Rabbit Lake in Renfrew County: How and When to Fish It

• Overview

  Rabbit Lake is one of the Renfrew County waters in Ontario. Elevation runs to 291 metres. Surface area runs to about 6 hectares — small enough to read in one session. The nearest place of any size is Deep River, 42 km away. Gatineau sits 196 km out, and it is the nearest city worth the name. Water in the same corner: Piglet Lake after 1.2 km, Roo Lake a touch under 1.6 km, Kanga Lake after 2 km, Blimkie Lake a touch under 3 km and Horseshoe Lake after 3 km. There is no boundary nearby to worry about.

• Where to Fish on Rabbit Lake

  No chart reached our records; the first cast is your sounding. Read the surface for the wind lane, then fish the edge of it. Look for the band where the shallows give up and the bottom falls away. Open biodiversity records for Renfrew County list smallmouth bass, pumpkinseed, yellow perch, rock bass and brook trout. These are county-wide records, so not all of them will be in this water. Fish Rabbit Lake where the bottom changes rather than where it looks deep.

• Seasonal Patterns

  Typical July readings run about 18°C; by January the average is down near -13°C. Cold locks it up for a good stretch each year. The freeze runs deep into the year, with break-up near late April. Average temperatures cross freezing around late April in spring and again near late November in autumn. The shoulder weeks of the open season are the productive ones. The season on Rabbit Lake rarely departs from it.

• Tackle & Baits

  Access is not recorded for this water. The map shows no ramp or car park nearby, so this is a walk-in water. For the bass here, soft plastics worked slow along cover and a spinnerbait for searching do most of the work. Rules for this water may differ from the county norm. Barbless rules turn up on managed water more often than not. For a change of water, Piglet Lake is 1.2 km distant. None of that is settled for Rabbit Lake in what we hold.