Rainy 7/6-7/11

A third report from last week/weekend.
We camped on the far east end at the Logging Camp site, using the truck portage over kettle falls from Namakan.
Nice site with the newer dock, much shorter to haul gear now than before from the old beach landing.
No fishing the first day as I had a main engine issue come up.
Went out Wednesday morning for 2 hours and graphed/ran a bunch of reefs and shoreline points in the area. And mostly came up really empty. Couple small’s and thats it. Both areas around cans 38 and 39 were pretty much devoid of fish?
Went back out with the wife and son about noon and got a couple 20″ overs, and a couple unders on a small reef near the border.
Dropped the wife off at camp at 2 and the son and I ran west to look for spots for the evening. Stopped at a mid-lake island and graphed the side where we’ve had good results in the past and nothing. Idled around the island and got in too close on the other side and the graph lit up. It was game on in only 10-16′ of water. We caught fish for 3 hours straight in a 50 yard area. Most were overs from 18.25 up to 22, I think we landed a dozen. Also got enough slots from 14-17.5 for a big fish fry. And we lost/missed a good amount of fish. High sun, middle of the day and 76 degree water, never would have thought that shallow. All fish were on lindy/leechs.
Thursday we went back and found 2 boats on the spot, including a guide spotlocked on it. Oh well, we had our fun. Hit a few other spots with a mixed bag of fish which all went back and headed to Kettle Falls hotel for rest of the afternoon. After dinner we went casting for pike/smallies near camp and my son got a beautiful 18.25 smallie on a flicker shad.
Friday we did find the island empty again and found the fish a little deeper in 20-24 and caught 8 more from 14-20.5
No fishing saturday as son water skied and then we hit Kettle Falls again for lunch.
Did have 2 otters around camp all week which was pretty cool, and had a pretty big snapping turtle visit camp on saturday. It swam right up to the rock at camp and sat there. My son fed it a whole hot dog in pieces off the rock. My guess is he frequents it alot looking for fish scraps as he wasnt in the least bit afraid of all of us.
Good trip and weather, could have used “a little” more wind at times. Lindy and leech’s took the majority of our fish.
Water temps were 75-77 on the main lake and 78 in our little bay when we left Sunday.
We’ll be back up on Namakan for a week at the end of the month.

Sounds like a great trip! Thanks for sharing.

Great report, I will be up there from 7/24 to 7/31 and will post a report when I get back too.

Great report and sounds like an awesome trip! How does the truck portage work? You launch on Namakan and then use the Kettle Falls lift?

BigWerm wrote:

Great report and sounds like an awesome trip! How does the truck portage work? You launch on Namakan and then use the Kettle Falls lift?

It’s a long trailer with a big sling. You drive on and they pull the boat across with a pick-up and drop you in the other side. Pretty slick, you don’t even get out of your boat.

Great report xplorer, sounds like a good trip. Let us know how you do on Namakan.

BigWerm wrote:

Great report and sounds like an awesome trip! How does the truck portage work? You launch on Namakan and then use the Kettle Falls lift?

We launch at Ash River and its 12 miles to Kettle Falls. I radio the Hotel on vhf channel 12 when we get close that I need a lift from Namakan to Rainy and they send the truck/trailer over. Load us on, and we ride about 5 minutes to the Rainy side where they dump you in. And just reverse on the way back.
Its $25 each way for the portage. Its kinda cool on the GPS when your tracks show you’ve gone overland

Xplorer,
I don’t have a radio; is there a phone number or do I just yell loud when I get there?

Ron,
If you’ve got service, its 218-240-1724 to reach the Hotel front desk. The only service I get at the far east end is Canadian towers, which luckily I can use on my plan. On the Namakan side, there is a small general store right at the landing that someone is usually at and they can call the tow. On the Rainy side you’d have to yell really loud
Or you could dock the boat and walk up to the hotel, its about 5 minutes from the dock.

Thanks. I’ll be at the Catamaran campsite mid-August and might do a day trip across the portage just for grins.

Be very careful going into the little, no tiny, spot where the dock is at Catamaran. There are a couple of huge boulders out front of it. We stopped last year there last year to hook up a tube to pull the kids back to camp from Kettle Falls and I bumped those rocks both going in and backing out even with my wife looking out for them.
I’ll be up on Namakan at Wolf Pack East starting on Saturday for a week. I’ll try to take a peek and see how they look this year.
I’ll also be up on Namakan August 18-22 on a guys trip. If your gonna be up over that time let me know and I could swing by and compare notes and show you some spots on Rainy’s east end that we fish that time of year. We will be at McManus island.