Any information would be helpfull on this subject. I have never gone Brook Trout fishing up here , but trying to go this year . Will be going end of April when season opens. Is this a good time?
Any Lakes or Rivers I should try?
Bait , worms , small lures what works?
Thanks for the help JOE

Timing is everything... Go RIGHT AFTER ice out... If there's snow in the woods, hillsides or in ravines then that's the time to go... Check with a local outfitter.

Regarding lures: small Mepps and Panther Martins work best.

Purchase the Algonquin Fishing guide to help you locate species on the lakes you want to fish.

Please remember, trout are slow to grow in the Canadian Shield, so those trout meals deplete stock for future generations.

Fish prudently and be practice Catch and Release.

Carl

I like going about 2 weeks after ice out. Around the mother's day weekend. The water has a little time to warm up and there seems to be more activity (my experience). If your going to practise catch and release press the barbs down on your hooks, doesn't take much to kill a brook trout.
Andy

Butt lake entrance #3, is the best or so i have herd. you have to canoe into it, but you will limit out on trout in 2 hrs!, I will be there may 19!

I'm not a big fan of catch-and-release as a philosophy.

There is a mortality associated with C&R. Proponents don't want to acknowledge that, but it's true. Some fish, like bass and carp, are fairly hardy under stress. Others, like brook trout, aren't. As has been said, it doesn't take much to kill a brook trout, and some die after they are released.

If the mortality is 30 percent, and if I catch and kill two brook trout while the C&R faction on a lake catches and releases 20, then they have killed three times more fish than I have, yet they will hold a position on a discussion group of somehow being morally superior.

In some areas, C&R is the law. In those cases, you may take a kid fishing and he or she may gill-hook a trout. The animal will be bleeding bright red blood from its gill slit. The law says you have to throw the fish back in the water, yet it has no chance of survival.

Since every kid's first question on his or her first fish is, "can we eat him?", I suggest you are teaching a twisted moral lesson to the kid by forcing C&R. Also, it's unnatural. Eagles, pike, mink and turtles do not practice C&R.

Also, proponents of C&R imply that the limits imposed by the government are insufficient. I could accept that if there were any evidence to support it, but I am very leery of people that propose the government is inept and then propose themselves as the solution.

Finally, I don't know much about girls, but if you take any three-year-old boy and put him in the tail end of a pool some hot August afternoon with minnows, crayfish, frogs and snakes, that kid absolutely MUST chase the animals. He can't help it. Maybe girls are the same. In either event, the chaser is not hungry and is not operating from learning. He (or she) is operating on instinct.

It is perfectly natural to chase, catch, kill and eat.

I think people have been letting the little ones go, throwing back the "trash" (whatever that means) fish or practicing other methods of selection since time began. I don't have a problem with that, and I don't have a problem with obeying the laws.

I do, however, have a problem with a cult philosophy that grew out of the bass tournament mentality and is being imposed in an extra-legal sense on the lakes and rivers of Canada.

kk

The MNR recently studied the effects of C&R, they found that Lake Trout have a 90%+ survival rate when released.

What affected the rate the most was the method of fishing.....lures had the highest survival rate...live bait the lowest, minnows were especially bad.

Given Algonquins ban on bait fish, live or dead, I would think Algonquins C&R survival rate would be around 90%.

Food for thought....

Markw

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MarkW on 2002-02-11 16:11 ]</font>

Anonymous - Don't forget about the Blackflies. They emerge shortly after ice-out, typically in early May, and can make life miserable for the unprepared.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jon L on 2002-02-11 16:40 ]</font>

2 weeks after ice-out MAX...We're usually in the first Sat in May (Lavielle again this year)
Warmer days and fast water (running) will produce monster blackflies...(3-4weeks after ice-out)
Look at a map of Algonquin and point at the middle (approx 9" radius) AND YOU'LL HAVE TROUT

Dave

10 percent kill rate on C&R is not food for thought; it's food for turtles.

Brookies in Algonquin are not seasonal predators. I think the best set-up is a Lake Clair Wabbler (half copper/half bronze) with a No. 4 trailer hook and a dew worm.

The fish start dimpling the surface most evenings, and you can cast to the dimples.

Larger fish hang around in the lakes, and smaller in the brooks, belying the name, brookies. Maritimers call them mud trout, and that's a good pointer. They like worms, and worms like mud. In this case, the "worms" often are emerging insects.

Brookies in lakes behave much like bass, but usually one drop-off deeper. Therefore, if you would normally look for bass within 10 feet of shore, cast toward shore, but let your lure or bait fall 20 feet short, then let it drift to bottom (if you're using the Wabbler), and sweep it up two feet, let it settle, etc.

Brookies also like amphibians.

kk

Here in Nova scotia C&R is law for the last part of the season. You also have to use lures, no live bait.

On the lake where we fish there are a lot of trout. We have seen a noticable increase in fish in the years after we started putting the larger ones back.

We try to keep the 1-2 year old trout for dinner and try to release the healthy looking undamaged larger ones. Our hope was that if we let the big ones go they would produce more eggs the next year that the little ones. It would be much more difficult to exhaust the fish supply by removing a few younger trout (where there are a lot of young produced) than by removing a few larger trout (where not as many are being produced).

I think that common sense should be enough to regulate how many fish a person takes in a year. That won't do it though, too many fisherpeople take all that they can get, this is a discrace to us all.

I have heard old stories where someone saw a canoe full of trout that 2 people caught. They probally all went bad!

This disgusts me. Why would anyone do this!

Sure, take what you need to eat and maybe a trophy each year, but a picture is more memorable since you can see what it was like that day where you were. It is all there in a photo.

Sorry to get off the topic folks, but I couldn't resist. I love to fish and I love to eat 'em but I hate to see people abuse nature.

(I am not talking about anything I have seen on this site, just personal experiences.)

As for the original topic, I would also like to fish northern waters someday. I am sure it will be a great trip annonymous.

Bill.