Whitefish through the ice on Lake Simcoe – Ontario
It did not take long for the 1000 Islands to find it’s way to our heart. Joined by Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence river, 1000 Islands offers variety of fishery that attracts anglers from Canada and the United States. With so many shoals and rocks Saint Lawrence seaway is a paradise for fishing, but you sure got to be extremely careful and bring your hummingbird radar. The waters… ahh these waters are so beautifully clean and turquoise, that it almost feels you are somewhere south on a Caribbean getaway.
I have to say besides the impressive fishing, what had me at awe is the number of inhabited small islands only big enough to have a house. Some islands barely even had enough of 1 meter around the house to step on, and yet every small piece of rock is taken. Let me just say this is not our first time fishing in Thousands islands, over the past three years it has become our favorite area to fish. We come here to fish every summer.
For those of your coming from far, there is plenty of lodging options including camp sites. This is exactly what we did this summer, we camped at 1000 Islands Camping Resort located between Gananoque and Mallorytown. Gananoque is known throughout the fishing world as The Land of the Giants. The world record breaking Muskie was caught right off Gananoque’s shoreline. Extremely convenient location, and the campground had everything you could possibly need. So our trip started off the Pecks Marina, just a few kilometers from the campground.
What we did find difficult to navigate are the busy waters of the seaway. Being the touristic attraction it is, there were plenty of vessels passing by all day long. It is absolutely find for trolling, but if you are interested in casting, do keep closer to smaller bays, as oppose to open waters.
The other thing is with all the rocks and humps in the waterbed, its best that you use a sonar to navigate the area. Our Hummingbird sonar was a great tool we would not be able to leave out on this trip. First part of the way we concentrated on casting and while it was awesome, we got to explore various waterfronts. In the afternoon we moved on to some trolling, and we surely did not regret it. We had 3 rods set with deepseas with different colour deep tail dancer by rapala: 2 on each side and 1 in the middle. As we were trolling just underneath the Thousand Islands Bridge, one of the rods started to bend more and more. So we figured may be got some weeds, deciding to clean it up, I started to reel in the deepsea weight. Well those were not weeds, but a monster of a gorgeous walleye.
Following our epic catch, we were also in luck pulling a feisty smallie. I have to say our first day was a big success!
Next two days did not disappoint us either, we had many more catches. SO you can imagine we were extremely happy with the trip. Everything on our list checked off for an amazing trip: – plenty of catches, – cooperative weather; and – awesome stay at 1000 Island campground. What’s there not to brag about?
Looking forward to the next year and already planning out the next corner to fish on St. Lawrence river.
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