The Key River Area of Georgian Bay has some of the best big smallmouth & largemouth bass fishing to be had in all of Canada.

You can expect to take many largemouth around six pounds & smallmouth around the same size if you are there at the right time & the right place.

The largemouth are hard to find & locate as they will always be where warm water back bays can be found with deep holes nearby.

Coves sheltered from North winds facing South always seem to be the best place to find them.

All sheltered coves with deep warm water in them or close by hold largemouth in this area.

The bass are not legal in Canada until the end of June after they spawn.

Check the law on this before you go after them.

In early spring they all gather in warm shallow water areas way back in & up the rivers to the back bays where they spawn.

After spawning most scatter all over the area with the exception of a few that stay in these areas all year.

The best method is called ”Walking The Dog” With The  Zara Spook.

Also expect to catch a record in this area as a 13 pound largemouth was taken here & a 9 pound smallmouth out of season.

The big largemouth exceeds the Canadian record but was never turned in.

I saw a picture of this bass at Key Harbour Lodge years ago & I can tell you it was a big one.

The nine pound smallmouth was taken in 35 feet of water in Sand Bay near the Windmill Cottage on a crawdad but had to be released as it was not in season as yet.

I saw the picture & I can tell you that bass was huge.

My best smallmouth to date is 7 1/2 pounds caught on a Creek Chub Injured Minnow & a ten pound largemouth on a Zara Spook.

Big surface lures with spinners often produce a lot of big bass & big hits.

Toss them back in the pockets & ledges along the cliff or rock faces where the water is warm & 5 to 6 feet deep or more & that is where you will find most of them laying.

Each bass has its own little hole in Georgian Bay.

Please release them to fight another day.

Here is the exact location of the Famous Georgian Bay Bass Hole.

Here is a new blog page on the area Georgian Bay Fishing.

I will be heading out for some trophy fly rod rod popper bass fishing down in Florida for a couple of months & will be taking videos & posting my trip on another blog page I have.

I will be in the Fort Myers Beach area & will be fishing The Everglades National Park by canoe.

http://www.billdice.blogspot.com

The fishing is about over here in Dayton, Ohio.

I retired so I am free to do a lot of fishing & plan to be up on Georgian Bay next spring for sure.

Make sure you keep yourself looking nice because I am bringing all the video equipment & cameras & will be intereviewing a lot of fishermen & campers.

I am working to get more of the photos we have from years back & want to post them.

Fritt’s brother has many of them I have to get scanned.

If you have photos you would like for me to post email them to: williamdaviddice@yahoo.com & I will post them on the site.

Historical photos would be nice or stories about old timers who used to live & work in the area.

Like the old Frenchmen that lived in the cabin out on the French River near Dallas Rapids.

The Sacred Indian Burial Grounds On Dead Island etc.

If you visit the bass hole please release them unharmed.

Thank all of you for making this blog a success.

It has no income & never will be a business venture.

Just my way of giving back.

I hope some of the businesses up there pick up a few customers because of it.

I will be improving on the quality a little at a time.

Bill Dice

Location Of Next World Record Muskie?

Will the Georgian Bay produce the next world record muskie & will it be caught out on the lower French River area near Dallas Rapids or Bad River outlet or possibly The Bustard Islands?

A 68 pound muskie was netted in this area & released which is the world record if caught & I have heard of a larger one than that netted & released.

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My grandson Logan has a secret carp method. He puts canned corn on a treble hook with no weight & throws it out on the bottom & then throws hand fulls of corn where it lands. The carp come to get the corn & then they pickup his bait.

He is going to The Georgian Bay Bass Hole for the first time this year 2010 being we did not make it in 2009.

I think the fish in the bay are in big trouble.

This kid is very confident & acts just like the cocky carpers in UK.

One of the friends I made through my blog just sent me some pictures of several beautiful brook trout they caught up in Northern Ontario where they have a really nice hunting cabin.

They live in Sudbury & have a cabin on Georgian Bay they reach via The Key River.

They really know how to hunt & fish.

They have sent me pictures of many big fish, bear & moose.

Talk about envy.

I wish.They said the snow was three foot deep this time of year.

