West Arm, Lake Nipissing Thanksgiving

[GregL]

We spent Saturday - Tuesday on the west arm, we stayed at a lodge close to the Mashkinonje Provincial Park. Fished a huge area from Warren Lake to about 3/4 down the west bay.

Fishing was better than last year but still slow. We probably put 25 walleye in the boat over the weekend. Tina was the expert this weekend she put 3 fish 18" up to 18.5. Out of all those fish
we could keep 1!

What surprised me was where they were located. We always fish the Warren Lake because I always feel the deep water will hold eyes. We do catch there but not very many, typically we
find then around the west bay area. Not this time all but a few of our fish came from the Warren Lake. Most came on jigs, a couple on worm harnesses and 0 trolling. I tried minnows this year
with very little luck, worms out fish them by a big margin!

We didn't mark more than 3-4 fish at a time and very few in the west bay area, they seemed to be really scattered. Water temp was 62.5 in most areas.

I'm happy to report our Ulterra didn't fail once, we may have a good one now!! Worked like a charm all weekend.

[plowjock]

Glad to hear you had a problem free trip with your Ulterra. You sure have had your share of 10 peoples issues.
Now for the fishing. Water temps are still way too high. Fish have not started the big feed yet. They just haven't done their migration yet.
I follow Tom Bolley on YT and he's finding his fish mostly shallow 6-8 fow.

[GregL]

Glad to hear you had a problem free trip with your Ulterra. You sure have had your share of 10 peoples issues.
Now for the fishing. Water temps are still way too high. Fish have not started the big feed yet. They just haven't done their migration yet.
I follow Tom Bolley on YT and he's finding his fish mostly shallow 6-8 fow.

We have, but I think were good now

I watch his vids as well. He is a extremely knowledgeable guy for sure! I watched that video on the leech lake shallow bite and wanted to try out the west bay flats. Probably should have, we checked around some high percentage shallow areas near deep neck downs and current but didn't mark anything. There is so much shallow water in the west bay you could search for days LOL! So we decided to go back to where we were finding fish.. 25- 35' and see if we could get them to bite.

I said I wouldn't go back but it's almost a challenge now because we know the lake has a decent population considering the pressure it sees. So we are talking about staying a week next year, to give us time to do more searching. I'm kind feeling like we might find more fish near where the French River meets the lake. Certainly there is a lot more structure and big main lake flats & humps etc.