Walleye opener in Montreal

May 8th 2015 was the walleye opener in zone 8 around Montreal. I'm not much of a walleye angler, save for a couple trips up North where the pristine forest lakes I fish have healthy populations of walleye that produce nice easy bag limits of delicious, non polluted walleye.

When it comes to the St Lawrence river however, their is no question that it is a world class fishery for big trophy walleye. Early on in the season, they are easily accessible from the shore, so I brought along some jigs just in case I'd find some walleye friendly water to cast them into.

I headed out for a short 1/2 day outing with Ari, it was his first time going out in waders. After hooking a few bass to start the day, we switched spots as bass season doesn't open for another 5 weeks or so, and targeting them before the season is against the law. We hit some pike friendly water at our second spot, didn't take long for Ari to hookup with some pike:

As Ari kept catching pike, I spent my time in shallower, warmer water, sight fishing for gar. Most were small, and not very interested in my offering, but I did hook and eventually lose a nice 3 foot longnose gar.

Eventually, I ventured off to a spot with deeper, colder water, with some current. Recognizing it's potential as a walleye sport, I tied on a nice 1/2 ounce orange jig head, with a 3 inch red grub with a white tail. On my second cast, I hooked into a nice heavy fish, I was quite sure it was a walleye from the way it was fighting. Sure enough, I turned out to be correct, it was a hefty 6.5 lbs walleye, my first of the 2015 open water season.

Later on. we made out way back to shallower water, with Ari losing another pike, and then a big longnose gar he had hooked while sight fishing. Casting my pike rod, I suddenly got a massive hit in shallow water. As I set into the big fish, I saw the big gold/brown body of a carp come up. At first, I thought I had snagged it by accident, but when I got it close enough for a better look, I was surprised to see it had my big Mepps spinner in it\s mouth. The aggressive carp put up a very tough fight in the warm shallow water, especially as I was using a small 6.5 foot bass rod. Ari made his way over and shot some video footage of the end of the battle, which must have last a good 4-5 minutes.

Snapped a couple quick pics, and released it to grow some more for another day.

So our walleye opener / wading outing turned out better than expected, some nice pictures and great memories during a short father and son outing on the St Lawrence river.