July update!!

Just putting in a quick update on the fishing from this past month. Time has been flying by, and I see it has been early June since my last post. Thanks to some of our guests for reminding me to get to the blog to update it!!!
Fishing this July has been good and steady. All of our groups are catching fish. The lake trout bite has been pretty good the past week and a half now. Everyone fishing them have been pulling some in. They are sporadic feeders, and they do turn on and off throughout the day. Jigging has been very effective for them lately.
Walleye have been steady all summer long. Austin and I were out today and landed about 25 walleye in about 2-3 hours of fishing, the largest just short of 23 inch. Dragging spinner harnesses with bottom bouncers has been producing quite consistently. Jigging is always a good standard way to pull some in as well. Some groups have been catching them as shallow as 5-8 foot along the weeds. Today we were pulling most of them out of 12-20 feet of water along rock drops.
Smallies have been good and steady, but not fantastic yet. The cooler nights we have been having throughout July has kept the morning topwater action to a minimum. When we have had the warmer nights, the action has seemed to pick up significantly. We are still landing 30-70 bass on outings now with some effort. I was with a group yesterday and we pulled in about 40-50 bass and pike in about 6 hours of fishing. The largest was about 19 inches, with a good number of 14-17 inch fish. Still waiting for the phenomenol topwater action that we always seem to get by early August.
Pike have been steady, as they normally are, no matter what. We were out 3 days ago fishing pike and pulled in about 35-40 fish in a little over half a day of fishing, with 3 slot sized fish, and one about 13 pounds, just barely 35.5 inches. Most of the northern we landed were nice, girthy fish. Spinnerbaits, spoons, and spinners like the larger Mepps Minnow have been doing well, along with some deep diving crankbaits.
We are looking for some of the best fishing of the season to arrive as August and September come along. It is hard to believe the summer is already basically over half over!!!
Good fishing until next update!
Jody

June 6 Fishing update

All of our fisherman the past couple weeks have been having very good luck. The walleye are picking up better every day, and larger fish are starting to bite. No super hawgs caught yet that we know of, but a good number of walleye 17-24 inch range.
The bass have been hitting good for most who are fishing them. They haven't spawned quite yet on most lakes, but they are on and near their beds. They have been hitting most lures being thrown at them from plastics to french spinners.
Northern pike are still hitting good and steady, a few nice fish have been caught in our area lakes, with large numbers of smaller pike. They are tending to be shallow, around the 3-10 foot range.
Not a whole lot of guests have been pursuing the lake trout yet, but the ones who have been are catching them. On calmer days, a jig and a minnow can be very good for them, otherwise trolling with a downrigger is always good as well.
Water temps on most lakes are in the mid 60's. The river systems are still low, although we are receiving some measurable amounts of rain the past day and a half, so that may help the levels come up.

Fishing Update

Just wanted to post a quick update about the fishing since opener on the 15th.
We have had very warm temperatures lately and the surface temps are approaching mid 60's and even warmer on some area lakes. Today it reached 90 degrees air temp!
The fishing has really picked up the past few days, especially the walleye. If this keeps up into June, we are looking forward to an excellent June walleye bite. Last spring was so cold it took a while for the walleye to really get going.
The smallmouth have moved onto their beds as well and are starting to defend them, usually attacking any nearby bait thrown at them. The females should be moving onto the beds in the next couple of weeks to spawn.
Weed growth is way ahead, of course due to the hot temps we have been getting. Smallmouth bass fishing, along with the walleye and pike, should be exceptional this early summer.
We did receive a good rain fall today, hopefully with a few more we can get our water levels back up to near normal for this time of the season.
Keep checking back for updates, as we will be posting more in the weeks to come.
thanks
Jody

Walleye Opener 2010

Well, walleye season has finally arrived after a quick ice out this spring. The weather has been excellent for the past two to three weeks. We have our first few groups of fisherman currently in camp now, with more to come by the coming weekend. Reports from the walleye opener is that the bite is still just a little slow. Had a couple reports coming from guys fishing up on Lac De Mille Lac and they said it was slow there as well this past weekend. We were out for a while on Saturday on a small lake about 40 minutes north of here and caught 4, one walleye was a nice 26 incher, along with a 37 inch northern on the same lake. The good news is that the walleyes always start feeding best as June arrives and the best bite goes well into June.
The smallies have moved shallow, and our guests are catching some good sized bass, and have had reports of some big northern being caught in the area, so they are finally turning on as well.
Water levels on the river systems are still quite low, hopefully they will come up for June. Our lake, being spring fed, is only less than a foot below average water levels.
I was on Marmion this past weekend and the bass were in the shallows their, along with tons of whitefish. Caught some nice whitefish, up to 5 and a half pounds.
Will update the blog again in about a week and a half, should have many more fishing reports by then.

