English river … Ear Falls!

Hey Guys, I am heading up to Manitou falls camp 8/21-25 and just wanted to see if anyone has been up that way in the last few weeks. From the sounds of it the water was still up pretty good thru June and thats great news IMO. I have been on the system 3 times before but have never fished this late in the year. We usually go up with work every june but this time I am taking my new bride on our Honeymoon up there A heck of alot better than Florida Anyways we are really looking foward to it and if anyone has any current conditions or advise to offer for this time of year I would love to hear it.
I have always targeted eyes with olny putting in a few hours for skis and pike but want to give them a go for atleast a day+ this time of year. We always run into some while walleye fishing and one of the guys pulled a 44′ this last year but that was walleye fishing. Thanks a ton for any info you have to share!!! We cant wait to get up there

Congratulations Joe. Its been maybe 10 years since Ihave been up there. Remember catching a lot of pike above barnstorm rapids and walleyes in and below them. Sure wish I could get back up there with what I know about walleye fishing now.

Thanks Mike! We are looking foward to it

Hey!!!!
I would spend a little time deep-water jigging “Clear lake”. That lake has rumors of tuna eyes and I think their largest recorded out of it was 17lbs……caught during the summer.

fireman731 just got back from red lake

I hear there are lakers in there as well gary! Thanks for the tip!! Never have been back there but its worth the shot and not too far from camp and the other areas we usually have the best luck at!!

The water in that lake is a bit clearer than the rest of the system.

On the east side shoreline, you’ll find a nice underwater point/bar.

Good luck up there!
Let me know ho you did when ya get back!

Hey Buschman, You should be in for some good fishing in late Aug. I’ve been going for the last 15 years to Manitou Falls and have always done well with walleye and pike. Try verticle jigging anywhere in the river system that it narrows down creating slow to moderate current. Or any where that the river makes a 90° turn. Usually in 12′ or under is where the walleye will be. Pike are plentiful in Unexpected and the NW side of Wegg as well as in the river. Nock on wood the weather is generally very stable this time of year and the fishing is usually very consistant. Good luck, I will be there the 18th thru 25th.

Welcome to IDA Jigfisher!
Isn’t that stretch of water just a treat!!!!

Thanks Gary, I just stumbled on to this site. It is a great area to fish for the average angler like myself. Many benefits that you get fishing on a chain of lakes with a river connecting them. Shore is always in view, current holds beefy walleyes, a couple of natural fast water rapids and more wildlife than one can believe.

Canada spoils a guy with the beauty and promise of great fishing. Makes fishing in the states more of a way to occupy time until you get the chance to head to the North Country again.

I’m still amazed with that system.
It isn’t every day a guy can boat a river, where the depth drops from about 15fow to 90fow in about 100 feet. You can actually feel the boat get “sucked down” in the current pull, as well as look at all the mini-whirlpools.

And the quality/quantity of fish in that system! Comparable to a fly-in, yet big fish like LOTW, Lac Seul, and Eagle. (not too many “rivers” can brag about 55 and 57 pound muskies! )

I have to get back up there next summer…..Just no way around it. I’d rather go there than LOTW.

What camp do you normally stay at?

Which lakes do you target muskies??
We usually fish in Big and Little Fox and a little up into Indian lakes, have thrown at some very nice looking structure, but have never seen a ski. I know they are in there somewhere – any tips would be appreciated!

Also anyone target smallies in mid August?? We have fished them hard in the past only to turn up a few here and there. I know the system is noted for a tremendous smallie fishery, but haven’t seemed to find anything of size or any sort of numbers.

Thanks

My dad and I started out at Naughty Pines on Wegg lake back in ’93. I won a free trip, so thought the price wasn’t bad if you split between the two of us. One we got there we figured out why the c.o. has to give a way a free trip so he can sucker other’s to come with the winner.

The good thing is that Manitou Falls Camp is next to the launch for Naughty Pines, so we stopped in to see the accomodations and we were impressed with the fact that they had showers, electricity and 30-40 hp motor’s on 16′ boats. Then we found out that the price was about $300 per person cheaper and didn’t have to go outside to take a crap. We’ve been going to Manitou Falls ever since. They oughta rename the other camp to Suckerville Lodge.

