Where are the lakers?!, Comon boys, post them laker pics

How has the laker fishing been for you guys the last couple years? I thought it was pretty slow. Whitefish, no problem. Lakers no luck.

Can't keep them off my line. I'll admit, they were slow at the end of the year for some reason, but the beginning and mid were dynamite.

Had a doubleheader and a 20lber last year too..

There are a lot of lake trout videos of me pulling them up from last year on my channel. Check it out if you want some idea of how good the fishing was last year.

7-minute mark for 20 lbs lake trout reveal.. but the entire thing is pretty entertaining of how the doubleheader happened lol

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/O0895i9DYKU[/YOUTUBE]


I can only talk about soft water fishing... But here's my soft water advice.

If you are getting a lot of whitefish and no lakers, I'm betting you're fishing the suspended fish and using blade baits.

Do this: Keep going until you don't mark fish anymore, just outside of the wall of suspended fish. Put a 4-inch shad on or a 4-inch swimbait. If you're in 110 ft of water, jig around 70 ft.. and wait. They will come off the bottom - you won't mark them until they're in pursuit.

What he said (for laker)

Can't keep them off my line. I'll admit, they were slow at the end of the year for some reason, but the beginning and mid were dynamite.

Had a doubleheader and a 20lber last year too..

There are a lot of lake trout videos of me pulling them up from last year on my channel. Check it out if you want some idea of how good the fishing was last year.

7-minute mark for 20 lbs lake trout reveal.. but the entire thing is pretty entertaining of how the doubleheader happened lol

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0895i9DYKU[/YOUTUBE]


I can only talk about soft water fishing... But here's my soft water advice.

If you are getting a lot of whitefish and no lakers, I'm betting you're fishing the suspended fish and using blade baits.

Do this: Keep going until you don't mark fish anymore, just outside of the wall of suspended fish. Put a 4-inch shad on or a 4-inch swimbait. If you're in 110 ft of water, jig around 70 ft.. and wait. They will come off the bottom - you won't mark them until they're in pursuit.

Wow thanks man. I appreciate advice and the video was awesome. I also liked your video and subscribed to your channel.

I understand your opinion as your successful at catching Lakers but you’re one person. Your personal experience is valuable but doesn’t tell the entire story of an entire lake. It’s the same as people who complain about the perch population yet some people consistently catch Jumbos.


The MNR has stated directly that the lake trout population has shrank and is not healthy. Also the lake trout population is extremely top heavy with most lakers being large and very little to no natural recruitment. They have again increased stocking to combat this drop in population size.

Other than BBP and Kemp most of the lake doesn’t have the numbers of Lake trout around that used to be present.
I target BBP area also and I catch a lot of lakers but again that’s just my experience. I think we need to consider that the MNR monitors the health of the whole lake not just our individual hot spots where we always catch Lakers.

On a side note no one should be eating big Lakers anyway as they are not fit for human consumption as per the “guide to eating Ontario sport fish”.

Thanks for the info, Disco! I had no idea the MNR had made this statement. Do you have a reference to this somewhere? I'd love to read it.

All I know is you can go almost anywhere in 100+ ft of water, put a lure down, and get laker action if the time of the day is right. If they hook up is a different story - and that's where the experience and finesse come in.

From the lakers that I have been catching, I can attest to the statement 'the lake trout population is extremely top-heavy with most lakers being large.' Most lakers I've caught in the past year have been 11lbs +. I think I caught maybe 3 or 4 lakers last year that were under 8lbs, and only a few that were about 2-3 lbs.

Some info to support the above statement for people reading this: Lakers grow only about 1 pound per year. This means that a 10 lbs laker is about ten years old - give or take a few years. A 20 lbs laker is generally accepted to be about 20 years old.

PS - Glad you liked the video. Thanks for the sub

Yes of course Reelinginthebigone.

A small excerpt.

“Lake Simcoe's cold-water fish community has shown a range of trends from 2003 to 2018 depending on the species (Figure 4). Catches of wild lake trout in monitoring nets have remained low, but stable, while stocked lake trout catches have declined from 2003 to 2018. Monitoring has also shown that lake trout continue to reproduce, although at low levels. Most wild lake trout are currently large, old fish (15+ years old), suggesting that the last year of strong reproduction was in 2004, although an appreciable number of wild fish were produced in 2013.”

Also the chart below shows the minimal wild stocks and the decline in catch rates for stocked lakers.

This on going monitoring of the lake is also why the MNR has increased Laker stocking recently due to the low natural production.

Full article.
https://www.ontario.ca/page/ministers-10-ye...ort-lake-simcoe

Thanks for the link!

