April-09 — John Gillespie's Waters & Woods

April 2009

Episode 14
Late Ice in Canada 2009
Show Date April 4th & 5th, 2009
Location: Eagle Lake, Ontario, Canada
Guides: Rob Manthei, Pete Maina, Danny Herbeck & Cal Ritchy [andymyerslodge.com]

It’s that time of year again, our annual last ice fishing show. This year we are up in northern Ontario, Canada. We are fishing out of Andy Myers Lodge on beautiful Eagle Lake in Vermilion Bay, Ontario. We have a good bunch with us including Pete Maina, Rob Manthei, Danny Herbeck, and John Gillespie Jr. We also have a special guest with us, Mark Meunier, an ex-Marine recently retired National Guardsman. He sustained a career ending injury while on his fourth tour of Iraq serving his country. Mark, Thank You for all you have done for us and your country, I speak for all the guys that met you during this trip, having you out to fish with us is the least we could do.

Ontario has so many lakes that you could fish a new one every day for a year, and not fish the same one. On our trip we choose three lakes that have produced some great fish in the past, and we choose some that we haven’t been too, either way it’s a thrill. Any of these lakes can produce a fish-of-a-lifetime for any angler. That’s the reason that we find ourselves, struggling through the wilderness to reach these lakes.

We start off targeting trout, using a standard method, a jig and a white Gulp minnow. We spread out across a large area, where you could be jigging in between 34 to 72 feet. We also put out a spread of tip-ups to maximize the area that we can fish.

We switch lakes for the second day, to do a multi-species grab bag of walleye, perch, and northern pike. This day has our anglers trying anything and everything in their arsenal to purvey a delicious meal. Cal Ritchy is our local connection, Cal works out of Andy Myers Lodge in the summer, and we get to follow him into the Canadian bush for some fun backwoods fishing.

Episode 15
Late Ice in Canada 2009 Part 2
Show Date: April 11th & 12th, 2009
Location: Eagle Lake, Ontario, Canada
Guides: Rob Manthei, Pete Maina, Danny Herbeck & Cal Ritchy [andymyerslodge.com]

We are on our second half of our last ice fishing adventure in Canada, and Cal Ritchy is taking the reins. We also have the rest of our crew, which includes Pete Maina, Rob Manthei, Danny Herbeck, John Gillespie Jr., and our special guest Sgt. Mark Meunier. Cal has us on another Canadian wilderness lake in the bush, and the fishing lights up right away. We are targeting big walleyes and northern today, we are using dead bait on our tip-ups. We also have Pete’s muskie rods set up with dead bait, Pete make this famous when he tried it out on Lake Tobin a few years back.

The wind whips up halfway through the day, chilling our anglers, but the fishing stays hot. Even though we have a big front moving overhead our jig sticks stay bent over, and the flags keep popping up. We find a new spot that is ideal because it spans over many different depths, from 6 to 30 feet.

We love our last ice fishing show because the fishing is always good, and we have the open water to look forward to.

Episode 16
Spring on the Fox River
Show Date: April 18th & 19th, 2009
Location: Fox River; Green Bay, WI
Guide: Charter Captain Brett Alexander [920-851-4214 | alexandersportfishing.com]

We are happily in a boat again, and look forward to some great fishing this year. To start off our spring season we join Brett Alexander on the Fox river in Green Bay targeting the trophy walleyes that the Fox can be known to produce.

We start out our day vertical jigging with a dead hooked minnow and drifting down river. Using the bow-mount, Brett can push the boat into the current so we can keep our lines vertical. Covering lots of water all day we find that minnows are the bait to use. When nightfall comes we head up to join the many boats to the dam for the hot night bite that happens daily. We anchor and cast flicker shads, making sure that we are right off the bottom, just ticking the rocks.

It is a great day of angling, and great to be on the water. Brett tells us that the bite on the Fox can only get better as we get further into spring.

Episode 17
A Cold April Day brings a Hot Bite on the Bay
Show Date: April 25th & 26th, 2009
Location: Oconto, Wisconsin – Bay of Green Bay
Guide: Pro Guide Larry Smith [920-361-4996 | walleyeguide.com]

It's a cold day on Green Bay off of Oconto, Wisconsin, and we're out with Larry Smith. We have weather like its early March, but it’s nearly May. We are out on the Bay with a very strong offshore wind, and a constant drizzle of rain all day. Targeting walleyes, we are drifting the shore and casting crank-baits in all directions to try to find what will make these fish go. The water temperatures have cooled down nine degrees in two days, and these fish are very negative. With such a light bite, we switch to vertical jigging, and our luck quickly changes. Even though the walleyes weren’t hitting the crank-baits, we had a couple pleasant surprises on our lines.

All the while the hot bite is lighting up our day, we have to hand land all of our catches because we forgot our Frabill net at home! The weather being what it was make the fishing that much better, and the Johnsonville’s taste great at the end of the day too!