I agree that this area is as good of a fishery as I’ve ever fished. What camp did you stay at?

The majority of the Muskies that have been caught have been on Wegg Lake which is the biggest lake on this chain of lakes. I’m guessing you are downstream from Oak lake? The thing that attracts the muskies to Wegg is that the river channel runs thru the main part of the lake and has some a lot of structure adjacent to the channel that offers the muskies access to shallow and deep water with current bringing bait fish to them.

As far as the smallies go we have never caught more than a few in a day either. Mostly below the dam at Manitou Falls or in the fast water eddies below the Barnston rapids leading into Wegg. I’ve seen a couple of 5+ pound smallies but have only caught a few in the 3+ range.

How is the fishing on your part of the English River? What resort do you stay at?

I stayed at Naughty Pines.
Our lodging wasn’t too bad there.
The shower was right next door, but yea only an outhouse.
It also kinda sucked having the electricity turned off from 11pm to 6am.

From the sounds of it they were going to quit the rebuild of naughty pines. I was olny up there once since the fire they had and there was 2 bldgs rebuilt from what I could see. This spring I talked to a land owner up there and the word was they stopped and were not putting anything else into it????

Lights out from 11-6 that would suck! We have always stayed at Manitou and they have always done a great job for us too!

We have seen skies in both goose and wegg when we tried for them. Caught a really nice smallie on a bucktail back in goose No big fish sightings but lots of mid 30 pike and a few mid size follows from the muskies. I cant wait to get back up there! Gary I will let you know how it goes!!

Jigfisher… Are you up there the 18-25th of august here If so I will see you up there! I hope to be pulling in by 9am tuesday and we are there till saturday am 21-25th. It will just be me and Monica. I think she will have a blast if fishing is anything like we get in june! Good luck up there! I talked to Mike the other day and he said the water was up pretty good yet. With that and the right wind there should be some great fishing!!!!!!!

I thought naughty pines was a great place. Little rustic but what the heck. Out houses and shared showers. Guess I never pictured going to a fish camp and staying at the Hilton. Doesn’t much mater now since it burnt down. Does that other resort have a web site?

Sure wish I had the time and money to get back up there this year. Maybe next year. We where up there 1st week in September and had great fishing. That was a high water year also. We took a lot of walleyes trolling crank baits and vertical jigging in the bottle neck areas of the river. Those where the days.

Yeah Mike W. they does have a site http://www.manitoufalls.com/

I can not get too down on Naughty Pines since with out them I probably never would have got my dad to give up farming for a week. My guess is if you compared apples to apples on the two camps that you would see the difference.

Your right fishing where the river bottlenecks is probably the best fishin’. If your not snagged your not fishin’

Its been about 15 years since I stayed at Manitou Falls Camp. We stayed in the Outpost cabin over the 4th of July one year and camped on an island the year prior to that. Even when we just camped, we went out of Manitou Falls Camp. The Outpost cabin was great. In the 2 trips I was up there, I caught 1 36 inch muskie. I caught it in the first big rapids (I think it was called the Barnstad Rapids). Back then, I still hadn’t been hit with the muskie addiction. We heard reports of some slobs (40# +) taken between Wegg and Goose Lakes. My uncle used to help the resort owner run bear baits. He pointed us to an area that produced better than any other areas for us. He referred to it as the Elbow. If you look at the map on the Outpost link for Manitou falls you could probably find this spot. Its at the south end of Wilcox Lake. It looks like an Elbow. We caught our limits of walleyes everytime we made it down that way.

Both times we were up there, we had really unpredictable weather. We definately used our rain gear every day – multiple times.

I also experienced no see ems or can’t see ems for the first time. In the outpost, we left our windows open (had screens in them)the first few nights because it was in the 90s. Those xxxxers kicked my butt. It looked like I had measles. They woke me up out of a drunken stuper 3 nights in a row. None of our bug dope worked. We finally had to keep the windows shut.

Good luck guys, you sure know how to make a guy jealous. Hope you able to let us know how you did.

