I fished the lake over 40 years ago and did very well. We started fishing Pine Falls when there were only 5 or 10 boats a weekend. Yes, things have changed but the walleyes still come from the lake as they always have. There was a differant set of people out there at the time and many don't fish any more, but let's not forget guys like George Forgie,TJ, AK TS and many more guys. We were the first to have fish locators and started with the green box. I know Stu and Lee and i know you know me as well, and commend you for what you've done. Andre on the other hand i don't know and have never heard of him doing any promoting. From his comments, i don't care to know him either.
Pleased to meet you too Mr. steadyeddie. I spoke of the winter recreational fishery and who put it on the list of present day "go to" walleye ice-fishing destinations! It doesn't matter to me one bit that you don't care to know me.
I didn't do this to make myself known to anyone. Manitoba based fishing forum members and social media site members know me very well already, based on my work in the field and my passion for challening everyone to be law abiding, conservation caring stewards of our great outdoors.
I posted my original comment because over the years this fishery has grown exponentially. People come from all over to ice fish walleyes in the extreme south basin of Lake Winnipeg. I see the thousands of comments posted by people who are "Lake Winnipeg ice-fishing experts". As if they were born on this lake, fished it their entire lives and who then call out anyone who doesn't have all the answers. Except, I and people like Stu, Lee and others know that the Lake Winnipeg recreational fishery is actually in its infancy. And I as stated at the beginning, after being in this area for a number of years and dealing with the angling public in the area for those years, the number of recreational ice-fishers on extreme south basin was MINISCULE! I guarantee that the number of Saskatchewan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska ice-fishers on Lake Winnipeg was a big, fat "ZERO" prior to the internet postings of Stu McKay, myself and the others that I identified earlier. In fact, the number of Manitobans in general was miniscule! It was all Red River, Whiteshell, Nopiming and NW Ontario.
So my entire point was that practically everyone who ice-fishes the extreme south end of the South Basin of Lake Winnipeg has no idea how it came to be that this fishery came to the attention of tens of thousands of anglers in less than 5 years! They don't know that the popularity of this fishery blew up in the several months between our internet postings of March 31, 2005 and internet postings of December 2005 - March 2006.
I find it gratifying that I was in on the ground floor of bringing this tremendous fishery to the angling community.
So next time you're fishing the big lake with friends and/or acquaintances, ask them how long they've been fishing it? Ask them if they know how that whole fishery came to be? As they land themselves a limit of LW green backs or a trophy walleye or two, tell them, that they have Stu McKay, Lee Nolden, Bradley Dokken, Jim Stinson and a couple other people to thank for opening it up to the world!
