More CO checks at night, Know the regs

As I was pulling off the ice for the night, I was stopped and asked my several people how my day was and what I was catching (not a problem). When I proceeded to tell them what I had caught, every single one of them asked if I had the walleye in my hut. Even after I asked them if they were aware that they were closed and had a reply of yes as if they knew. It's concerning to me that people have no regard for the rules and regulations, even though they seem aware of them. No wonder why our fisheries are being ruined

2017 bodes to be a bad year for crap like this with not giving a crap about regulations.already with everything you can read about,people are just doing whatever the hell they want.some clown shot a deer over by trent university,and these idiots from keswick with their bear....yeah...i can see this being a whole lot of fun

MNR needs give stiffer penalties get them in the pocket book. It should be a ten thousand dollar fine and a five-year fishing ban for the first offense and a higher fine for the second offense.

Was being asked too, agreed about the higher penalties, even the first time should be higher too, who knows is it the first time or not!

We will never have enough CO's to monitor it all and there seem to be just as many people fishing illegally as legally in waters where only pan fish are open.
I know many here that legitimately fish for pan fish will hate what I'm about to say but I really think they just just ban ice fishing altogether on some of these lakes as they are still going for walleye and even bass and ruining those fisheries.

Puta, I totally agreed with you, years ago I saw people how to hide the bass they caught during ice season, I wrote a email to MNR told them how they did, next two weeks, CO was there checking one by one. Actually, people only want to catch fish they never think of the environment, There is one lake I fish for 20 years, used to have good bass from day and night, but one spot is totally being destroyed, both sides of the channel used to have nice big lily pads but now not even one lily because the people anchor their both inside the lily pads for Crappie and non season bass( I make a guy released the fish by photo hie boat and number told him I will report the MNR )!!!! Now that area doesn't have any fish, cause no place to live and hide. So, I will say it's destroy!

X2 I love ice fishing scugog and would support an ice fishing ban to help rejuvenate the lake.

Havent fished the bog in many years, sad to hear this is an issue on scugog. I'm sure it has been happening on other kawarthas but i havnt noticed it being an issue in the few i fish, my focus is usually on daytime perch and gills so i see few eyes but anglers "targetting" crappie at twilight and night could definately put the hurt on them, it would be nice to see mnr put some money back into stocking the kawarthas, since they have lowered the creel and set slot limits, keep those in place and stock,and let us fish them in winter, it may water down genetics a bit i guess but it works well in the states, just my 2 cents.

i disagree totally with closing the winter panfishery, the tri-lakes area need more buckets of panfish taken in my opinion, they are overpopulated and make walleye and bass angling difficult in the open water season at times, once again, my opinion.

Hitting someone in the wallet really hard does have a positive effect because word gets around.
When I was stationed in Texas, I used to fish one impoundment that's a power-plant lake. I became friends with a couple of DNR guys stationed at the gate and stopped to chat with them a lot of times, One of those times, we were talking outside the gate and a pick-up pulled up to leave. Mike stopped it and asked how they did (3 guys with a tri-hull). Not too bad they said. Mike walked back to the boat and looked in, seeing a couple of coolers. He asked what was in there and the driver said one had the 3 catfish they kept and the other was their food and drinks. When Mike asked if he could look inside, the guy hesitated. Mike jumped into the boat and saw the 3 channel cats in one cooler, then looked in the other and saw it was full of largemouth bass. At that time the minimum size was 12", but the ones he saw were 7-8". So he removed the cooler, took the keys to the truck and started counting. When he finished, there were 40+ dead largemouth from 5-10". He got out his calculator, did some figuring and told the guy his fine was $8500. When he said he didn't have that with him, Mike told him that he'd keep his truck and boat until he returned with the money. He came back a few days later to pay his fine.

I don't disagree with you but panfish is not the reason I am in favor of putting a ban on ice fishing. My reasoning is because people are catching walleye and bass out of season while using the open pan fish season to pretend that's what they're fishing for. This is killing those Fisheries More so then abundance of panfish. Especially sinve Mother Nature seems to have a way of balancing things out so it's not like panfish would take over the place.


Also because there is no way for there to be enough conservation officers to be everywhere at the same time it would be nice to even narrow down the odds of when people could fish. There are certain rules that they could put into place to make it easier to catch the cheaters for example only fishing during daylight hours. That may help people catch these guys going out all night targeting walleye. Also an idea would be to segregate Lakes from year to year for example for 2018 you are only allowed to ice fish Rice Lake in the Corpus. And then the next year let's say Lake Scugog and so on. This would help make sure that all of the conservation officers were concentrated where everyone was fishing and if somebody was fishing on an undesignated lick then you know automatically that they are illegal and it is faster to find them. Once again I know that people out there to the gym in Italy Target pan fish and do legitimately fish within the laws so I know my suggestion won't sit the best with you but it's just my two cents to help the Fisheries

There's so many factors in play. I've been on scugog over twelve times this year ice fishing and have seen people fishing for pickerel and playing it off like they are fishing for crappie( minnow on a jig head on a tip up setup) in my opinion a pickerel rig not a crappie rig and I fish at dawn and dusk for crappie and I use an appropriate bait for crappie so I don't attract a pickerel that's just me. Plus it would be nice too see a stocking program for scugog especially with an effort through the township.

They should have left all the kawartha lakes including scugog closed to ice fishing. The open season will kill all these lakes. Whine and cry its a done deal the last nails in the coffin. Rice will be next with walleye closure. The end

Agree, all these lakes are too close to the city and see way too much pressure year around, a break in the winter wouldn't hurt.

Make laws like -No permanent huts and no night fishing.