License/ Outdoors card reminder! ... spring update

A reminder to everyone coming up this season to bring along the Outdoors Card you received this past winter. If you don't have it with you, we will have to charge you an additional $9 charge for another application prior to purchasing your license. Unfortunately, non-residents can not purchase their fishing license online as of yet, the Ministry of Natural Resources is aiming to have that going for next season. They do have a 1800 number you can call and purchase a license, but it does take 4-6 weeks to receive the license, so most of you are probably best to just buy your license once you have entered Ontario. We do have licenses at here at the camp, or there is a few spots you can stop on the way to pick one up.
Our first trout fisherman arrived yesterday afternoon, unfortunately it looks like a poor weather forecast for the days they are here. They should still be able to land some trout if they can tolerate the rains. (which we do badly need however!).
The water levels on all the river system lakes are extremely low, the floods is approx 7 feet low. The upper launch is still okay to get into with larger boats, you just have to back out about 50 feet further than normal. Have not been into the lower landing lately to see how accessible that is. We still have 3 weeks before walleye opener, which is a lot of time to get some significant rainfalls to help bring water levels back up. We will post about the water levels again before walleye opener.
The smallmouth are just starting to move shallow and become slightly more active. We were out last Saturday and caught about a dozen bass and a dozen northern pike. Seen a lot of fish, but the water temps were just a bit cool yet and the fish were not real aggressive towards artificials and we did not bring along any live bait. Surface temps are ranging 45-48 degrees right now.
If anyone coming up has any questions at all, please feel free to contact us anytime through our email, or call direct if you need to talk in person. Otherwise, good fishing until we see you next!

2010 Season Begins!!!

Believe it or not, the open water season for 2010 has begun. All the lakes have opened up and Crystal is loosing it's last bit of ice today. We were out yesterday after the kids got home from school and trolled for about an hour, caught one nice laker, lost a couple more, and one good bass. Water temp was 35. The trout have been biting quite well most of the winter and still are going into the open water fishing. If any one wants some excellent trout action, plan an April or very early May trip! First time ever we have been able to fish out here in a boat in early April . Ice out is about 3-4 weeks ahead of time. Unfortunately, unless we receive a lot of spring rains, water levels are going to be down a bit due to little snow run-off this spring. A record winter for us as I only had to plow snow 2 times!! Usually it is 2 times a week.
Well, for all our return guests, our new office is in the new house that we have been picking away at for 6 years! We finally completed it last fall and moved in before Christmas. We did add nice little tackle shop, and what we are doing as a special promotion is anyone that refers a new group that books with us, we will give them a $50 credit good for any fishing tackle in our office. If you refer two groups, you will get $100 credit!
Moving into our new house allowed us to open up our old residence (number 1) as another cabin rental unit. We are, however, starting to get fairly booked up for this upcoming season, so if you or anyone you know of may want to come up this season, please contact us as soon as possible to reserve a date.
We are looking forward to another good season this upcoming summer. Thank you to all guests that have reserved dates for 2010 and to all our past guests as well that may not have the opportunity to come up fishing this summer.
Well, I have to go to get my walleye gear ready for this upcoming weekend, I am going to do some open water jigging before the walleye season closes the 15th. This is the first year we are ever able to try for some winter wallys from a boat!
Jody

Tribute to Jack

This is not a blog entry we ever look forward to enter, but we just wanted to let all our fishing friends that have been coming to the camp over the years know that Jack Switzer, the big old guy that was always helping out around the camp passed away earlier this spring. Jack was a good friend of ours that helped us through our learning curve of operating the camp the past 6 years. He was also a good friend of many of our fisherman, as Jack owned and operated the camp from the 70's to 1989. Some of our long time return guests were actually coming to Crystal Beach when Jack owned the camp. Jack will be sadly missed, but much of his craftsmanship has been left in the buildings and on the property here at Crystal Beach. Rest in peace Jack.