OK, I’m a little late getting this report up here and I know it. My only excuse is, or was, the wife gave me the green light to go fishing for my birthday up on Superior (that report here >>> Superior Laker Report) right after we got back from our family vacation up on LOTW. I would have been crazy to not take her up on it and I’m confident all of you would have done the same. So, moving on… 
A little background if you haven’t picked up on some of the chatter about this trip leading up to our departure. Dave Koonce and his three generation family, Joel Nelson along with wife and two kids, and my wife, father-in-law (FIL) and 2 year old daughter all decided to take a summer vacation together in 2015. Our destination of choice was Sunset Lodge on Oak Island in the NW Angle area of Lake of the Woods. We chose this location because the fishing is fantastic, the islands provide shelter from the winds and waves that wives and kids hate and the cabins and lodge / bar area is basically brand new which meant that if the weather went sour on us… the wives would be happy from start to finish. Happy wives while on family vacation = #1 goal.
Since this was a “family vacation” I really didn’t do all that much fishing. I think over the span of our time there I really only got out in the boat a couple times for 3 – 4 hours at a crack. While I didn’t have much time on the water I’d still like to share a report in the hopes that it might help someone else heading up to the area. If you will have kids in tow or just like to catch a lot of decent sized fish this presentation is about as close to a “sure thing” as you’ll find on LOTW.
On my first day out fishing I got to share the boat with Joel, Joel’s wife, Joel’s two sons (Micah and Isaac) and Herb the FIL. With a full boat and youngsters onboard I knew trolling would likely give us our best chance for getting some fish in the boat with limited fishing time available.
We opted to head to Little Traverse Bay which is a fairly expansive area south and east of Oak Island and north and east of Garden. This area is studded with small islands and underwater reefs and offers a fairly flat and featureless basin between structures making it an ideal area for our intended presentation.
We ended up running two lead core lines at 4 colors and two down rigger rods positioning our baits right at 28′ – 31′. The basin in this area bottomed out at 32′ – 34′. Trolling speeds were 2.2 – 2.5 and our best baits were #5 Shallow Jointed Shad Raps in Purpledecscent and Red Craw. Now I should mentioned that I’ve never trolled these baits before but thought they’re aggressive wiggle and shallow running depth would make them a great downrigger bait. My suspicions were spot on! The fish had been feeding heavily on rusty crayfish and the tight wiggle on these little baits worked like a charm and kept everyone in the boat busy fighting and netting fish from start to finish. In fact the bite was so good doubles were common and we even pulled off the ever elusive QUAD – four rods in the boat with four fish hooked up at one time! Suffice it to say, I will be using these baits more in the future.
We worked our baits right at the base of the break of the rocks in this area where the rocks transitioned into the basin and the action was veery, very good. Catching a limit of eaters for the group took no time at all and we had a nice mix of overs to CPR as well. Micah caught our biggest fish of the AM at 26″ (shown in the photos held by older brother Isaac) and everyone had a fish or two over the slot. By the time we had run out of time (around 10:30 AM) we had boated well over 50 fish, kept a beautiful limit for the boat and kept the kids completely engaged from start to finish which is no easy task indeed!
I did make it out the next day with Joel and Herb and the bite hadn’t changed one bit… the fish related to the area where the basin of Little Traverse met rock structure were still on fire. If you’re heading up to this area in the next few weeks I’m told by the guys in the know at Sunset that this bite and the general area we fished only gets better as we get into August.
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