Last week my brother in law Mike and I spent a week at Snowbank Lake 
north of Ely, MN doing some roofing (in exchange for lodging) and fishing. We have fished this lake many times in June but the patterns change drastically this time of year. 
Snowbank is partially in the BWCA so we saw lots of ‘paddlers’ working hard to overcome the windy conditions we experienced all week. That just looks like way too much work to us. 
We just had to try some of our favorite June spots but quickly realized that the fish had moved out to deeper depths. On Sunday Mike caught this nice silver pike on a [censored] (pink) colored hook and large minnow in 20’ of water and it put his walleye gear to the test for sure, under the boat, under the anchor rope, around the boat – but he played it beautifully and had his drag working just right. 
Don’t worry about the blood, Mike is a quick healer. 
We spent a lot of time cruising and checking the locator to find where the fish were staging and found lots of fish congregated in 35 – 60’ of water. During our searches we did catch lots of short smallies and on Monday I caught this respectable smallie on an orange hook and large minnow in 35’ of water. We did catch lots of “hammer handle” pike as well to keep the action going and Mike had one lone walleye in 44’ of water. The walleyes just didn’t want to come out and play on this trip. 
We also spent one day chasing lake trout in 60 – 80’ of water with cisco’s and trolling but they weren’t willing to play either.
A neat experience I had was hand feeding a Gray Jay while roofing, if there’s food they aren’t bashful at all to come and feed right out of your hand. 
We also witnessed a Pine Marten chasing a squirrel up a tree and then watched it hang out up there for a while keeping an eye on the roofers and saw two Bobcats while travelling and a really cool orange sky Thursday morning which warned us that we wouldn’t be taking the boat out later that day or Friday. All in all we worked our 
off looking for fish, put 15 hours on my new 40hp Yamaha 4 stroke, which by the way is very efficient on fuel, tried about everything we could think of and had a great time out on the water. 
We still want to conquer the fall bite on this lake and maybe make an ice fishing trip there as well. Ely is a cool town to visit and the colors on the trees just exploded during our week there.
1st pic Mike with silver pike, me with smallie, feeding a Gray Jay, Orange sky, fall colors on road leaving.
