Fishing White Lake Ontario

Every once in a while, I get invited to fish on someone's boat with them. After a few past experiences, I tend to be skeptical about doing this sort of thing. Not that the experiences on these boats were terrible in any way, but for various reasons, the fishing never worked out to what I had hoped.

My eldest son Ari got married in Arizona a couple years ago. During the wedding ceremony / reception, I met Paul. We got to talking, and being that he lives in Ottawa every summer, I mentioned something about driving through there to go fishing back before highway 50 was completed. That led to him pulling up a bunch of fishing pictures on his phone, and had I not been at my son's wedding, I'd probably would have spent the rest of the night talking about fishing with Paul.

To make a long story short, Paul invited me to fish with him, and  over 2 years later, we finally decided to make it happen. Paul has been spending most of his summers on White Lake in Ontario, about 1 hour drive West of Ottawa in the Lanark/Renfrew region. Over the years, he's caught a decent mix of smallmouth bass and walleye, mainly drift fishing or casting using live worms. Being that I barely fish with worms at all, I mentioned that I'd introduce him to my trolling system, as well as a bit of casting, as long as my injured shoulder would allow.

I made the drive out to White Lake early Wednesday morning, arriving just at the tail end of some rain passing through the Lanark region. Paul was in a nearby town picking up some supplies, so I unloaded my gear, set up my rods, and decided to take a few casts off his dock.

First cast using a Mepps 3 spinner hooked up immediately, with a decent smallmouth bass at the end of my line. After a few jumps, I had the bass dockside, with a couple more bass in the same size range following it. I landed the fish, snapped a pic, and quickly released it.

I was quite happy to land a decent bass on my first cast of the trip, obviously thinking that fishing on White Lake was going to be extremely easy and productive. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I didn't land any more fish casting off the dock after that first bass, so I gave fishing a little break.

Paul eventually showed up with his friend Howie, and we headed over to a nearby marina to pick up his pontoon boat. I've rarely fished off pontoon boats in the past, only time I can remember was back in Colorado about 10 years ago. At that time, we were trolling for Kokanee salmon, and that boat was properly rigged with rod holders and downriggers. By contrast, Paul's boat was not rigged for fishing. Namely, the lack of a kicker or bow mounted trolling motor, no lake map, nor any rod holders. That being said, these are all luxuries, and I've fished plenty enough times to figure out how to accommodate for the lack of gear.

I brought along a couple quick release rod holders, that I was able to clamp onto the pontoon rails. With White Lake\s extra clear waters, I was able to sit at the bow, and visually navigate around stumps, rock piles, and over weedbeds, thereby negating the need for a lake map. Paul's 90 HP Yamaha motor was able to keep us trolling slowly enough to be in productive range. Using 2 rods, we started off trolling a spinnerbait on the shallower side, and a jerkbait on the deeper side. After a bit of adjustments to each other, we got our system down to trolling at the proper depths, along the proper structure.

It didn't take long for us to hook into out first fish, I handed the rod to Howie, who proceeded to land our first pike of the trip.

Paul followed up with the next pike.

We landed a couple more pike, as well as a small largemouth bass while trolling. 

Eventually, we switched to casting, and I landed a decent little pike on a crankbait.

After a while, we headed back to shore for an early dinner. Paul kept us nicely fed, with some BBQ chicken, grilled veggies and potatoes, and I enjoyed some nice European lager for dessert. Paul and Howie were both amazed at the quality of pike fishing on White Lake. In 18 years, they had never landed that many pike in a day. Being that they generally were fishing with worms, I wasn't surprised.

We got back out on the water for the evening bite, this time, with Paul and Howie drift fishing with worms, while I stuck to casting a variety of topwater lures and spinners. We all caught a decent amount of fish, mainly a mix a small largemouth and smallmouth bass, as well as a few sunfish, perch and rock bass.    

We eventually called it a day, after landing 7 pike, a good 20 or so bass, and some panfish.

The following morning, Howie left to head home, and our next guest cancelled due to a family emergency, which left Paul and I fishing alone for the day. We started off attempting some deeper trolling, but with the weeds growing quite high in the water column, the lack of a lake map was evident. A good hour or so of me constantly clearing lines of accumulated weeds was enough, and we switched back to our original trolling game of trolling spinnerbaits over the tops of emerging weeds. Our plan paid off with some more pike.

 

At some point, we tried drift fishing with worms, but the wind was quite slower than required. Paul connected with some smaller bass and jumbo sunfish, while all I caught were weeds. We switched back to trolling after a couple hours, but the area we tried wasn't productive at all. With less than an hour left to my trip, I suggested we try casting an area where we caught a lot of the smaller bass during the previous evening. Not much was happening, until I got a nice hit on the spinnerbait I was casting. After a short battle and couple nice jumps, I had my biggest bass of the trip in the net.

Nothing too huge, but a good 2.5 lbs or so, the largemouth bass was a perfect end to the short fishing trip on White Lake. We headed into shore shortly after.

Looking back on this latest fishing adventure, I was happy to have tried a new lake in a new region that I had never fished up until this point. Paul is a great host, and on his end, he was very happy to have someone with my fishing experience on deck. I put him onto a new world of opportunities when it comes to fishing on White Lake, and being that he has a boat on the lake for 3-4 months every year, I'm sure he'll do very well using the new techniques I showed him.

On my end, I'd be glad to return to White Lake for another attempt at fishing it properly. White Lake is a beautiful and picturesque waterway, with a large variety of structure, prone to holding the various fish species in the lake. |I can only imagine the sort of success that would be achieved if I had enough time to properly dissect White Lake. 

Paul and I plan to do it again sometime, hoping next summer will work for both of us.