Pike fishing now???

[MikeyMikey]

Howdy.

Never caught a pike before and I don't know what kind of season they have.

Are pikes in the shallow water now? to the point where we can fish them from the shore?
What the hell are they doing in shallows now?

 

[openfire]

I'm not into Pike myself, but I saw a report last week from what appeared to be the Bluffers area in the east end... Lots of huge pike swimming around in the marina area.

Any pike guys here know more about this?

 

[Rich]

Down here they are in shallow, weed flats in 6 feet of water just infested with them. Lots of hammer handles but some up to 10lbs have been caught. Casting white, double willow bladed spinnerbaits has been very effective. But at this time of year bigger baits catch bigger fish. My 2 oz Ottonabee Wannabe has had some big bites but I cant hook the fackers!

 

[wd40]

i haven't caught a pike before either.
which part of the marina do you fish for large pikes?????
also, are there other species of fish that could be caught over there?

 

[openfire]

i haven't caught a pike before either.
which part of the marina do you fish for large pikes?????
also, are there other species of fish that could be caught over there?

From the report I saw, they had also caught some salmon as well.

They were fishing from a boat in close to the marina.

I suppose some of the fish could be caught from shore.

Like Rich said, shallow weed flats seem to be holding Pike right now.

 

[wd40]

i heard pike is rare over there now. but i still wanna give it a try if i've time.

do you think there's bass there? i read this urban fishing doc online; bass was on the list of species found at bluffers, but i'm not sure how old the doc is, and which areas they covered.

where's this report that you're reading? i want to have a look.

 

[openfire]

The report was over at OFN...

http://ontfish.proboards89.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1158776778

The report is 2 weeks old. (Sep 20)

 

[wd40]

ahhhh. those are nice pikes.

 

[Rich]

You might remember FishheadRic from OFN.

Well he got this beauty last week

Shh! I could get in trouble for posting that here!

 

[wd40]

yeah, there's this spadina quay wetlands place at the foot of spadina. it should hold lots of pikes. but i'm not sure if we're allowed to fish there from shore though, & the accessibility. does anyone know?

 

[frozenfire]

That would be so awesome, since I can pretty much walk there from UofT. Any info on this would be great. I would start bringing my rod to school hahaha.

 

[frozenfire]

Looks like FishheadRic is on a boat though

 

[Rich]

Looks like FishheadRic is on a boat though

No he only shore fishes from the Toronto Islands. Tons of pike there.

 

[openfire]

Rich, do you have any idea how long the pike fishing extends into fall/winter?

 

[Snypa]

The pike are around all year round, the problem is they get a little slugish during the warmer months (the bigger pike, small guys are always active) and you have to be quite patient when fishing for them. It's almost like trouting, even the most seasoned pro might not catch squat sometimes. Aswell the pike are all over the waterfront, they are a cold-water species of fish, so temperature always effects them, especially if it gets cold or warm all of sudden. Like for example, today its nice & warm out & sunny, compared to cold & windy yesterday, might be a great day to fish for pike today !

Almost every where you go they're swimmin around, I went with FHR a couple times to the islands & leslie spit lastyear, he killed it, caught 2 pike right in front of me, then lost another one, right before this massive thunder storm was coming thru (remnents of this other hurricane going up the east coast, not katrina) was passing thru toronto, turned out to be a good day for piking We got drenched tho, but it was worth it !!!!!!!!

 

[Snypa]

Another time when we went bassin at the islands last summer, I remember seeing a 40-50+ big mommma big just hanging motionless at the bottom of a weedbed in front these docks on hanlans island, biggest fish I've ever seen in real life lol... that thing was HUUUUUGGE !@

 

[wd40]

Snypa: So how did piking go today? Any success? Pics?? I only saw some small bass following my swimbait. It looked like they were more interested in playing with my lure than actually eating it. Anyway, I only had an hour to fish. It wasn't enough, but I guess it's better than nothing. If I had more time, I think I would've walked over to that place where the big boat was.

 

[Snypa]

Yeah wd40, it was great getting out there & it was also nice meeting you man, who would have ever thought we would run into members from this board there It was also nice to know they didn't mind us fishing there, like I've seen ppl fishing there before, I just wasn't sure if they had asked permission etc, btw I fished there for about another 10 minutes until we decided to head more west along that boardwalk towards that big sailboat I was talking about, well as it turned out, we walked along that south west shore through that new park that was under renovation, and to our surprise, we were at another small inner bay before that sailboat bay further west (theres a bridge & a firestation marine unit) kinda like that OPP marine unit, the good news was that it seemed fishable, so we decided to screw it and just fish it

So when we walked past the firestation, a friendly firefighter asked us if we had caught anything etc, told him notta so far, and then we went towards that bridge to start fishing the bay. When we started doing that and got a little bit closer, we realized that there was a TON of weeds in this particular area, compared to just a block east, which was good because we saw more fish & baitfish around, it looked more alive, but this time we saw some larger LMs swimming around & chasing my bait, and I also noticed schools of minnows & also gobies in the really shallow water near that bridge. Anyways, after a while I got bored of that & kept on targetting pike because I wasn't really interested in catching them, so we continued fishing for about another hour or so, tried out some new lures etc & eventually headed home.

Didn't catch any pike later that day, but it was great to out down there on a nice day and also test out my new gear that I bought on Friday & at BPS that day, went by lebarons on friday, picked up a new pike spinning rig, abu garcia cardinal 503 & a bob izumi weedlines (pike & largemouth) rod, and then on sunday morning we picked up leader connectors & also a $30 BPS net that has rubber netting, wasn't able to bless the net tho with a fish on Sunday, but hopefully I'll do that next weekend locally Let me know when you want to head down again, and this time we might just have to meet up !! Its all about timing with those fish, so if you are persistent, you will catch one, and the reward & challenge makes that much more exciting to get on one of those 40+ inchers !