Ontario is home to some of the finest bass fishing waters in the world. Which lakes rank as the best in the province? There are many lists of best bass lakes in various locales but how do you truly go about assessing which ones are best without just giving an…
In my area of Southwestern Ontario, nearby lake fishing consists of the Great Lakes (Huron, Erie and their “little” brother St. Clair) or smaller reservoirs. Weather permitting and with the right boat, the Great Lakes present some of the finest fishing in the world and we are truly fortunate to…
A couple of neat web based fishing resources that I’d like to share. The first one is from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry web site called Fish ON-Line. It provides a searchable map of lakes in Ontario and lists such data as lake size and depth, fish…
Nine years ago, while visiting the Hawaiian island of Kauai, my wife, Western University Earth Sciences Professor Patricia Corcoran, and I noticed an abundance of plastic debris on some of the beaches we visited. In particular, the beaches on the east side of the island contained plastic debris ranging in…
I recently built a Secchi disk (see link for instructions) for water clarity measurements. A Secchi disk has four quadrants painted black and white and is 20 cm (freshwater model) in diameter. The disk is lowered into the water using a line marked in feet or meters and the point…
In a recent post I talked about the various types of lakes based on their mixing classification. An understanding of the type of lake you are fishing on can give you a good indication of the depths where fish may be located at a particular time of year. In addition…
Fish movement is keyed to two main factors, temperature and the oxygen content of the water. Fish will seek out areas of a water-body that satisfy both of these needs. While the coldest water can hold the most oxygen (see Table 1) the cycles of a lake can dramatically alter…
One of water’s unique properties is that it is most dense or heaviest at 4° C (39° F) (Figure 1). This fact means that as the surface temperature of a lake approaches 4° C, either by warming from colder temperatures (spring) or cooling from warmer temperatures (fall), the surface water…
As an addendum to the previous post, I’ve gone through a number or sources for the various depths at which the various colors will no longer be discernible underwater. For most freshwater rivers and lakes color loss underwater will be at approximately: Red ~15-18 ft (5 m) (note: after 5…
I recently came across the results from an interesting volunteer program called the Lake Partners Program, sponsored by the Ministry of the Environment for Ontario. This program engages volunteers to measure Secchi Depth (water transparency) and total phosphorus (TP) in lakes and rivers across the province. The results are tabulated…
