Great catches: Some of the Show Us Your Fish contest’s best pictures from northwestern Ontario | CBC News

Fishing is a huge part of summer in northwestern Ontario, and anglers from across the region are showing off their catches as part of CBC Thunder Bay’s annual Show us Your Fish contest.

We’ve asked for the best pictures — from monster pike to tiny trout — and gave away two rod and reel sets plus a tackle box stocked by our resident angling expert, Gord Ellis.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen more than 130 entries come in from listeners near and far, and we’ve come down to three winners.

Carlo Cantera

A man holds a fish, with an excited expression on his face. — Carlo Contera shows off a monster caught earlier this summer on a lake near Kenora, Ont. (Submitted by Carlo Cantera )

Carlo’s smile says it all with this picture of a bass he caught in Kenora. The feeling of catching a fish like that is something we can all relate to.

Shannon Zurevinski

A man in a swimsuit holds up a fish in front of a lake. — Shannon Zurevinski sent in this great photo of an adventurous catch by her son, Nick, on Lake of the Woods near Kenora. (Submitted by Shannon Zurevinski)

This picture comes with an incredible story from Shannon Zurevinski and her son Nick’s adventurous catch on Lake of the Woods. It’s so good, we’ll let her tell it herself:

“My son Nick bought a $17 Rapala with his first paycheque and wanted to test it off the dock the same night. But he caught it on the bottom. So he ran and changed into trunks to dive down and see if he could spot it. He dove down nine feet [three metres] and dislodged it from the rocks.

He then threw it up so it wouldn’t get caught again and started to swim back up with the line in his hand. Then, he made it halfway to the surface when a fish grabbed the Rapala.

It was about a foot from his face as he tried to quickly swim back up to the dock. He reeled it in successfully. It was a 16-inch walleye. We laughed about it for hours.”

Andrew Faiers

A young woman holds up a picture of a fish. — Andrew Faiers sent us this great shot of his daughter, Lucy, with a great catch on Father’s Day weekend. (Submitted by Andrew Faiers)

Andrew Faiers said this year’s picture is brought to us from Lucy. He said she loves fishing and always manages to catch the biggest. Her winning entry is an 18.5-inch small mouth bass weighing 3.5 pounds that she caught on Father’s Day weekend at the Sleeping Giant Provincial Park near Thunder Bay.

What a great memory.

Thanks to everyone who participated this year, scroll through to see some more of our favourite entries from anglers and the stories behind them.