Ice fishing Tunkwa/Leighton has been pretty steady for most of our guests, if you find them, they are there in good sized schools, and tend to be feeding. Action can be fast when a school passes through. If you don’t find the fish you have to keep moving until you do. Reports of fish being caught as shallow as 3′, and out to the 12′ depths. Most fish are in the 16″ size range, but we did see a 4lber brought up through a hole. All the usual presentations are working, but the good old “Tunkwa Rig” (a hook less spoon, with a 10lbfluorocarbon dropper line of about 12”, tied to a glow-in-the-dark jig) seems to be the best bet. Tipping the jig with a small piece of worm has been the most consistent offering, but giant meal worm’s snapped in half, or a few maggots on the hook tip will work when the fish go off the worms. We’ve been having great success using the new VMC ‘Pro Series’ Larvae or Pug Bug (glow in the dark) jigs! They come with excellent quality hooks that feature an extra wide gap for there size, this really makes a big difference on there holding power, when fighting a trout under the ice. Still fishing shrimp piece have accounted for some fish as well.
Ice is about 12″ thick, plenty safe, but the thinnest any of us can recall for this time of the winter. There is still some snow on the ice, and slush is heavy in parts of the lake. Also, parts of the lake are very rough to travel across, due to the frozen tracks from quads/sleds made in the slushy areas. Lake access is still available through the resort(day us fee is charged for non guests), the south day use area, or the Provincial Park.
The storms forecasted for Sunday missed our area, and the local roads are in great shape!

One of many Nick S. caught fishing in 12′ of water in Tunkwa..