Presented by Garmin

We love early-season Pike fishing and this is a fantastic place to start the season out. Killarney is just north/east of Manitoulin Island on Georgian Bay. This is a big fish area for a lot of species.

We headed up with great expectations as Northern Pike are often ravenous feeders in the spring. Once they finish up spawning, guaranteed some will hang around the shallow to semi-shallow areas to feed before transitioning into the summer. 

Prior to this, we shot a show years back in the fall and the Pike fishing, along with the Smallmouth and Muskie, were pretty much second to none. To view this episode go here. It was, and still is, one of our favourite multi-species episodes of all time.

On this shoot, we encountered a lot of smaller-sized Pike which is to be expected. Post-spawn Pike fishing means a LOT of small male fish with the odd big female mixed in. It’s simply part of the game. We also encountered some pre-spawn Smallmouth Bass. It’s crazy how these two species can coexist with each other since Pike are such an apex predator. Somehow Mother Nature mixes them together and all seems well (that we can tell).

52-degree water, 8 in the morning, already way back in the shallows; the early bird always gets the Pike!

A couple of highlights of the shoot were a gorgeous Pike that we hooked into and a Muskie that crushed the almost exact same presentation. Our big Pike absolutely inhaled a Yo-Zuri 3DB Twitchbait. Had that lure been a live prey fish, it would have been toast before it even knew it was being eaten! Although we don’t weigh our big Pike and Muskie in the field, we know this was a beauty.

Yo-Zuri’s 3D Inshore & 3DB Twitchbaits… They both worked on Killarney Pike and Muskie.

As for the Muskie, unfortunately, it was only days before the Muskie season had opened so we couldn’t (or should we say wouldn’t) lift the fish out of the water to show the camera. In fact, we didn’t even net it. We simply went boatside with the needle nose pliers and flipped that fish back into the abyss almost immediately. That fish also hit a Yo-Zuri Twitchbait (can you tell we like that lure???)

GARMIN MOMENTS OF THE KILLARNEY SHOOT

Killarney Bay is a portion of Georgian Bay. Having it accurately mapped makes figuring things out so much easier.

For this particular shoot, we immediately headed in towards the lighter blue and the green areas, which indicate shallow flats… perfect for post-spawn Pike.

As you can see by this second screenshot, once in the shallower areas, the map changes completely. Although we had success throughout this shallow area, our best results came from the left side of this map where it was closer to the main bay. It was obvious to us that the Pike were finished spawning and had already started to make their way out to their summer haunts.

Looking back years ago to our first shoot here which was in October, and then looking back to the top screenshot, all the fish action was in the exact opposite direction than on this trip. Then we searched for fast breaks in the white portion (deepest parts) of the bay and found success in doing so.

Garmin’s Fishing Charts screen can give anglers a wealth of information before they even hit the water. These maps have paved the way on multiple shoots for us.

SPECIAL THANKS

All in all a great shoot and thanks to the Sportsman’s Inn and Red Prioux our guide. We couldn’t have navigated those treacherous waters without him.