Got home from lake Michigan, had about a two week gap to get a bunch of work done at work and at home, on top of getting rigged up for my first trip to Canada! Worked a 4 day 73 hour work week and did a training burn with the fire dept and also the National Night Out on top of all of that, then left the next morning. I went up with the girlfriend and her family for their annual trip to Canada. We stayed at Open Bay Lodge on Lac Des Mille Lac. The experience was about everything I imagined Canada to be. Caught a lot of fish, ate a lot of fish, scenery was breathtaking, just like fishing in the BWCAW and had some excellent shore lunches.
I have never been to a resort where the owners of the resort know your name, incredibly friendly staff, eager to help and make sure that you had an excellent time while staying there! Every morning I would get up and go for a walk down the shore to the bait shop, bs with them and then watch them feed their “pet pike,” which happens to be 9 mid 30s pike that every morning, they would swim out from under the dock, rise up to the surface, fin around and they would pitch the dead suckers out and they would hammer them! It was pretty damn cool, to be a couple feet away from an absolute feeding frenzy like that! Mike and Cherril are amazing people and I really hope I get to go back there! Shower facilities, the cabins, the service were all top notch and way above and beyond what I expected for their prices!
If you’re looking for a very affordable Canadian trip, Open bay is it! The seasonal camper holders there were all very friendly and willing to share some of their tips and knowledge of the lake, when I showed them leadcore they were all over that. Plu the boats were seeing us out there with two girls in the back of the boat constantly waving the Beckman around the boat landing walleyes or at the fishing cleaning station…
Everyone I had talked to said that August was a terrible time of the year up there as the fish were not shallow anymore and they were really scattered and hard to come by. Our best bet was to be go fish smallmouth or northerns. If I had to fish walleyes, a spinner and crawler harness was the ticket. Troll around the islands in 15 feet of water or go find “the juggs,” or this rock or that rod. I tried and then went out and found my own fish. As much as I like fishing smallies, I kinda felt a lot of pressure to go try and find as many walleyes as possible. So we did.
First day I did some snooping around getting a feel for the lake, pulled some blades and then spent the rest of the day pitching Heddon Torpedos for smallmouth, zara spooks for pike and Boo-yah spinnerbaits for a mixed bag of pike of smallies. You wanna hear a girl scream, tether an upper 30s inch pike to her Torpedo and urine it off and have it eat boatside! Was a blast running the terrova and having a hay day just putting numbers of fish in the boat and nothing beats a great topwater bite.
Average smallie was around 16, with nothing going over 20 inches. Pike were in that above average hammerhandle size with a majority of them being in that 29-33 inch class with a half dozen fish over 36 inches.
As we were cruising back to the resort that evening, I noticed some huge schools of baitfish suspended over 50-60 feet of water with a few nice marks hanging around the edges…which got me a little excited.
Water temp typically started off at 67 degrees every morning and around 9 am it would climb to 70. Next morning, Dani and I hopped into the boat, pulled all the rods and gear out, threw in our two-leadcore rods and two totes of crankbaits and went after them.
The hot bait that day was The Cotton Cordell CC shad, blue back/orange belly. Every ten minutes we were switching cranks if it wasn’t getting bit. That bait stayed on one leadcore rod for three days. Dani was rifling through the crankbaits and had a pretty nice “kill” box going until she got dialed in with a Bomber Long A in silver prism/blue back which remained a hot bait for the duration of the trip.
Whatever crankbait we ran didn’t seem to matter whether it was a shad style bait or a stick bait, but as long as it had some combination of blue or orange, it was getting bit. A lot. Average walleye was nothing huge, that 15-16 inch range with a half dozen mixed in over 20 inches every morning and evening, with biggest walleye being around 26 inches. We had a shot at a big girl, a really big girl. Second night out, I had Dani and her sister in the boat, sun was starting to set and had everything dialed in, baitfish were starting to really chimney stack and were getting pushed shallower. I called the shot, saying the big girls were gonna eat now, wasn’t thirty seconds and my board was sunk. Pulled the rod out of the holder, basically said who wants it. Dani took it, had it within 25 feet of the boat, fish came topside, said something along the lines of, here is your fish for the wall hun. Fish took a run deep, and she pulled back and the crankbait came separated from the rod. $hit happens, but it was fun!