Very interesting. Most of the fish I've caught last year were clipped or tagged, and those fish are in the 10lbs+ range. I reported a few tags as well.

One of the biggest problems, and I mentioned this already, is the fact that it takes a lot of skill to get these fish back down to the depths properly without killing them.

Biggest mistakes people make:

1. Holding them vertically
2. Not using depth descenders (I wish the MNR would make these mandatory for whitefish/lake trout)
3. Taking them out of the water when they don't need to be taken out of the water.
4. Not burping them correctly.
5. Not reviving them correctly.
6. Dropping them when taking pictures (they are slimy AF)
7. Using gloves and ripping off their protective slime. However, this is still 10x better to get a grip on them than holding them but their gill plate or vertically! Just make sure to wet the gloves first!
8. Touching their gills (or holding them by their gills under the gill plate)
9. Using a net too small.
10. Using a non-rubber net or coated net (ripping into their sides and removing slime)

I know you know all of this Disco, but just for the other members who might be new to lake trout fishing reading this - just because the fish goes back down, doesn't mean that it survives. A lot of fish die an hour or a few days later. For instance, holding them vertically out of water rips their internals. Fish are not meant to be held vertically with gravity pulling them down.

These fish are super sensitive - I'd wager just as sensitive as Musky. They aren't perch or bass where you can literally flip them back in the water and they go on their merry way.

I couldn’t agree more.

I would add one thing. One of these big lakers should ever be fought on light gear. An extended fight allows exhaustion and lactic acid build up which increases mortality. You do not need to bring lakers up slow at all as they burp and can expel their air bladder easily.

I use 20# floro leader and catch lots and they all shoot back to bottom not swim lazily.

I agree...tons of Lakers on Simcoe

Look into the studies please everyone. I’ve been fishing Simcoe for 40 years. The Lake Trout population issue is real and backed up by MNR studies over the last 10 to 15 years. 10 years ago double digit days of lake trout in the winter was the norm, now guys are happy to catch a few a day. I’ve personally never killed a lake trout on Simcoe and I stopped targeting lake trout the past 4 years, I guess I was spoiled during the late 1990’s to 2010’s when the lake trout population was booming and the fishing pressure was a lot lighter. All I can say is do some research on the topic and think before you bonk! Tight lines.

To the guys saying there's tons of lakers in Simcoe. How many lakers are you catching a day?

I think the few of us concerned might have different perspectives on a good day of fishing for lakers. Double digit days on Simcoe for lakers was very very regular back in the day. An incredible fishery. Now 5 or 6 lakers in a day can be considered a stellar day. Should we accept 5 or 6 lakers in a day meaning there's tons of lakers in Simcoe? The current average size of fish is what keeps bringing me back but my other Laker lakes now 20 fish days are regular (some guys would catch 3 lakers there and call it a stellar day so I think it's perspective)

A typical day of soft water Lake trout fishing on Simcoe for me would be 2-3 lakers. A steller day would be 4-6. I don't hard water fish.

To me, it's not a matter of lakers not being there -I mark them coming to have a look almost every 5-10 minutes. It's just only about 10% of them will be engaged enough to chase.

During the right time, I can't keep them off my line. They are all down there on the bottom, you just don't mark them until they come off the bottom.

I come from Salmon fishing, so getting 4-6 salmon would be a stellar day for me too

I couldn't imagine you guys getting 10 lakers a day back in the day.. wow. Was that only hard water fishing, or was that soft water as well?

Back then it was both hard water and soft water. Soft water is easier to get double digit days since the lakers mostly congregate in the deeper water and it's easier to boat around until you find them. In the winter theyre more spread out throughout the lake and it's harder to move to find them. Back then it didn't really matter which drop off you drilled a hole in the winter and you'd still crush them. It was incredible.

The fish you are describing that come up casually to check out your bait and go back down are typically whitefish. I've dropped my camera down before and would watch the whities come up out of curiosity. On rare days whities even fly up, chase and hit baits just like lakers. Lots of those whites cruising around down there.

Simcoe Polluted with Lakers? Maybe by gobies. We’re not even close to the numbers this lake held 17yrs ago. Don’t know how worse it can get but with misinformation to the newbie fishergirl/men it can get real bad real fast, people will think it’s ok to take home anything they catch, when really they should be throwing them all back. Don’t know how anyone can eat 15-20lb laker anyway. It’s just like steelhead, ppl think it’s stacked yet they never fished when fishing wasn’t this popular. Girls and boys hit the tribes catch 5-6 a day and call it an epic day. When I was 18 I was catching 20a day.