Write and let us know of whats happening in your Kawartha area.

Whether you call it pickerel or “walleye” this glassy-eyed fish with the golden flanks and the creamy white patch on the bottom of its tail is undoubtedly the most popular sport fish in the Kawarthas.
Feeding activity is closely related to light and temperature conditions. Pickerel prefer to feed in the evening and very early morning or in the poor light conditions afforded by murky water.

Large opaque eye, large canine or tearing teeth, white tip on lower lobe of tailfin. Average size in the Kawarthas is 14 inches or l 1/4 pounds. Common baits used are minnows, worms, spinners and jigs.

Its up to you now to enjoy those warm days (orcool and wet ones) of fishing a plenty.

The catch of the day is submitted by you, ao drop us a line and show us what you’ve caught!

Walleye fishing in the Kawartha Lakes is almost too good to be true, and not just because of the quality of the fishery. Think about what has come together in this south-central Ontario region: the most popular gamefish in Canada (the walleye), the most populated area in Canada (the Golden Horseshoe is less than a two-hour drive away), and the most travelled chain of lakes in Canada (the Trent-Severn Waterway handles hundreds of thousands of boaters in a year). Combined they create an easily accessed, high quality walleye fishery that continues to produce year after year. If mother nature had her way, the fishery wouldn’t even exist. Up until the 1940s, the Kawartha lakes were exclusively bass and musky water.

After walleye were first stocked they have sustained themselves with little human intervention. Growing right along with the number of fish were the services for the angler so that today there are countless resorts, cottage rentals, trailer parks, bait shops, boat launches and full service marinas on the lakes. With numerous villages, a few small towns and one city in the area, the Kawarthas also offer activities and shopping that appeal to the non-fishing members of the family. But we are here to talk about fishing on lakes with familiar names like Balsam, Rice, Sturgeon and Pigeon. When it comes to fishing catching techniques, all the traditional walleye methods (and some that you wouldn’t expect to catch walleye with) work on these lakes. Stillfishing with pickerel rigs works well in the deeper corners of rivers. Trolling crankbaits excels along the first major drop off near the flats in spring. Jigging is a year round producer. Livebait rigging takes fish along rocky points. The thing to keep in mind here however, is that, unlike many “traditional” walleye lakes across Canada, the dominant, most consistent structures from lake to lake are the massive, thick weedbeds. They influence the walleye throughout the open water season.

In spring, walleye are attracted there when the yellow perch use them for spawning. In summer, they are the most immediate source of shade, cover and oxygen. In fall as the die-off occurs, forage concentrates in the last living weeds, creating some of the easiest feeding the walleye will enjoy all year. You don’t have to fish right in the weeds all the time to catch weed walleye, but eventually you will have to get into the slop. Luckily, a number of easily mastered techniques have evolved that consistently catch walleyes from the weeds, without the hassles that normal methods would generate. Used by tournament anglers fishing a different lake each weekend, or by cottagers who have to fish the same weedy lake every season, they work during the heat of summer, and the middle of the day.