Scott Dingwall with one of the biggest whitefish I have ever seen, caught from Lake of the Woods several years ago. – Submitted photoSince the start of the year this column has been focused on ice fishing for our most popular species of fish across the Sunset Country Region. We’ve covered what I consider the big four – walleye, northern pike, lake trout and crappie, but of course we have more opportunities than just fishing for those species. Let’s take a look at a few more options you can have some fun with out on the ice.
Before I started fishing in the U.S., I used to do a lot of guiding and spent most of the winter on the ice. If I wasn’t actually taking people fishing, I was out there with my buddies looking for new bites and places to fish. It was a lot of fun. We had great days fishing for whitefish and stocked trout as well. In more recent years, we’re seeing more big perch on Lake of the Woods that offer some incredible action.
A lot of our fisheries across the region host a population of whitefish. They are a fish that prefers cold water and can be found in most of our deeper waterbodies. They are also active under the ice. In the early 2000’s we discovered a couple of lakes that had an excellent population, especially Shoal Lake, west of Kenora and the catches were great. It was not uncommon to catch dozens per day.
The thing with whitefish is they have a small mouth, so you have to downsize your lures a little bit. I like using a spoon like I would use for walleyes, like a ¼ or 3/8-ounce Buck-Shot. Something that will get their attention. If the whitefish are bigger, they’ll be able to get most walleye baits in their mouth but if they are smaller ones or being finicky, you can add a smaller jig tipped with a piece of meat or plastic a few inches under the spoon. This is called a dropper rig. The spoon gets their attention, then they can eat the smaller bait.
Whitefish have a y-bone in the top part of their fillet, like a trout or pike, but if you take the time to remove them, they are arguably the best eating fish we have, rivalling walleye in my opinion. If you do get into a bunch of them, they are also the most fragile fish that I have ever handled, so you want to make sure you have some pilers to remove the hooks and try not to even take them out of the water if you intend to let them go.
One other tidbit about whitefish that anglers may not know is they have a downturned mouth. This is how you can tell the difference between a whitefish and a cisco, one of the more predominant baitfish species that we have. The cisco has a mouth that opens in the front, like most other fish. These two species look similar and while most cisco are going to be noticeably smaller; I have caught them up to a few pounds in size.
We have dozens of stocked trout lakes across the region. Most are brook trout, but there are opportunities for rainbow trout, brown trout and splake as well, a cross between a lake trout and a brook trout. These are some of the most beautiful fish that we have and they will vary in size. These stocked trout grow rather quickly and they don’t spawn, so it’s okay to keep a few.
These stocked trout are mostly found in shallow water in the small lakes that they are found in, often in three to eight feet of water. They evidently cruise the shallows looking for food and that’s where anglers can find them. Some days, jigging with a small spoon or jig and minnow will work best, while other days, a live minnow left to swim on a set line is the best way to get bites. You can check the OMNR Fish-ONLINE website for a complete listing of all the stocked lakes across northwest Ontario, as well as the stocking records, so you know which lakes are really loaded up. You’ll catch the biggest fish in the lakes that were stocked heavily four or five years prior.
Over the past couple of years in this column I have mentioned the perch that we’ve been catching on Lake of the Woods quite frequently. We used to catch them occasionally but now, many of my favourite walleye spots are holding schools of big perch as well. They are big enough that they will eat the same spoons and jigs that we use for walleye and they are as good as it gets for eating. We’re lucky that we have literally endless fishing options on the ice across Sunset Country, good luck out on the ice.
