Heading up to the Cabin on The Gunflint Trail for a whole week!!!! smallies and lakers are the target I am going to try and catch a laker on a fly behind a downrigger. I have a few I want to try and tie and we will see what happens. May explore a few lakes and a few different places there are countless lakes to hit and countless species to go after. so we will hopefully have a lot of pics to show after the smoke clears. Stay tuned.
back from Gunflint lake what a nice time up there. The weather was awesome the fishing was okay for smallmouth and lakers. We caught a lot of fish but no big fish. Caught hundrens of smallmouth biggest only 16 inches averaged like 13 to 14 inches. The key was finding scattered rock in 4 to 8 feet Where crawfish are. I am sure if we tried out in 20 feet on reefs we would have got bigger size. the best bait was a #4 or #5 red and white mepps spinner.
On the lake trout side of things catching fish wasn’t an issue the size was. We caught quite a few fish that were about a pound and I even caught a little 8 incher. kept one fish that was 2.5 pound (that perfect eater size) I did come up with a few lake trout flies and did well on one but going to make more and try it again. the fish that we caught were in 50-70 FOW down 45 to 55 Feet. I wish we would have tried out deeper 80-100 but it was hard to leave the action.
The highlight of the trip for me was finding an arrowhead on one of the beaches. the arrowhead its self was a little eroded from the waves washing up on it but still very cool to find. Had an awesome time and will have pictures to follow. thanks and im sorry it isn’t a well written report but had to make it quick so it probably wont read very well.
hear is the arrowhead and the lake trout fly i used on the downrigger. Help me name it.
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That fly looks like a Davis Arrowhead to me.
That is a great name!!
That is a great name!!
And I liked the report. And you get bonus points for catching lakers on home made flies! Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone trying that before. 
Just wait until fall. Pss I catch them on a fly rod When they come up on the reefs.
Heading up to the cabin with the bro this weekend going to target lakers with flies behind downriggers or dipsy divers. I tied a little twist onto the Davis Arrowhead what do you think?
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Allan are you on Gunflint lake? or Magnetic? I have a buddy on Magnetic and does fairly well for lakers out there.
We are in Gunflint and we do get into magnetic once and a while. The smallmouth fishing can be great in there. The plan for this trip is to fish loon the first day then gunflint and a few others. May even fish the streams. It will probably be to early for them yet. The forcast is calling for rain so maybe the pike salmon will be running but I think the temps are still a little hot for that.
Well we gave he hell but the bite was tough. We caught lakers but all small with one smallside keeper. We caught most of the lakers on a clack’n rap behind a downrigger. We fished 30 to 60 feet down over 50-110FOW. James this was one of the times if you were not 10 feet or less away from the downrigger ball you weren’t going to catch fish. Also caught a small smallmouth bass down 45 feet over 60FOW that was interesting.
As for other species we caught some smallmouth and a few pike but nothing big. biggest smallie was 15 and biggest pike was 3 pounds. The pike were buried in the weeds with mud bottom. The smallies were mainly on rock reefs 6-25 fow but also on timber with scattered boulders. The smallmouth seem to be off of the crawfish now and moved on to the smelt and other baitfish. If you are in the area try deep rock shelves or the deeper rock reefs for big smallmouth. I would say 10-30FOW.
With cooler temps in the forcast the fishing will only get better! Look for lakers to start moving shallow to spawn (think springtime patterns) the big pike should be coming back in shallow following the bait, and after the next hard rain Pink Salmon should start running along with brookies and steelhead.
Well it’s been a wile since I posted. I have been living the dream and getting out a lot. I have been fishing for just about everything and doing well. My favorite trips are up to the cabin and this last trip we did good again. With 28 lakers the biggest being over 10 lbs and countless smallmouth it was a blast. Our one downfall was the smallmouth size wit has the biggest being a girthy 18 incher and many in the 16to 17 and a half we still didn’t do to bad. I think if we could have stuck to the main lake we would have been able to reach our goal of 5 fish over 20 inches bUT do to some choppy conditions we had to go to the rivers and shallow bays not the rocky shorelines or reefs that we wanted to.
Now for lake trout fishing we did well for how long we fished (not very long due to weather) our smallest was about one pound or so but most were 2.5 to 3 pounds I also lost an awesome fish I estimate at about 15 pounds. We let the big one go and kept 3 it was an awesome time and is always nice to get to the cabin.
All smallmouth were taken on number 4 mepps spinners the trout came off downriggers and dipsys we only fished two baits a storm purple uv storm crank bait and a gold and orange spoon the lakes were in 60 to 75 feet of water and the storm was 25 feet behind the downrigger ball. We targeted 25 feet off the bottom to right on the bottom most fish came 10 feet off.
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More pics
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Here are more
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