waters, not sure if they were setup nearby or further up north by BBP.

 

[openfire]

That's nice of the operator to be so flexible with his shuttle service.

BTW Snypa, pics are auto re-sized now so you don't have to worry about re-sizing before you post.

Also, I'm making a GTA gallery with restricted access, so you can upload your pics there. This way, pics don't get lost over time as has happened with other pics from other reports.

 

[Snypa]

Yeah the shuttle service was very convienent. I was more or less surprised at the fact we got fishing quite quickly overall. After we arrived at the tackle shop to check-in at the start of the day & get some minnnows, i think he dispatched the shuttle driver, we went to the pick-up area which was at end of this street (killarney rd) 1 block away, and the shuttle was already taking out a few clients ahead of us, gave us some time (5-10 min) to get our gear on, and we were out there fishing within about 15 minutes I think it only took us a little over a half an hour to get to the place, since we left very early in the morning there was barely any traffic on the 400

As for the resized pics, yeah I was noticing that when I first posted the report, the pics weren't showing up properly, like they were fuzzy from being resized, so i took them off and made them a bit smaller so there was no need for resizing. As for the online gallery, thats a great idea for the reports section ! Was noticing that there's missing pics in some of the reports, normally I would usually get around that by posting the pics on imageshack, and the pics are pretty much permanent on that site. And a few of my report/bait pics are on flickr, but I'll probably leave them on there, as I don't really upload pics on there that much.

 

[openfire]

I added the pic resize modification so large pics can't break the layout like they did on the old forum... So yeah, re-sized pics will be a slightly lower resolution, but large pics will no longer stretch the forum all the way to the right like they used to. I used to hate having to resize every pic before posting a report... was a pain in the butt.

Anyway, FYI, your personal gallery is "public", so don't post "sensitive" pics there.

OH BTW, if you look at your original report, I embedded your second video at the very end. (Just testing)

Wait a minute... was that dinner pic there before? LOL That looks like some good eats! I'm surprised I didn't notice it earlier.

 

[Snypa]

Anyway, FYI, your personal gallery is "public", so don't post "sensitive" pics there.

OH BTW, if you look at your original report, I embedded your second video at the very end. (Just testing)

Wait a minute... was that dinner pic there before? LOL That looks like some good eats! I'm surprised I didn't notice it earlier.

nono I know its "public", problem was my friend's grandson wanted to see the report or at least the pics of our fishing trip, so he couldn't see the report because he doesn't have access to the forum, so I just uploaded them onto to flickr. I didn't really think of this report as one of the "sensitive reports" since its not at a new location really ;D I also can make them private on flickr, its just that I wouldn't be able image link on another site & only ppl with flickr accounts would be able to see the imgs, so I uploaded my pics to 1 place (flickr), any of the newer sensitive pics I'll just upload to the gallery. One thing I hate, is having to upload pics to multiple places, sorta like the resizing problem, so I can easily keep tabs on where i have my imgs, so I see what u mean abou the sensitive pics. I'll probably upload any new sensitive pics to the OFF gallery. All of the sensitive pics of my "older reports", were hosted on imageshack anonmyously, so I doubt anyone would be able to see those. You see, at first I had the intention of posting the report, both on here (special report edition) & also on gofishont (cut-down public report), so I used flickr since the pics weren't really sensitive, but regardless I got a little lazy about it (ended up not posting it) since I already uploaded the report to the GTA section

Oh and as for that dinner pic, Yea LOL, I added it after lolz, almost forgot too add that pic It was sooooooo good, it was like the best I've ever had, and especially when you have fried perch & shrimp together !! I ended up finishing off the perch fillets last week.. mmmmmm.. getting jonesed out, just by looking at it

 

[ght]

nice report defenitly might try that next year

 

[disspatcher]

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Fish On.