North Arm Rainy Lake: 9/11-9/25

After too long it was more than awesome to return. This was also my first time doing it as a two week trip. Wish it had been three, the weather is still great.

Overall my buddy said this was one of the top three trips he’s ever had in 40+ years. Overall we had pretty good people weather and the fish were cooperating. Now on to the report.

Water temps: 65 on 9/11 and 62 two weeks later. This is different than normal, typically we’ll see a 5 degree drop in a 7 day trip.

Weather: Consistently in the upper 60s for highs. Most of the rain was overnight so we didn’t wear the rain gear too often. Managed a campfire every evening. While we had multiple cold fronts there was only one that really screwed us. Sunday night the 19th had 10 hours of thunderstorms then after sunrise the wind switched to the north for more rain and falling temps. Total down day, lots of reading in the tent.

Fishing: Rodney Dangerfield was a comedic genius and pike should get the same respect. So awesome was the pike fishing that’s really all I have to report. Never, ever, ever, have I had pike fishing like this. My partner and I kept score for pike over 10 pounds. He had 45 and I had 26. Multiple 17s took big fish of the trip. Needless to say we didn’t spend hardly any time on walleye or smallmouths.

Pattern: Weeds, big weed beds with diversity produced. Not all were equal, some held fish and many big girls while others were inexplicably slow.

Pics: All are on my partner’s phone. Not sure how I’ll get my hands on them but will post up when I do. After about the third day we stopped taking pics.

Quote of the trip: Before going my buddy had a fascination with adding a Whopper Plopper to his collection. Hemmed and hawed forever. Since pike typically don’t like topwaters I encouraged this to the point where I actually bought it for him at the Outdoorsman in the Falls. Low and behold he actually caught a a couple on it and all very nice.

On the last full day of fishing he has a big fish chase the whopper plopper down. Manages to keep his cool and wait for the fish to take it 10 feet from the boat. In the middle of the fight, “That’s how we do it in Plopperville!” 15 pounds at sunset

Favorite fish for me: It’s also one that got away. Shortly before the plopper story I had a very large pike bump but not hook up. Then come following. Went into a figure 8 just because why not even though pike always spook at the boat. Dang fish followed it around for 4 full figure 8’s before taking off.

Sounds like a great trip! will be in the MN side of Rainy late next week

Excellent Report. Sounds like you had a great trip. Its funny that you talk about the whopper popper and the Pike following at Boatside. One of my goals on our last Canada trip was to catch a Big pike on a topwater. My buddy said it was a waste of time. It only took me about 2 minutes with one to catch a 38″ fish. The only thing that stopped me from fishing it more was I ended up with a hook tearing into my palm. It was fun to watch the fish smash that topwater bait. He hit it and missed it on the prior cast. We also had several fish follow up lures to the boat and were able to get them follow the bait for a fair amount of time. had one leave under the boat and then hit my partners bait when he was pulling it out of the water.