All of you fly fishermen could drive up there & catch some really nice trout this time of year.

Here in Ohio it is really cold & much to cold for someone my age to go trout fishing but my son & grandson went fishing for saugeye this weekend.

A saugeye is a cross between a walleye & a sauger.

They are hybrids & don’t reproduce & the state restocks them every year.

They hit well in the cold of winter on Mr. Twister Grubs on jig heads.

There are also sauger which are native to the Ohio River basin.

If you fish below the dams on The Ohio River you can catch them all winter long.

My grandson is 8 years old & really starting to enjoy fishing & has now started to cast the twister grubs & is really coming along.

That is a good thing because his dad is a fishing fanatic.

Spring will be here soon.

I will start getting all of my gear ready  for this year & I hope to take my grandson up to The Key for the first time.

I keep telling him about how good the fishing is up there & he is all ready to go.

I am very close to my grandson & I try to get him at least one day a week & spend time with him.

He is also doing very well in school.

He is a really good kid & really nice.

My son is coming over tommorrow & we are going to sell a few things on eBay.

He wants to start doing that for a living now & he wants to specialize in tackle.

I work for one of the most successful eBay dealers in America & we have over 600 machines for sale at all times but I have never really sold anything of my own yet so we will be learning from the ground up.

I have a lot of things I am also going to sell as I no longer have use for them.

Hope everyone is doing well.

I have a lot of pictures to put up but I have to have them scanned so it will be awhile.

Becky Mason has a website now on canoeing.

Bill Mason’s daughter.

I put her link under Bill Mason if you like canoeing.

I love all of his books & videos & learned much from them.

Take care.

Bill Dice

Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner

In all the years I went to Georgian Bay one of the things I always enjoyed the most were the black bear stories & one of the things I feared the most was the black bears & especially when I went alone.

I have camped out in the wilderness all over Canada & usually in a tent.

When you go alone you try not to think about Mr. black bear showing up in your campsite because if he does there is not much you can do anyway.

No guns allowed & no bear mace allowed so you are basically in a bad situation.

Black bears in Georgian Bay swim long distances so camping on any island does not guarantee that one will not visit you in the middle of the night.

A black bear can swim many miles to get to islands in Georgian Bay & they like to do this at night.

When they have a bad berry season the bears will go into campsites for dinner & they also will go in large groups.

During normal berry seasons they are mostly loners & very seldom raid camps, cottages or lodges.

They will break into cars, rob boats, refrigerators in cabins & become a real danger when starving.

One year a woman had just been killed in Ontario by a black bear training for the olympics & we heard it on the radio over & over again on the way up.

Then you start thinking about all the stories about people mauled or killed by black bears which really is not that many over a period of many years.

I even bought a book that listed every bear attack ever recorded in The US & Canada.

I probably would have been better off not reading it.

You probably have a better chance of getting killed on the highway on the way up.

None the less it still bothers you & you do think about it & what you would do if the time came that you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong bear that was hell bent on killing you & eating you for dinner.

It does happen & has happened in Ontario, Canada.

I have seen many bears from a distance over the years & have faced them eye to eye before in my campsite.

I camped with 2,200 black bears at Lake Missinabi way up north.

I could write a book about that as we had one bear encounter after another for 10 straight days & nights.

The bears actually lived in the primitive campground with us & that is the only place in North America you can do that.

I also know some campers were killed there where we camped a few years back.

Now that the spriing bear hunt is no longer open I have heard the area we camp in is crawling with big black bears.

I say that because Georgian Bay Black Bears get really big as the islands are full of berries.

I have seen many 350 to 600 pound black bears where I camp & I have seen many mother bears with three cubs rather than just two or one.

When I get in my tent at night I am usually really tired after fishing or canoeing all day so falling asleep is not all that hard to do.

Not in the wilderness.

We would always ask about the bears when we arrived at Camp Dore & sometimes they would have a bear encounter story to tell us.

One year we camped out on The French River at Dallas Rapids & the lodge owner said you are not camping on the rapids are you?

He said there was a real big mean one over there that had been tearing up his boats & cabins at night.

We saw coolers up in trees the bear had stashed there.