Got back on 8/25 in the a.m., I thought the fishing was better this year with the water being above the normal level over the past 5 years. The thing about fishing the English River below Manitou Falls is that the water level is never the same year to year and the current never flows the same from year to year. Just for sh*%s we kept track of the walleyes caught out of our boat and for the week we had 249 \\\\\\\’eyes that were above the 12\\\\\\” minimum in order to count as a catch. Of the 249 a good guess is that 50 would have been over 18\\\\\\” , 150 over the 14\\\\\\” mark and 50 under the 14\\\\\\” mark. The largest was a 24\\\\\\” caught in the river between Goose and Wilcox.

Rumor has it that Naughty Pines is shut down and the owner has bankrupted himself. It sounds like the insurance company was not going to pay out for the rebuild until it actually was rebuilt. So he gambled and put some money into a housing development in the states and lost a butt load of cash and had to close the camp down. It is shame too, it looks like the owner just walked away and left everything there. I\\\\\\\’m guessing the bank has control over the thing now. Here is a link if anyone wants to buy it http://www.investorsfishcamp.com/index.html

Jigfisher what cabin were you in up there??? Me and Karen were looking for you but didnt have any luck.

Fishing up there for #\\\’s was fantastic for us but we lacked the big fish that I would have liked to see!! I told monica while we were packing if she wanted to spend the time after just big ones or just #\\\’s and she was happy just catching lots of fish. So I stacked up on jigs and decided to stay shallow instead of bringing the leadcore and running cranks. We fished Barnston \\”kates reef\\” all the way down thru Unexpected and all the lakes had fish. But to be honest our best numbers came close to the camp. The winds on wendsday and thursday really help out in concentrating fish in areas but made it a bouncy ride for Monica
I was suprised by the lack of some areas getting fished. There are lots of reefs out there and we olny seen boats on about 4-5 of them so we stayed on most the ones that didnt see any other boats. I know of a couple fish that were over the 28\\” mark that were caught and those girls were in 24-28 fow but if anyone is heading up and wants to catch lots of fish you dont have to go any deeper than 5-10 fow!!!. We never kept count but figured we caught between 500-600 eyes but none over 24\\”. On thursday we wanted to go back to camp for lunch and refill on beverages After lunch we went back out to one reef getting lots of current and lots of wind blowing right up into the current and counted 127 walleyes in about 3 hrs. It was just unbelievable!! We have caught lots of numbers in a single spot before but this had to be the best I have personally seen. One big thing that made a difference was to not anchor!! Keep moving with the flow and keep working the whole structure was key. We ran out of minnow that after noon after just refilling and just kept working the area with cranks and plastics and those fish never slowed down. Monica caught a 19\\” and 18.5\\” smallie on the cranks while I was pitching plasics and pulling eyes. Anyways I will put some pictures up too but just wanted to report back in quick. We had a blast and I know she already wants to go back up

We were in Cabin #2 this year. Wow it sounds like you and Monica had a great half week. We mainly fished the river. I know that there is a lot of areas that we do not cover on the system. We seam to spend most of our time on far end of the system. We concentrate on were the depth comes up from 30\\\’+ to about 6-10\\\’. There is a sunken island that is in the middle of the Wilcox between Madi\\\’s Island and Damions Island that the three boats the were in our group caught a ton of 14\\” + and the elbow were the river turns 90° we caught the majority of the big fish. Your right if you want to go after #\\\’s this is a great area to fish, we easily could have put another couple of hundred in the boat, but we decided to let the other boats fish the hotspots. The other two boats that were with us like to anchor since they don\\\’t have a trolling motor to hold on a area.

The guy that had the Triton boat puts some nice fish in the boat if you get a chance to talk to him he will impress you with the amount of big fish he catches on this system. He seams to every year put a multiple trophy fish in the boat. Muskies, Eyes and Smallies.

I am leaving on the 8-14 for my annual trip to Manitou Falls Fish Camp west of Ear Falls. I was wondering if anyone had a report on the conditions on the English River or specifically the area below Manitou Falls?
What is the weather been like and does anyone know what they are predicting for the next two weeks?
What are the water levels like this year?
Can you get into all the lakes?
How have the bugs been in the area?
Most of all, how has the fishing been??
Any report would be helpful as we are having a pre-trip meeting on Sunday and we would like to be as prepared as we can?