Hey guys, this year I got the excellent opportunity to work with Chad Thompson of Pasha Lake Cabins near Jellicoe, Ontario. I’ll be doing several reports throughout the season from up there, and here is my first. We were up there from May 14th-19th, for reference.
The date, May 10th, 2014. The place, Minnesota. The special occasion? Just the state’s biggest holiday, Fishing Opener! It’s about as big of a deal as you can get here in the Gopher state, and everyone’s excited. However when people ask where I’m hitting for Opener, I have to say nowhere. I’m working, you see, I’m a sales associate at the Eden Prairie, Gander Mountain, in the fishing department. A job like that is great, except for small things. Small things like the fact that I’ve worked every Opener since I started with the company. But this time when I tell people that, and get those sympathetic looks, I tell them I’m not upset in the least. The reason for that? Four days from now, I’ll be spending a very long weekend fishing some of the best waters Ontario, Canada has to offer. You see I’ve got a trip booked with Pasha Lake Cabins, near Lake Nipigon, up in Ontario. And when you’ve got a trip like that set up, you can tend to forgive little things like Opener weekend.
Pasha Lake Cabins is a very well-laid out and furnished camp about three or four hours north of the Minnesota-Ontario border. The owner, Chad Thompson, has about a dozen cabins, as well as space for campers and tents, if you feel like roughing it a bit. The cabins are all well-furnished and comfortable; and the camp itself boasts a lodge, gazebo, fish cleaning house, and even a sauna! Some of the cabins have TVs, and Wi-Fi and long distance phone calls are available. I’ve stayed with many establishments in my roughly thirty trips north of the border, and Chad’s establishment could hold best any of them in accommodations and creature comforts. Chad himself is a excellent host and outfitter, willing to work with customers on what they want to do and what they want to catch. He’s extremely knowledgeable when it comes to the area’s fishing, something he deserves a lot of credit for, when the area hosts dozens, if not hundreds of fishable lakes!
As far as the fishing in general goes, you have about as many different opportunities up here (I use here, because what better way to write this than sitting in the lodge, listening to the loons talk excitedly outside?) as you could ask for. Want to go out and catch double digits, and even triple digits of walleyes? Chad’s got you covered. In fact, he’s got a secret spot so good, he basically guarantees you’ll get one hundred walleyes, or your money back! And I’ve talked to multiple different sources who say that isn’t a load of you know what! Want to catch twenty to thirty pound lake trout, and do it regularly? Lake Nipigon is about twenty minutes away, and boasts the best lake trout fishing this side of Great Slave Lake! Oh and while we’re discussing the largest lake fully located inside Ontario (and a full 12% larger than Lake of the Woods), do you know where the world record Brook Trout was caught? I’ll give you one guess. I’ll also give you one guess where on a good day, you can go and expect to catch MULTIPLE Brookies in the five to eight pound range. Speaking of monster fish, let’s not forget the apex predator of these waters, the Northern Pike. I would bet my honor as a fisherman that there are plenty of thirty to forty pounders in Nipigon, and I’m sure somewhere in there there swims a world record breaker. Now if you don’t want to bring your own boat, book a charter, or just aren’t a fan of a body of water larger enough to produce ten foot swells (although rarely), there are plenty of smaller bodies of water where the fishing is just as good, and you can stay out of the wind and the waves. In fact every day I’ve been up here I’ve learned at least a few new lake names, and they’re all gems in their own way.
Now I know what you’re saying, “Tyler, this all sure does sound great, but how was YOUR trip??” Very kind of you to ask! My father and I spent the day driving up to Canada expecting that the “Polar Vortex” had hit Canada just as hard as us back Stateside, but we were not expecting this.
Yikes! Now I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, when we showed up, Pasha Lake itself was mostly ice-locked, and most of our fishing destinations were chosen with the lack of hard water being the number one concern. As you can imagine, and as most of you probably found out during the MN Opener, the fish were about as unhappy with the situation as we were! The walleyes were looking at the photo period (daylight) and wanting to spawn, but with water temps mostly in the very low 40s, they had to wait it out in deep water. As most of you know, that combination makes for less than stellar fishing. But when you’re a true, blue fisherman, with lake water running through your veins, there’s only one thing you can do.
Go fishing!
Because remember folks, it’s Fishing, not Catching! And after all, don’t we all know that persistence can only be rewarded?
After we put our time on the water, we finally found and patterned the fish. They were holding out in the deepest parts of the lake, waiting for the shallow water to warm up so they could move in. The name of the game was slow and steady, with a plain jig and a minnow, or relatively subtle soft plastic doing the trick. They definitely weren’t active or aggressive, but when we slowed down our presentations, we began to put fish in the boat.
Well folks, this has been my first report from PLC, but it definitely won’t be my last! With so many different fishing opportunities to explore, I can’t imagine ever getting tired of coming up here. I (or you) could dedicate an entire trip to a few bodies of water, one species of fish, or one technique of fishing, and keep yourself occupied for years without doing the same thing twice. That right there is something special, and enough to keep me coming back. The excellent accommodations, customer service, and fishing don’t hurt either! My name is Tyler Flom, and if you have any questions about this excellent representation of what Ontario has to offer, please contact me via PM, or get ahold of Chad directly, at http://www.pashalake.com. And if you ever happen to be at Gander Mountain’s Eden Prairie location, look me up. After all, getting paid talk about fishing for eight hours a day really is a great gig, but only if you have someone to talk with! Thanks for reading, and good luck out on the water!
P.S. After speaking with Chad recently, it sounds like the fishing has gotten back to normal, and they’re slaying them up there right now. When I was up there we went into Jackson Lake and dropped off some motors for the boats. We spent a few hours trying for the fish, but they were definitely out deep, and I wasn’t familiar enough with the lake to find them. Plus the decent amount of frostbite on my toes from the watery trek in didn’t help either! However Chad said that a group that headed out there recently reported almost 100 walleyes in the boat in one day, so it looks like they finally turned on! I’ll hopefully be making a few trips back up there throughout this season, and having barely scratched the surface of what the area around Pasha Lake Cabins and Lake Nipigon has to offer, I for one can’t wait!