Needless to say sleeping that night was difficult.

We put a white gas lantern out in front of the tent & let it burn all night long.

The bear never did show up but we worried about that all week.

The lodge owner had hunters shoot 10 bears on his dump that week just to get rid of some of them.

When fishermen went to their cottge the bears would raid their boats & eat their worms & minnows.

Very sneaky even in broad daylight.

I have a few bear stories but I would like to hear others about black bear encounters on Georgian Bay Islands.

The last encounter I had was momma bear & three cubs 50 feet from me in my campsite when I got out of my tent at 7 A.M.

Lucky for me they headed down the shoreline away from my campsite or I would have been in a really bad situation as she was at least 350 pounds & very healthy & her cubs were also healthy & large.

I was camping alone & picked this spot because I did not think there would be any bears there.

I walked all over this area during the week & had no idea a mother with cubs was in the area.

I could have come face to face with her doing that & had no weapons of any type.

Needless to say I packed up & left after she & her cubs moved off to another area.

That was a great experience I will never forget but I would not want to go through it again.

Georgian Bay Bears are often hard to spot because they book it when they hear boat motors in their areas.

You would not believe how fast they run over the rocky terrain.

There is no way anyone could ever get away from one by running.

When I spot one on the shore ahead I always kill my motor & sit & watch them from a distance.

Pictures are diifficult unless you have a real big tele-photo lense & tri-pod which is useless in a bouncing boat.

Do you have any bear encounter stories?

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Put the above map on satellite mode & follow the Key River out to Georgian Bay to see aerial photos of the entire area.

The Key River is at Route 69 & Key River Junction near Ludgate, Ontario, Canada.

Very close to the upper French & Pickerel Rivers & it is located inThe French River Provincial Park System.

You will park your vehicle & boat trailer at route 69 & Key River Junction at one of the lodges or fishing & hunting camps & load & launch your boat from there for your journey out to Georgian Bay which is an 8 mile trip.

There is no free boat launching or parking available at The Key River Outlet To Georgian Bay.

In recent years we parked & launched at Camp Dore & there are several others there also.

If you are staying at a fish camp out on Georgian Bay they will tell you which place to park your vehicle & boat trailer if you are bringing your own boat & motor.

Checkout all my links in the right hand column for further information.

Back in those days if you went up in May when the yellow pickerel were running there would be at least 500 fishing parties camped out on the islands & all the lodges were booked years ahead.

This area & The Moon River area of Georgian Bay were the hottest big yellow pickerel fishing in all of Canada for many years.

Fifteen to seventeen pound yellow pickerel were common & very few would run under six pounds when they came out of the big lake & started up the rivers to spawn.

Fishermen would be trolling all over the area & any lure would do but most used the floating black & silver floating Rapalas.

You could easily get your limit in an hour or two or catch & release large numbers in a days time.

When a fishermen got a hook up they would yell out “Fish On”.

We carried on that tradition & always yell out fish on when we get a hookup.

One year one of the guys that went with us tied on a small yellow Rooster Tail & he hooked one pickerel after another & out-fished all of us with six pound line & ultra light rod.

He used the same lure all week & had it when he left minus a few tail feathers.

When we first started going up to the Key River Mrs. Lyttle owner of Key Harbour Lodge was very nice to us & took us under her wing.

She knew we were young & inexperienced & worried about us just like any mother would her own children.

We always enjoyed going to the lodge to see the big fish pictures & chat with the experienced fishermen that were staying there.

We would go in the evening when they came in from a days fishing & that way we could see what they got & find out where.

They had an Indian Guide named Ivan & he told us to get there early in the morning & we could follow him when he took out fishing parties & he would lead us to all the hot spots in the area.

No one knew more about the area than Ivan & probably never will.

Ivan told us to always use twenty pound line in Georgian Bay & he only used one lure A red & white Daredevil the medium or next size down from the standard size model & he always had a wire leader.

Mrs. Lyttle’s son Al grew up at the lodge & trapped the area for many years & he had a cabin out on the islands where he & his family lived.

He also showed us where to go & he would help us fix our boat motors when we had a problem.

