Jeff Gustafson - Livewell

The biggest fishing weekend of the year for anglers and resort owners across the Sunset Country region is set to go down this coming weekend as the walleye season opens back up after being closed for the past month to protect these fish while they spawned.

One of the best parts of what I do is that I get to meet all kinds of really cool people and usually I get to take them fishing.
Last week, I met up with Winnipeg Jets’ forward Nik Antropov for a day of fishing on Lake of the Woods. Nik also played for the Toronto Maple Leafs for seven years, so as it turned out we had some mutual friends in southern Ontario that hooked us up.

Since the season is closed for everybody’s favourite fish for a few more weeks, other less popular species get a little more pressure than they might throughout the rest of the open-water season.

Those of you who follow my column likely have read some of my stories about shed hunting in the past and know what I’m talking about.
For those of you that have not heard the term shed hunting before, it refers to looking, or “hunting,” for shed deer and moose antlers–not looking for sheds that can be found in the backyards of most area residences.

Walk into any tackle shop and you are barraged by the selection of scented soft plastics available to anglers today.
Bright-coloured packages contain every shape and colour imaginable in scented varieties to replicate forage options for the fish we chase.

Now that the ice is out on just about all the water across Sunset Country, anglers are itching to get into their boats and start catching some fish after another long winter.
Long winter is a relative term. I know we had it pretty easy over the past few months, but it’s still a long time from November until April for us to fish out of a boat.

I love this time of year. The weather keeps getting better, the days are getting longer, and with open water, we have plenty to look forward to.
Since ice fishing wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been spending some time in the woods scouting around some of my deer-hunting spots looking for shed antlers, so I’ve been getting out in the woods.

After many months of hard water on our lakes and rivers, things finally are starting to bust loose—and slowly but surely, we’ll all be in boats sooner than later.
By the looks of things, we are going to break all kinds of records on ice-out dates for the big lakes across Sunset Country.

Over the past week, I’ve witnessed something I didn’t think was possible during the middle of March: the ice on lakes across Sunset Country has been absolutely devastated since the 20-degree temperatures arrived last week.
The ice on our lakes went from having a foot of snow on it early last week to not being safe to travel on at all—in literally eight days.

One of the most plentiful fish we have in lakes across our region is also the least targeted by anglers.
The lake whitefish has long been popular with commercial fishermen because they are great to eat, but have received little pressure from sport anglers.
Whitefish prefer cold water so that makes winter the prime time for catching them.