Behavior

Species

One page per species: senses, habits and the seasons.

• Largemouth Bass — Canadian habitat use through local temperature, clarity, flow, cover and prey: understand both movement and precise feeding stations.
• Smallmouth Bass — Canadian habitat use through local temperature, clarity, flow, cover and prey: understand both movement and precise feeding stations.
• Walleye — The north’s low-light specialist: a mirror-eyed (tapetum lucidum) schooling predator that hunts perch at dusk, dawn, and night, migrates tens of kilometers to rock and river spawning grounds at ice-out, and rewards anglers who read light, wind, and depth.
• Northern Pike — The ambush apex of cool, weedy water: a circumpolar S-strike predator that grabs prey crossways in a jaw full of backward-slanted teeth, spawns in flooded marshes at ice-out, and thrives from the U.S. Midwest to the far-north Canadian lakes where bass cannot follow.
• Muskellunge (Muskie) — The fish of ten thousand casts: a low-density apex ambusher that follows more than it strikes, swallows prey a third of its own length, and rewards the angler who finishes every cast with a figure-8.
• Crappie — The suspended-school panfish everyone loves: an up-feeding plankton-and-minnow sipper that hovers mid-column over open basins, spawns in colonies in waves, and rewards anglers who find the school’s exact depth and keep a tiny jig just over its head.
• Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake) — A group profile of the three coldwater salmonids northern anglers actually target — the current-loving rainbow, the sensitive headwater brook trout, and the deep-cruising lake trout — united by an oxygen-hungry physiology that makes water temperature the whole game.
• Yellow Perch — The size-sorted schooling grazer of northern lakes: a strictly daytime bottom feeder, the marquee ice-fishing target of Canada and the Great Lakes, and the forage fish that feeds nearly every predator it swims with.

Species cheat sheets

Every species side by side, one level per cell: look it up like a dictionary.

• Habitat — How likely are you to find it on this kind of spot, in this season?
• Water temperature — How actively does it feed at this water temperature? Pick the mode first: the same number means a different fish on the way up than on the way down.
• How it strikes — How typical is this way of attacking for it?
• How it fights — How typical is this behaviour once it is hooked?
• Colour vision — How well does it see — and respond to — this colour or visual cue?
• Senses — How strong is this sense — and how much does the fish rely on it to feed and to stay safe?
• Light & time of day — How well does it feed in this light? (open water unless the row says "under ice")
• Depth — How often does it hold at this depth, in this season?
• Seasonal rhythm — How good is the fishing for it in this phase of the year? Rows are phases, never months: each fish runs its own spawn clock, and latitude moves every date.
• Forage — How important is this prey in the adult fish's diet?
• Lures & presentations — How productive is this presentation for it?
• Water conditions — How well does it do in this kind of water?
• Home-made attractants across species — The species pages hold some fifty recipes — they boil down to these families. How much does each one do for each fish?

All cheat sheets

Species comparisons

Two easily confused species, point by point.

• Largemouth vs Smallmouth — Compare habitat tendencies and overlap in Canadian waters, without dividing bass into warm-shallow and cold-deep stereotypes.
• Pike vs Muskie — Same ambush chassis, opposite bets: the abundant coolwater pike that spawns first and commits to the strike, against the sparse warm-tolerant muskie that follows, inspects, and grows into the continent's biggest esocid.
• Walleye vs Trout — The cool half of the fishing year, split two ways: the mirror-eyed twilight percid of stained fertile water against the oxygen-hungry daylight salmonids of cold clear water — opposite prime hours, opposite lakes, opposite cultures.
• Crappie vs Perch — The two great panfish live on different floors of the same lake and punch different clocks: the up-feeding, low-light crappie hovering mid-column against the strictly-daylight yellow perch grazing the bottom — and why every choice from depth to bait to season flips between them.