Mr. Lyttle had a stroke & lived at the lodge until he passed away at which time she put the lodge up for sale & retired.

Mrs. Lyttle always treated us special even though we never stayed at the lodge & went out of her way to teach us things & caution us about weather & cold water & the dangers of small boats in Georgian Bay storms & bears & rattlesnakes.

She told us to leave some bacon & grease out overnight in a skillet if we wanted to see a big black bear in our camp & warned us about not cooking or leaving anything in our tents that had an odor including soap & things like that.

She told us black bears in Georgian Bay can get real nasty when cornered so we should always give them a quick way out if we got one cornered by accident walking around the islands.

One time we told her the pike were not hitting.

She laughed & told us to catch a few live perch & put them in a minnow bucket & put one out set four foot deep on a bobber & then come back & tell her what happened.

Boy did we.

One ten to fifteen pound pike after another right off the bank at our campsite.

From that time on when we told her we got a big pike trolling or casting lures she would always smirk & say “Sure You Were Not Using A Live Perch?”.

The Lyttles ran the lodge for many years & all of them were top notch people that helped us every way they could.

They went out of their way to teach us everything they knew.

They always had a big smile when we returned each year.

They also had a pay telephone if we needed to call home for anything.

If you are not the wilderness camping type The Key Harbour Lodge is a great place to stay & learn the area.

You can catch big pickerel in the bay at night when they are running & also really big pike over twenty pounds.

They also have guides & tackle & gasoline.

Yo can fish the areas we fish from Key Harbour Lodge & even run out to The French & Bad River Areas or Bustard Islands when the weather is right if you have a deep boat & 25 HP motor.

We always camped out there when we went because of our small motors.

If you are after largemouth this area is better than The French or Bad River area if you know where to go.

The smallmouth fishing is good out there but the water is to cold for largemouth & they are hard to locate out in the big water areas & bays.

For largemouth go back in & find the warm water bays & swamps with lilly pads with six to ten feet of water nearby.

Low Water Conditions: Mrs. Lyttle told us years ago that Georgian Bay has a 35 year water cycle where it goes up for 35 years & then down for 35 years.

If her theory is correct & I believe it is the water levels in Georgian Bay should start going back up again in the next few years as the water started to go down slowly when we first started going up so the down cycle should be about over.

The water has really been low over the last few years & that hurts a lot of the really good bass holes many of which may be high & dry.

The bass are still around somewhere so you just have to find them.

When we were young & full of vigor we would fish from sun up to sun down.

One year one of the local Indians stopped by our boat & simply said:

If the fish ain’t biting boys “Why Don’t You Leave Them Alone?”

He said he drops his worm down & if he gets one right away he keeps fishing & if not he pulls up his line & goes home & drinks a couple of beers.

He knew no one could make a fish bite.

We found that out the hard way but it was sure fun trying.

Maribou Jigs set three feet deep on weighted small round bobbers work best in weed beds.

Small Mr. Twister Grubs & special crappie tube jigs work well also.

Live bait fishermen use minnows & bobber & they can get their limit in a hurry on a good crappie hole.

We use light outfits with six pound test Stren line.

One to three pound Black Crappie are common & when they are hitting you can catch all you want.

Check with local stores or lodges for information on the best places & time.

The Georgian Bay Bass Hole is full of them in Spring & summer & fall.

There is a pan fish hole on The Key River that is full of Big Crappie & pan-fish & the kids can catch them on small twister grubs one after another.

The Key River is full of crappie & you have to know where to find them in backwater bays out on Georgian Bay & around islands.

Ontario Big Fish Records

Georgian Bay Bass Hole

We have caught black crappies up to 3 1/2 pounds in The Georgian Bay Bass Hole & that one was caught trolling a small deep diving plug & that is how we found out they were there by accident. We turned him loose & had no camera back then. We returned to this same area many times & they were always there & still are.

The Goergian Bay Bass Hole in the top of this blog post with a picture of me fishing it is the best big crappie hole in all of Canada.

You can stand there & catch all the 1 to 1/2 pound Black Crappie you want one right after another & never leave your campsite not to mention largemouth & smallmouth bass that come in there to feed or the large pike & muskie right behind them.