Hard-water sesson underway!

The 2002/2003 ice fishing season has finally started here in southern Manotba. The “lower Red river” has now got plenty of safe ice on it, thanks to the cold snap that went thru the region last week.
Fishing reports have trickling in and for the most part, it’s been relatively slow for walleye.
I personally fished last Saturday, December 7th. Although the action wasn’t fast and furious, we did manage to catch some decent fish. With two of fishing, we ended up cacthing
six walleye. These fish ranged in size from 1-1/2 pounds to the largest at 10 pounds. During this sesson, we lost four fish aswell. Overall they weren’t aggressive, a couple of them were caught while a rod sat idle in the rod holder.
We threw quite a variety of color and size presentations at
them, but it never had a real positive effect on them. Of the fish that were cuaght, five were caught on lead head jigs tipped with a salted emerald shinner. One was caught wile jigging a Northland Buck-Shot “glo” jig. It had been tipped with two salties.
Although we never hammered numbers, it was still considered
to be a mighty fine sesson.
For those of you that are familiar with this section of the Red, we were fishing in the vicinity of Selkirk-Air. We were fishing the main channel, over twenty feet of water.
We planing another trip for tomorrow morning, in which if successful, I will post a few pic’s.
In the mean time, get out there and enjoy!

Stu McKay
Cats On The Red

Stu

A question here about your walleye fishery that will likely reveal a little hint of jealousy….

What helps your walleye grow to such huge proportions on the Red? Good habitat and lack of pressure? Restrictive regs? Abundant food? I’ve never topped 10 Lbs through the ice and you guys on the Red seem to do it with ease.

My thinking is food, lots of food. Genetics may be a big part too?

The big lake is a huge system, lots of water and lots of food.

What is your take on it Stu?

It’s a shared opinion, that the main reason fish grow tp such proportions in lake Winnipeg is food orientated. There are many different forage species in the big lake. Sisco, tullibee, a number of shinner species, when the emerarld shinner being the most common and the list goes on and on.

More recently, the self-introduction of rainbow smelt, is now part of this ecology. We all know what this means for

big predators like walleye, northern and catfish, they’re

only going to benefit in the long run.

There could be many reasons, as to why lake Winnipeg produces, but if were truthful, no one really knows for sure! Personally, I kind of like it that way.

Stu

Cats On The Red