It's not MI, but it's close enough! Simcoe

[Little John]

I fished Lake Simcoe Wed-Fri last week and had a great time. The weather was a bit flakey, with high winds, snow squalls and a cold front bearing down, but the fish were quite cooperative. I pretty much just did a run and gun scouting excursion on Wed all day and Thurs. morning, trying to locate big fish. I kept my 50 on Thurs. afternoon and then got serious about quality on Friday morning, keeping 40 more real slabs. I weighed several fish on the ice at over 1.25#'s. I weighed my 15 best after getting home on Saturday. They 15 weighed in at 17#'s.

The weapons of choice were Optic Stealths and Fiskas Wolfram jigs tipped with Little Atom Nuggie tails. I caught literally hundreds of fish and had to pick through them. I caught Sunnies, jumbo Rock Bass and even a 2#+ bull head.

The ice conditions were perfect! There was just enough snow to run a sled and atv travel was a no brainer. The ice was 18-24" thick on the inside of Georgina Island.

Here's some pic's from the outing. I was by myself so sorry that there's no action shots:

[Matt Johnson]

Nice fish John! Those jumbo perch are quite the tussel on light line, and they taste OK as well

[Little John]

I've caught bigger perch on many occasions, but I don't think that I had them put up as much of a fight as some of these beasts did. The very 1st real hog that I hooked, was when I was fishing with the flasher and a barbeless hook. I set the hook at thought, "darn it, a stink'n pike has my good jig". So I played the fish for about a minute or two trying to shake the fish loose by dropping slack line every few seconds...I finally worked the fish to the hole where I could see it and realized that it was a @#$&^ huge perch. It was at about the same time that all of my slack lining actually did the trick and the hook popped out.

The moral of the story is: Don't ever assume what you have on the other end of your line.

I don't even want to guess how big it was. I just know it was big...

[Team Otter]

Nice perch! I've done some reading on Lake Simcoe and always thought that would be a great place to explore. Aren't there monster 'eyes in there as well?

[Deitz Dittrich]

LJ-I dont think I have or ever will think that I had a pike when a perch was on the other end... That had to be one SUMO Moster Perch... sorry for your loss!!!

Come on, guess how big it was...it will only hurt again for a few secconds!

[hanson]

Sounds like you had a great time there Little John!

Did I hear correctly that it is a 50 perch daily limit? Yowzer! Thats a lot of fish cleaning.

Has that always been the limit on Simcoe or has it been reduced. Devil's Lake in ND had absolutely unreal daily and possession limits and that lake is not the same now as it was then. They've since reduced their daily limits but it still hasn't come back strong yet.

What kind of lengths were you getting on those perch, 12-14"??

Mille Lacs here in Minnesota has been pumping out 12-15" perch all winter long. Bite should be firing up even more with late ice coming.

[Drake]

Nice perch Little John, looks like you got some good size fillets off of those! We're getting some good sizers here off Blackduck Lake in MN, but doing some weeding of quite a few smaller ones, but can only keep 20 a day (40 possession). What were the size of the sunnies?

[Little John]

I had about 20 fish out of the 90 that I kept that were between 13" & 14". I didn't ice any of the legendary 15's or 16's, but I do know that they are there. I would actually rather keep 9-10" males for eating and conservation reasons, but was trying to generate publicity for the businesses and tournaments on Lake Simcoe that have suffered in recent years for a number or reasons...

When I started fishing Lake Simcoe some 20 yrs ago, there was no limit on Perch. That's right you could keep as many as you wanted, and in our selfish ignorance we did. How does 150 quart coolers full sound for two days of fishing for two guys??? But the locals never really cared, because they wanted Lake Trout, Whitefish and Herring. They also originally had generous bag limits, with herring being unlimited. Well, the herring are all but wiped out, the Lakers are no longer reproducing naturally (so I'm told) and the whitefish are not nearly as numerous with a two/day limit. Now I really don't think that the winter sport fishery alone has had that great an impact on any but the herring population. I think environmental factors like pesticides and nitrates from fertilizers have done far more damage to the entire ecosystem balance. Now there is a huge population explosion of Cormorants (fish eating birds) that I've seen here in MI and now on Simcoe that can't be doing any good...

Any how the bag limit is now 50/day, 100 possession limit, which is the same on Lake St. Clair (another incredible perch factory).

The sunnies were on the smallish side 6-7 inches, but the rockies were jumbo sized 10-11". I've caught larger sunnies, but was really after the perch on this trip.

Simcoe is an awsome fishery that everyone should experience!