lake nipissing ice Fishing Report 2024

73 yellowfin tuna 3 skipjack tuna. We were minutes away from bailing on our area after our first 3 schools swam away without biting. The words from my old boss Ed McEwen “never leave fish to find fish” once again proved to be spot on. A cooperative school late in the day made all of our frustration fade away.

13 bluefin tuna from 40 to 80 lbs and 2 yellowtail. Come prepared with a 25 lb setup for kelp fish and smaller tuna. A 40 or 50 lb setup for flylining sardines at the 60-80 lb tuna and a 60 or 80 lb setup for flatfalling. Fluorocarbon is a must as well as size 1 to 2/0 circle hooks. Come take advantage of this rare opportunity to catch a true trophy fish in local waters without trolling.

Mike Pritchard called in with this report for the Tribute. "We're just rollin' out of our 2nd stop. We picked up 25 Bluefin & we still have a couple of fish hang'n. We also caught a half dozen Skipjack, 6 or 7 Dorado here for the morning. We are seeing a very, very good sign of tuna. I know there are a couple guys here who have done very well. We're talking over 100 fish for the morning, with some Yellowfin tuna as well. We'll keep you posted."

Our private charter had to display some good old fashioned patience today. In a typical 3/4 day trip we can expect to make about 3-5 moves thru ought the day looking for fish. Today however, we did not find what we were looking for until our 9th stop of the day. The rapidly changing conditions coupled with the short windows of biting fish have been driving yours truly crazy the past couple of days. Today's photo will show you why we have been putting ourselves thru such mental anguish. Todays final count for our 31 passengers is 11 yellowtail 20 calico bass 16 barracuda 7 rockfish. Our yellowtail today weighed 20-35 pounds and were biting the fly lined sardines the best.

~~Aug. 26
 Whenever you end well it makes you feel like you had a good day. When you start well and end slow you get that "it wasn't a good day" feel to it. Today we started slow and finished strong. We had a good day. We looked at a lot of fish this morning but only one would bite. We had one fish well after lunch. We then found an area that for some reason the fish we found wanted to bite. We found one school that produced 18 of those 30-45 pounders and one school that bit through the sunset for 13 bluefin with one of those going 65 pounds more or less. So we ended our day with 32 beautiful bluefin tuna and we're going to do this again tomorrow for our last day.

 We developed quite the south swell today from that category 5 hurricane down below. It's amazing what some wind thousands of miles away can do to the ocean right here. It's ground swell with no wind on it so we barely feel it come under the boat but it's impressive to watch. Surf"s up.

This trip had a little of everything. (1) stressed out captain because he thought we might get skunked. (2) line shy, finicky tuna that would only bite light line. (3) Wide Open, heavy line eating, 45 going, madness. (4) a really cool shark that hung with us while we caught 198 yellowfin tuna.

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

Good evening. Oh boy!! We finally have some rough weather two weeks of awesome weather and it's taking a little bit of getting used to. I've only bounced back from the dash and banged the wall behind me twice so I'm pumped! I think I might have corrected my lower back issues too...not.

Anyhow, we fished for Yellowtail today and had a slow go of it for most of the day up until we had a nice go of it in the late afternoon. The fly-lined sardines were catching the majority of the 'tails but the yo-yo jigs worked a little bit as well. The "knotheads" (Mark's distant cousins) destroyed us for most of the day but during our little flurry in the later part of the day, they left us alone for the most part and we had some clean fishing. We caught a host of other species as well and when all was said and done, we had a respectable score and it was a fine way to end the day.

Dinner was awesome tonight. Our good friend Sam donated one of his tasty Bluefin--unbeknownst to him until it was served (Thanks, Sam)--and Chef Shawn seared that thing to perfection and served it with white rice and veggies and man, it was delicious. I don't know if I've ever had seared Bluefin like that before. It was out of this world and I wasn't the only one saying that. Excellent way to end the day, for sure.

So that is all. We're bouncing up the line as we speak and we'll be in the BFT zone in a couple of hours and we'll be giving it a half a day until we run out of time. We'll see what happens. The weather is up which usually is conducive to the Bluefins having their noses in the mud but crazier things have happened and we'll see if we can't connect. We'll report with you tomorrow and we'll see how this weather plays out.

-The Supreme Team

Found our Shot at Gold! Today we spent our day looking for kelps. There was a lot of kelps but we had to be selective and persist through many empty's until we were able to find one that was holding. The fruitful kelp for us had beautiful Dorado that wanted to bite.It was a chaotic 30 minutes of biting fish, but we made the most out of it. Everyone was able to land a Dorado and we even picked off a Wahoo! Here we have Mark and Jon with their beautiful Dorado!