Paradise Cove: A Four Season Vacation Destination

It was a September day in beautiful Nipissing, Ontario when the FISH TV crew headed up to a little piece of heaven. Paradise Cove is a four-season vacation rental destination situated in West Bay on beautiful Lake Nipissing—just a 3.5 hr trip north of Toronto, Ontario.

Lake Nipissing is one of the largest freshwater lakes in Ontario and a world-renowned tourist destination for ecotourism, fishing, family vacations and more. The property offers three executive self-sustained cottages, each in a truly private setting. On-site amenities include canoes, paddle boards, kayaks and boat rentals. Paradise Cove caters to families, couples, corporate retreats and anglers. During the winter months, ice fishing and snowmobiling packages are available from January to mid-March and they also offer Christmas booking packages as well as off-season discounted rates. Their cottages are surrounded by crown land with hiking and ATV trails, accessible right from the resort. In addition, the nearby Maskinonje Provincial Park provides access to hiking/nature trails totalling 30 km.

The Ontario Federation Snowmobile Club (OFSC) trail passes just about a hundred feet from the property offering easy access to sledders. This resort has it all and especially the fantastic fishing that Lake Nipissing has to offer—from trophy Musky to thousands of Walleye, from mega Smallmouth to giant Pike and Sturgeon. This lake is a fish factory and a place where your next bite might just be the biggest fish of a lifetime.

On this trip, we decided we were going to focus on Smallmouth Bass as it was September and the smallmouth start putting on the feed bag about this time of year. But before we get into how and where we caught them, I just want to touch on a few other points about Lake Nipissing. Lake Nipissing, Big Water or "Gichn-bee" in Ojibwa, is Ontario's fifth largest lake after Lake Nipigon, Lake-of-the-Woods, Lac Seul and Lake Abitibi. It is nearly 60 miles long from Barlow Lake to Callander Bay, about 16 miles wide at its widest and covers an area of 336 square miles. The average depth of Lake Nipissing is only 20 feet with a maximum depth of 173 feet near the mouth of the French River.

We arrived at Paradise Cove with some pretty windy conditions but the good thing about West Bay is that there are so many islands you can tuck behind and fish in this area.
The first this we did was pull up the Garmin mapping on our electronics to make sure we knew where we were going. One thing about Lake Nipissing is that you better have good mapping as there are rocks that pop up everywhere and we kind of like our Mercury motor and Lund boat in good condition. We started looking for underwater points near deep water and also rock humps close to deep water. This time of year, the fish will chase bait and push them shallow and if you want to fish the windy side of any point or rock hump, these currents will also move bait in that direction. The fish are starting to put the feed bag on for the winter so you will find the fish scattered from shallow to deep you really have to look at every possibility from one foot of water to 30 ft of water. Always start shallow, this way you can target your cast to the structure whether it be rock piles, individual rocks, logs, weed beds, points etc.

The baits I like to start with are moving baits like Terminator spinnerbait, Rapala DT crankbait or the Loco 13 Fishing jerk bait. These are great search baits that cover water in a hurry looking for active fish. On this particular day, it was pretty windy so we started fishing wind-blown points. Boat control is a must on this type of fishing with staying backcasting to these points so as not to spook those fish that are up tight to the shoal.

At the first spot we went to, Leo made a cast with his jerk bait and connected with a two-pound smallmouth so now we had something to go by. When you catch your first fish, try and remember what the structure looked like, where you made the cast, whether was it on the point or on the inside of the point, was there a rock there or another object to hold that fish. This is called trying to establish a pattern and if you mimic this in a couple of locations, then this is a pattern that you can use all over the lake. Now don’t get stuck on this pattern all day. If you have hit two or three of the same rock points and no fish, it's time to try and find another pattern. But on this day, we hit these types of points with the wind blowing in on them and we were catching fish. I was catching fish on a spinner bait and then Jeff would catch the in-active fish on a drop shot with Leo staying with his Loco 13 fishing jerk bait.  The fishing was great until the sun came out and then everything changed. 

We kept fishing these windblown points and nothing, no fish… so we had to change our pattern. It was time to fish deeper as it seemed when the sun came out the fish took off and went a little deeper, so we focused on ledges of the points that we were fishing and things started picking up again. We were catching them on tubes, Rapala shuddering baits and back to Rapala DT 8 and 10’s to get down to catch these fish.

All in all, it was a great trip to Paradise Cove and the fishing on Lake Nipissing is second to none. So the next time you want to book a fishing trip or a family vacation, have a look at Paradise Cove in West Bay on Lake Nipissing.

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