Couch is a very popular lake for tournaments and our club has one there almost every year. The lake is about 10 miles long, north to south and as much as 4 miles wide. It has a good mix of largemouth and smallmouth, lots of pike and perch, and the ocassional walleye and muskie. Structure here is different then most lakes in that there are no lily pads or other very shallow cover, if someone is catching the largemouth shallow they are almost certainly fishing the docks, although there are a few trees that hold fish. Largies are also found deep here as the deep weed edge is often found in 18 to 20 ft of water and largemouth live there all summer and really gang up in the fall. Largies are also found in most of the weed flats in the 6 to 12 ft range. Lots of these weed flats are found thru-out the lake. Couch has a reputation as a great smallmouth lake and it is well deserved. Smallies are found thru-out the lake, anywhere there is rock, a rock/weed mix or sand with a few weeds. They tend to gang up in the north end of the lake in the fall. This year our club tournament has been changed to Aug 13th which is a couple of weeks later then last year and I would expect that the smallies will be the prime targets, however we all thought smallies would work last year(2007) and were wrong. Similiar results in 2008 as the largemouth dominated with very few smallies.

 The best boat ramp is at the Orillia Town Docks. It is a dual ramp and the parking is good. Watch the wind on this lake as it can blow up quickly and there is not a lot of places to hide.

May 10/08   Steve's fun pike tournament at Couch
Not a big turnout today, but for a few days notice, we still had 7 boats show up. 3 fish limit, total length. Here are the results

Team..... Fish 1/ Fish 2/ Fish 3/ Total

1. Rowbotham/Johnson.....31.5/35.25/38.75/ 105.5
2. Brian Gardy ..... 32 / 33.25 / 34.5 / 99.75
3. Reid/Foster ..... 31 / 31.75 / 32.75 / 95.5
4. Gill/Andre ..... 32 / 31.5 / 31.25 / 94.75
5. McGuire/McGuire .... 0/0/0/0
5. Watson/Pickering .... 0/0/0/0
5. Walker/Van Allen .... 0/0/0/0

Big Fish went to Steve Rowbotham and Callum Johnson at 38.75 inches

Water was still cold (48-49 degrees), with very little wind.  Our big fish was caught on a big swimbait in 10 feet on the first break into a shallow bay.  The rest of the fish were caught on a mix of rattle traps, sluggos and jerkbaits in 2-6 feet of water.

Here is a link to our big fish http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a24/steverowbotham/3.jpg