August Long Weekend on Simcoe

I invite my friends Marco and Matt up to the cottage for a weekend of fishing. Simcoe, surprisingly, is very calm on the first morning, so we head out to a main lake shoal I've been wanting to try for some time. I alternate between throwing a spinnerbait and dragging a pumpkin coloured grub. No luck, despite the fact that we fish in water as shallow as 5 feet and as deep as 30. Interestingly, both Marco and I somehow manage to land gobies. At least, for future reference, I know there's forage in that spot.

In the evening, we start targeting perch. Marco lands a nice 12" fish using a white grub on a red jig-head in about 20 feet of water. At this point, I've tied on a drop-shot rig with a Black Shad 1" Gulp! Minnow on the hook. After catching some small perch, a rock bass and even a few sunfish, I set the hook on something a little bigger in 16 feet of water, about 6 inches from the bottom. It's a little smallmouth, but I'll take it.

And then this happened, while I was still using the Gulp Minnow:

Caught 5 species today on #Simcoe including my first #catfish pic.twitter.com/A6bmn9hf8H
— Greg Cholkan (@gregcholkan) August 3, 2014

Even Matt, who barely fishes, got into the action that evening:

The next morning, we start working some points. Off the first one, in about 5-7 feet of water in a rocky area, Marco catches a smallmouth while swimming his white grub. Reeling in relatively quickly, the fish smashes his bait only a few feet from the boat. Meanwhile, I've gone back to throwing my spinnerbait. Off another point, we find a nice weedy spot with a drop-off that goes from about 5 feet of water to ~10 feet pretty quickly. I manage to hook a decent smallmouth, and while I'm bringing it in, I see another one chasing the lure alongside the one on my line. Unfortunately, I lose the fish by the boat before Marco has a chance to get it in the net.

And now, it's time to get back to packing. I'm off to Quatsino Sound next week to do some salmon fishing!

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