Northern Angler

So after haveing the last two and a half weeks off work I've decided to try and catch as many fish as possible over the Christmas/New Years holidays. I went out 10 times and landed close to a hundred fish! Today alone I landed eightteen whitefish and had a 18-20 lb pike peeling line like crazy. The tip-ups attempted to yeild about 10 fish over the holidays but have yet to be successful in landing them. Today I snapped 40 lb test while trying to pull a pike in on the tip-up. That one hurt the pride. My own fault though, I should have played him more instead of just trying to bring him to the ice hole. Speaking of ice, at the north side of Snipe lake it's a consistant 14" thick and lots of people are driving on it. We only went within 200 yds at most from the shore so I'm not sure how thick it is further out. Swan lake was successful as well, They were biting first thing in the morning and we landed them until about lunch time. The guys beside us were using dew worms and were having very good luck also. The ice there is about 10" thick but beware of the fountains as the ice will be less thick there. I would not recomend driving on this ice.

 Well, it's back towork for me and the reality of fishing only on the weekends again. Man, I could sure get used to fishing almost every day!

Clark Peters

Ok, so first off I'm apologizing for leaving it so incredibly long since my last post for Snipe Lake. I've been out quite a bit since. I went out the last two days (June 23rd and 24th). The first day the waves were a good 2 feet high and I only caught little scrapper pike that were anly 1.5 to 2 lbs at the most. This is quite different than in the spring when the smallest I caught was 4 lbs. Anyway, yesterday was a different story. We were picking off the odd pike that ranged from 1.5 lbs to 6 lbs. Once 6:30 hit we couldn't keep them off the line (trolling with a Len Thompson Red Devil). The pike started to slow about a bit by 8:00. This all took place about 50 yds from the weed beds. We crept into a bay amongst the weed beds and had perch start hitting our red devils. Josh switched to a smaller bright orange with brown head jig and I switched to a bright green jig. Literally almost every cast we had perch. They averaged around 1 lb. the biggest was close to 2 lbs. The odd pike made it's way onto the jigs but they were smaller than some of the perch we caught. we caught these guys until about 10:00. I've never had perch action like that before. We landed about 50 fish and had many more bites! What an absolute blast! I can gaurantee I'll be heading back soon.

April 27, 2009

I took a drive up to sturgeon this morning to have a look at the fishing conditions. The picture below is of Williamson Park boat launch which is where I've had most of my luck shore fishing. The ice is about 50 feet from shore so there's definatly room to cast. Over to the right of where the picture was taken I noticed the ice is quite a bit farther from shore however the water is shallower their. I had a run past the narrows only to notice the boat launch is still closed (if you drive about 200 yds further you will notice a small boat launch down a narrow road to your right which is a public launch, it's very sandy their so not good for large boats!). I degress. The ice is about 20 feet from shore at this point. I havn't made it to Goose Creek or the spillway at Sturgeon creek yet. Both of those tributaries are closed at this time however you can still legally fish into the lake from the shore of those creeks. Be sure you DO NOT cast into the tributaries as they are clsoed due to spawning for some time yet. I will be back out in the next couple days to have a look at the tributaries and will keep you posted.

-Clark

Well, fishing at Snipe Lake has been good the past few weeks. The ice is a nice 14 inches thick on the north east side of the lake however the drifting snow makes it difficult to drive onto the ice. The best access is from the Provincial Campgound and the best fishing has been no more than 100 yards from shore in about five feet of water.

The whitefish spawning period has pretty much ended for the year so they aren't hitting as hard as they were just after Christmas however there are still a few that are hitting a green or yellow Mepps lure.

The pike aren't hitting as hard as they will be in the spring time but you still get a few hits and they hit hard! Be prepared to have one of those monsters on the end of your line.

Perch are in abundance in this lake but mostly you will get little minnow like scrappers that have bigger eyes than stomachs. Every once in a while you will get a decent size perch between one and two pounds.

And last but not least there are burbot A.K.A lingcod and rumor has it that there are some huge ones in this lake! Have a look at the video in the video section to see just how slimy these things really are!

I will be heading back out to Snipe Lake in the next couple weeks and will keep you posted on what's moving and what's not!