MikeyMikey
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2006
- Messages
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Toronto Islands (Halan, Centre & Ward) Pike fishing report - May 10th, 2008.
Well Spring is here and pike should have spawned/spawning around Toronto Islands so I decided to ferry over to the Islands. I was really hoping that my 2nd outting to the Island this year would be as good as my May'07 piking. Yes I said my 2nd outing because I totally got skunked for several hours non-stop! Phew~. Now that I am submitting a report I must have caught something, right? Let's hope so.
So I drove straight down the Yonge St. to see how much downtown have changed and traffic is as always but I gotta say it's more enjoyable (sometimes) than just driving down the DVP or something. Once I reached very south of Yonge St. I turned left and parked my car at the Public Parking right next to that big sea food ship. Walked to the ferry and took a 1045hour boat over to Wards Island side.
Weather/Condition: Obviously being near the water felt little cooler/cold for me but water was calm but stained look. Cloud covers with on and off sun peaking out. Even with this slight cooler air and light winds there was a lot of people at the Islands enjoying themselves. I sure enjoyed my sight seeing as there was a lot of *caugh* girls *caugh* riding bikes & skating... so I have to say it was somewhat pleasing to my eyes. (Ooops, out of topic here).
Fishing Gears: BPS Cheapo 6'6" Medium Heavy Rod, Daiwa Cheapo Starter Baitcaster spooled with Berkley Fireline Crystal 20lb test (8lb test diameter). Seaguar 80lb test Flouro leader.
Lures: Rapala X-Rap in Perch, Clown. Rapala Husky JerkOff (HJ13) in Gold & Black. & Lucky Strike Suspending lure in blue'ish colour.
Misc equipment(s): Sony Ericsson W810i was used to take snapshots.
After getting off the boat at Wards I walked along the water until I reached a small wooden bridge and from here I started casting perch pattern.
I simply used 3 different retrieve pattern, fast straight, slow straight, constant jerk! jerk! jerk!~ jerk! jerk! jerk~ jerk that body~ & jerk pause (only about 2~3 seconds as I lack patiences) retrieve methods. During this time if I see any fish in the water or see any pike follow my lure I would repeatedly try different retrieve for several times and if nothing happens, I would swap to different lures and repeat all over again. Than I would move on down the water and start working it all over again. (I think I should have done even longer pause in between, 10+seconds)
So for about 6 hours of walking the Islands from Wards to Halan Point I only ended up catching one single pike. Oh! and it was a small one too!
Now here are the fun stuff...
I arrived here and started doing my routine retrieve with X-Rap Clown pattern...
Here is a Google Map linkage to view the exact(almost) spot.
And here is the result. This one actually gave me a bit of fight unlike pike from last year where after few head shakes it would just drag in like a wet socks.
This one actually ended up rolling on my line and damaging itself as you can see from the line marks on it's body. But Hey! Look at it... atleast it's got a smile on
Well it sure wasn't exciting day but atleast I caught one small slimy 'can I even call you a pike' pike.
Final thoughts: I have to say that water level sure was about foot or two higher than previous year at this time and condition of the water didn't felt as good either. I remember last year at this time I've seen a lot more active carps swimming around foul playing with each other and fair amount of visible weeds in the water. Even tho we had a lot of snow which I guess helped increase the water level? and very very warm two weeks or so early on which really got the trees going green fast. But! to me water seems still cooler? I remember my first outing where I have seen several big pikes just laying close to shore but on this outing I haven't seen a single pike other than the one I caught and about 3 pike follows. Non of which seemed big enough. What ever the condition is I think there is still good pike fishing to be had once we see little more fresh weeds grow. Than again what do I know? I just learning to fish.
Thank you!
Well Spring is here and pike should have spawned/spawning around Toronto Islands so I decided to ferry over to the Islands. I was really hoping that my 2nd outting to the Island this year would be as good as my May'07 piking. Yes I said my 2nd outing because I totally got skunked for several hours non-stop! Phew~. Now that I am submitting a report I must have caught something, right? Let's hope so.
So I drove straight down the Yonge St. to see how much downtown have changed and traffic is as always but I gotta say it's more enjoyable (sometimes) than just driving down the DVP or something. Once I reached very south of Yonge St. I turned left and parked my car at the Public Parking right next to that big sea food ship. Walked to the ferry and took a 1045hour boat over to Wards Island side.
Weather/Condition: Obviously being near the water felt little cooler/cold for me but water was calm but stained look. Cloud covers with on and off sun peaking out. Even with this slight cooler air and light winds there was a lot of people at the Islands enjoying themselves. I sure enjoyed my sight seeing as there was a lot of *caugh* girls *caugh* riding bikes & skating... so I have to say it was somewhat pleasing to my eyes. (Ooops, out of topic here).
Fishing Gears: BPS Cheapo 6'6" Medium Heavy Rod, Daiwa Cheapo Starter Baitcaster spooled with Berkley Fireline Crystal 20lb test (8lb test diameter). Seaguar 80lb test Flouro leader.
Lures: Rapala X-Rap in Perch, Clown. Rapala Husky JerkOff (HJ13) in Gold & Black. & Lucky Strike Suspending lure in blue'ish colour.
Misc equipment(s): Sony Ericsson W810i was used to take snapshots.
After getting off the boat at Wards I walked along the water until I reached a small wooden bridge and from here I started casting perch pattern.
I simply used 3 different retrieve pattern, fast straight, slow straight, constant jerk! jerk! jerk!~ jerk! jerk! jerk~ jerk that body~ & jerk pause (only about 2~3 seconds as I lack patiences) retrieve methods. During this time if I see any fish in the water or see any pike follow my lure I would repeatedly try different retrieve for several times and if nothing happens, I would swap to different lures and repeat all over again. Than I would move on down the water and start working it all over again. (I think I should have done even longer pause in between, 10+seconds)
So for about 6 hours of walking the Islands from Wards to Halan Point I only ended up catching one single pike. Oh! and it was a small one too!
Now here are the fun stuff...
I arrived here and started doing my routine retrieve with X-Rap Clown pattern...
Here is a Google Map linkage to view the exact(almost) spot.
And here is the result. This one actually gave me a bit of fight unlike pike from last year where after few head shakes it would just drag in like a wet socks.
This one actually ended up rolling on my line and damaging itself as you can see from the line marks on it's body. But Hey! Look at it... atleast it's got a smile on
Well it sure wasn't exciting day but atleast I caught one small slimy 'can I even call you a pike' pike.
Final thoughts: I have to say that water level sure was about foot or two higher than previous year at this time and condition of the water didn't felt as good either. I remember last year at this time I've seen a lot more active carps swimming around foul playing with each other and fair amount of visible weeds in the water. Even tho we had a lot of snow which I guess helped increase the water level? and very very warm two weeks or so early on which really got the trees going green fast. But! to me water seems still cooler? I remember my first outing where I have seen several big pikes just laying close to shore but on this outing I haven't seen a single pike other than the one I caught and about 3 pike follows. Non of which seemed big enough. What ever the condition is I think there is still good pike fishing to be had once we see little more fresh weeds grow. Than again what do I know? I just learning to fish.
Thank you!
