Our annual Canada fly in trip with my Dad and 2 brothers was the best we have ever had this past week. From the drive up, to getting in, fishing all week, and getting home, everything went smooth. The weather was great in the low 80’s with mostly sun all week. We only had 1 morning with rain and wind.
This was a new lake so we did not know what the underwater structure looked like and were not sure where the fish were going to be. None of the lakes up there are mapped, so bringing in high quality graphs is a key to finding fish. I personally use the Lowrance HDS 5 with a portable power pack.
Our 1st day was to search and find fish. We started on all the “typical” structure you could see with your eyes like – rock piles, points, and weed edges. We did catch a few fish here and there, but it was not fast and furious like “Canada” fishing can be. Also there is a good population of northern in the lake so fishing the easy structure had us loose a few jigs and cranks.
We were scratching our heads a little, but decided on the 2nd day to keep at it and keep searching. We started out on a shallow rock pile 10 ft deep that had weeds at the bottom of it and gradually went out to around 20 ft. Pulling spinners with crawlers helped us land a few more fish and put some nice eaters on the stringer with an occasional 22-25 inch walleye. We also pulled cranks in the afternoon sun when it was hot out concentrating on structure that had rocks and weeds that had immediate access to deep water. This strategy ended up working well for me and I landed the biggest walleye I have ever caught taping at 29 ½ inches weighting 8 ½ lbs.
The 3rd day we ended up doing similar to day 2, but in the afternoon we ended up finding a deeper flat out in the lake away from the shoreline that was fairly large. It was in about 15 ft of water and had a secondary edge that was in 17-22 ft. The structure was mostly sand with rocks and occasional weeds. This was what we were looking for. We tried pulling cranks and jigging, with limited success. Then we started pulling spinners with crawlers and our luck turned quickly. We started catching fish immediately and landed multiple fish on the same pass. Most of the fish were bigger in the 20-25 inch range. We hit the MOTHER LOAD.
On day 4 and 5 we hit other areas, but mostly concentrated out effort on this large flat and were rewarded with many BIG fish. We caught good # of fish in the 24-27 inch range with 1 28 inch and 2 29 inch walleyes. On 1 pass we had both boats side by side and my brother Al got the 28”, then my Dad laced up a 29”, my brother Chris got a 25” and I followed the rear with a 24 inch walleye.
If I had to say what lure made our trip it was DEFINITELY Jolly Roger Spinners. We tried other spinners as well, but the fish wanted Jolly Roger Spinners with crawlers badly. They outperformed anything else 3 or 4 to 1 hands down. If you did not have a Jolly Roger on your line then you were NOT catching fish! Without them we would not have had the trip we did. Our best colors were: Electric Perch, Firebelly, Firetiger, Purple Minnow, and sunrise Craw.
thank you Shawn 
It was an unbelievable trip. All of us made personal bests on that trip and boated so many big walleye it was truly a trip to remember. Of course we will be going back to the same lake next year.
sounds like a Great trip all right 
Again… nice job!
