Out and about at Sibbald's point

[Whynot]

I'll save you the time if you're looking for fish pics - you won't find any on this report, unfortunately!

With a calm forecast on Sunday we decided to give Simcoe a try for Whitefish. Never chased whities by boat and, tbh, only ever caught one and that was this past spring a week before they opened.

We launched at Sibbald's, surprised to only see 4 boat trailers in the lot when we arrived just before 7.

After launch out to a small rise in 40fow, marked a few fish, got some small perch bites and my buddy was bit off.

Then went further west and drifted a shoal. A few perch, one jumbo with an empty belly that had clearly held lots of eggs not too long ago! Caught and destroyed two invasive gobis, one was about 7" that hit a 3" minnow body! I then had a solid hit, but missed the hookset. Boo.

Saw a few boats out deeper - I'm guessing White Shoal - but my boat is ancient and I'm always nervous about making a big run so we didn't venture out.

Around 10 we gave up and headed in shallow to try to chase pike. Didn't see any signs of pike but once we got into 10fow and weeds there were bass everywhere - they seem to be in pre-spawn, only a few pairs seen, lots of singles cruising around and none were aggressive at all. We mostly just cruised around and watched the bass - holy TANKS - tried casting a bit once we weren't seeing bass regularly, but no luck on pike.

So all in all, not great fishing but what a beauty of a day on the water! First time trying for late season whities and we've never gone to Simcoe for bass but will certainly be out there this summer! Will be curious to see where they're at in the spawn when the season opens.

[dmaster]

You must study about whitefish life, behavior.
Must to know they are no spawning in the spring, normally in November-December.
It is cold water fish, when the lake warming up, they are moving from shallow to much deeper waters, like 100 - 120 ft.
Past Sunday we located few schools of them at exactly 100ft depth. Few others saw them at 90, 120...
Not a simple thing with LS whities, need skills to guess and located them, and fast enough, bite slowing after morning hours.

[Whynot]

Interesting - thanks for sharing!

The research I had done - albeit limited - indicated June whitefish will still come up to shoals to feed overnight and then move back to depths as the sun rises.

I guess what we didn't properly account for is the relative depths of LS vs the lakes we were reading about.

Really appreciate the info you shared!

[Longshank]

Whities will come and feed shallow for a short window when the fly hatches are in full swing, but soon after that I would say that 75 foot is the minimum to where the go on Simcoe and as stated even quite deeper...

some of the shiel lakes will have shallow wf longer but also eventually go quite deeper


hey, you got out and tried