San Souci, Parry Sound, on Georgian Bay?

maytagman

maytagman

Well-Known Member
R.O.C. (Radio Operator's Certificate)
15-20 years ago I used to fish salmon on GB. Then the bait crashed and the salmon disappeared. My buddy has a cottage there(Moon river close to San Souci) and wants to give it a shot this summer. Has anyone fished for salmon in this area recently say in the last 2-3 years?
 
Have fished off moon island the last few years never got a salmon but we usually only fish the small bays
 
Tough go I would imagine. Salmon numbers are definitely a shadow of what they were in the 90's.The parry sound lake trout population is quite healthy tho.....there are some giants to be found in that area!

Josh
 
Thanks..............numbers are good across the bay in Owen Sound, strange.
 
Yes, the Owen Sound spring fishery sure was on fire this year. For whatever reason a large number of Georgian Bay fish can flood the bay in late winter-spring. The fall returns however are nowhere near what they were before 2002. With the success of anglers ice fishing and then trolling OS Bay being plastered all over social media in afraid the harvest of those Salmon was rather substantial. I wouldn't expect the fishing to be nearly as productive when the mature Chinook return to the bay this fall.

The Notty seems to be the one Georgian Bay trib that still recieves a somewhat respectable number of fish each fall. Most of the other tribs that used to host substantial runs simply haven't recovered from the bait fish crash. I'd estimate the overall salmon population in Huron/GB is maybe 5% of what it was 20yrs ago. They are still there but you'll put in a whole lot more trolling hours for each fish.

Josh
 
With the success of fish populations due directly to Management in recent years In all the great lakes one has to question the issue at hand..................illegal harvest or the fish have nothing to eat?
 
The sole reason for the collapse of the salmon fishery was the 2002 Alewife collapse. Chinook are not the most adaptable feeders. They had trouble finding suitable prey and as such we saw some very small and skinny salmon for many years. The smaller population we have now has adapted to the much less fertile lake conditions and after the initial crash in numbers seem to have rebounded and found a natural point where there isn't massive overcompetion for the smaller bait fish population.

Chinook were originally planted in the lakes specifically to control Alewife overpopulation and they've done exactly that. But with the arrival of Zebra and then Quagga Mussels that filter out much of the lakes micronutrients the lake simply cannot support the same biomass of bait and predators it once did.

Josh
 
We have a cottage not to far from San Souci and have caught Salmon / Rainbow and a pile of Lakers .
 
Last summer . In the area of Black Rock and Harbour island . Need two guys to run down riggers. Lots of depth variation. Remember 1 rod per person.
 
I will be heading up to moon river next week for 4 days fishing.

With the river in it's current condition, we will most likely be trolling the bay.
 
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