August 12th, It finally happened.

Hope everybody is having a great summer and keeping their lines tight! I've been chasing pike and bass in my backyard (cooks bay) with limited success. Lots of jumbo perch on the trawl and monster rock bass but only 1 pike and about 12 bass in 7 outings. Everytime I try to go deep its windy and I dont feel too comfortable with a 25 on simcoe but today the weather was good. Lines down at 6:30am and marking the odd whitey but no lakers. I've never caught a laker on the open water on simcoe and was determined today. I kept moving and moving and moving until I thought I found a school of whiteys but it was deep water percyh. My gas tank is getting empty but I made one last move. 10km later I finally start getting some decent marks but no takers. 2 years ago I met James (Xialou) at a boat launch and after a quick chat he gave me one of his jigs rigged up and ready to go so I figured I'd finally give it a try. Thank you James!! Got my first open water Simcoe laker! As soon as it was in the net the hook snapped in half. Lucky break again. Didn't have any more jigs with me except 1/4oz and they weren't cutting it. All in all very happy with today.

Snapped hook.

Deep water perch

Nice!

Congrats on the very nice and your first open water laker! That's a tank! Well done.
We are lucky here to have so many varieties of fish to go after.
Pike in excess of 3-4 lb are hard to get in July and August as they go deep and have short feeding windows.

Jigging Lakers on Simcoe is the best way to go. Congratulations

nice one VBB persistence pays off


fyi, I have been experimenting with your fav. lure both on Erie at at my cottage


very pleased to say that it worked quite well in both applications.. now I am determined to fine tune it further


gl on your next outing

The longer it takes the sweeter it is when it finally happens! Congrats on finally landing an open water laker!

nice job!

Beautiful laker!! Congrats!!! Now we just have to get you a different t-shirt !!!!

Never!! Go green!!

Congrats!

Those lures are fantastic! I've caught almost everything I fish goe with a vibrato. Out this morning and thought I saw a whitey on the bottom. Had a 10g on an ice fishing rod so send that down as nothing else was working. Didnt do anything on the bottom but on the retrieve it smashed it 50ft up. After some very nice runs it came unbuttoned about 20ft from the surface. Beauty of a morning to be out until the NE wind picked up.

Get some Kalens bullet saltwater jigs, you'll never bust a hook again. 3/4, 1oz, 1.5oz. I use them all with big plastic.

Never heard of them. Thanks for the tip.