One of the cool things that was fun was seeing the size of the Lake Herring the fish were puking up in the livewell. 6-8 inch stuff was not uncommon, I tried pulling bigger stickbaits in that length and they didn’t get touched. I gave them a really fair shake as I was trying to get a pig or two.
The fish wanted leadcore with crankbaits no doubt. I pulled everything I knew out of the book to try other methods and so did the other boats in our party, deep diving super rogues might catch one or two every couple of hours, snap weights didn’t do nothing either. So that was kind of unfortunate the other boats in our party didn’t have leadcore set ups, but we rotated seats and every got to reel in a fair amount of fish! You can bet next year they will all have leadcore rods packed!
Had a blow/rain day and the only thing with the pattern that changed was the crankbait colors that were working. The hot baits became a Bomber Long A in Gold Prism/Black Bars, Silver Flash/Chartreuse back, Wally Diver in Chrome Chartreuse and Cheap Sunglasses, Red Racer, white shiner and Pink shiner Shadlings.
The last few days of the trip, the wind kept going, it made it difficult to maintain that 2.0-2.2 speed the fish were keying in on, so I pitched two small drift socks out the back of the boat to slow us down but not cause the boat to lean hard to the side all time. Never tangled with the prop, never lost a fish in them and it definitely upped our fish numbers those days.
The very last morning, I was able to get Dani’s mom out in the boat with us, for her 50th birthday she wanted to catch some walleyes but was a little anxious about hopping into the boat with me, and having to use my rods and gear. Five minutes in when I handed her the first rod to reel a walleye in helped and 10-15 fish later, she was doing juuust fine! We fished for 3 hours and were averaging a fish roughly about every 6 or 7 minutes. We had multiple triples, and doubles and as soon as the fish came to the boat, Dani would scoop it into the Beckman, swing it over to me, unhook it, pitch the crank over the side of the boat and she would be setting back. Made a great trio! On top of that while she was out catching all the walleyes her heart and sore arms desired, she actually made her daughter reel in the last few fish as she was too tired. We came back to a freshly baked birthday cake that her husband stayed back to make.
Couple of things I learned from the trip. There are idiots on the water no matter what country you’re in. I had two Legend boats buzz us at about 25 yards under wide-open throttle. Giant lake and if your trolling the same one-mile stretch, fishing a very feature less area, guys will still pull up right on top of you, or cut you off. Or when you turn to come back, they will turn sharper and pull back in front of you. Just laugh it off, as you’re in 60 feet of water fishing 25-30 feet down and they are dragging bottom bouncers on the bottom. It makes it a little better when every time they do that, you pop a double or a triple alongside of them. J
Get the Navionics Chip! It is well worth the money as every dangerous area that I found, was clearly marked and it helped really dissect the water and eliminate a ton of water!
Gas prices suck in Canada! It was basically $5.95 a gallon USD I had a fuel Caddy I filled down here and dragged up in the truck and it more than paid for itself with what I saved.
My digital camera is in the tank, so this past summer I have been using my cell phone, mainly because it is always attached to my hip. Yea, no service up there and leaving your cell phone in the truck because you do not need it, means you don’t take very many pictures in the boat.
Finally, if you get the chance to go to Canada fishing, DO IT! You can fish it as hard as you want or be as relaxing as you want it to be! We took the relaxing way, fished for a few hours after breakfast, had a shore lunch, play some cornhole, ladder ball, swim, go for a hike, explore an island, burn some wood or just sit in a chair watching the loons and the bald eagles, then maybe head out for a few hours, come back for dinner and have a camp fire, repeat, 5-6 more days and you come back to the states refreshed and ready to do it all over again! I had an absolute blast with Dani and her family, the fishing was good, the food was fabulous and the company was fantastic!
