Molson Lake Lodge Lake Trout report

I had the unusual opportunity to take advantage of someone’s slight misfortunes this past week. Tom Wallrich and relatively regular customer of mine gave me a call and mentioned that his partner had to back out of a fly-in fishing trip and the trip was already paid for and I was the lucky angler that Tom offered the trip up to. The trip was to be a 5 day expedition to Molson Lake Lodge in central Manitoba with the primary target of Lake Trout in shallow water with hopes of a good pre-spawn bite….Naturally I have never experiencing this before I felt blessed with the opportunity and leaped at the chance!

Tom and I drove to Winnipeg, Manitoba and arrived last Tuesday evening. With a early flight departure on Wednesday morning, driving up the night before naturally made sense. Wednesday morning came and we jumped aboard a twin turbo prop 20 passenger plane and enjoyed a quick 1-1/2 hour flight to Molson Lake Lodge and quickly awaiting there was our guide for the week Sam! We anxiously got unpacked and dressed for day on the water to await us. Within minutes of arriving at our first spot, we hook up almost immediately with a scrappy 6 pound Molson Lake lake trout that came out of 4 foot of water. Needless to say I was unaware that this would be the bite for the next 4 days of fishing. Pitching white jigs and plastics and hair jigs to shallow lakers had my 100% full attention and could hardly contain myself with a childish giggle on nearly every cast and a gorgeous 6-9# lake trout on the other end! This reminded me too much of smallie fishing….except they were on steroids.

My equipment packed for the trip was a couple 6’6″ St. Croix Avid medium light rods, a shimano Symetre 1500 reels wound with Power Pro and an assortment of white and pink plastics and hair jigs for pitching and stickbaits for trolling. These tenacious fish gave me and my equipment every angle of a workout. By days end my arms were sore without a doubt. Our best day consisted of 149 lakers between the hours of our guide trip of 8:30am and 4:30pm and that’s including an hour in a half of the one of the best “true” shore lunches I have ever tasted. Tom and I were hooking up on nearly every cast when we got in to the “spot” that our guide Sam put us into. This was the first time in a long time that I did not have to run the boat, take fish off or have the pressure of putting the customers on fish. It was a blessing without a doubt. Included in the mix of all these lakers were a few hungry pike taking their fair share of swings at our offerings. The biggest pike to the boat was a nice 38″ fish that drilled a 3/8th oz white hair jig at the boat. One of the unusual characteristics about the lake trout up there last week was the fact that the faster the jig moved the more attention it got. My 5/16th and 3/8th oz jigs unquestionably were the favorites of the lake trout as they would pass on the slower falling ¼ oz weight jigs.

Also one of the highlights of the trip was getting fed like kings up there. Coming back to the dock, the lodge had awaiting you a fine course of a dinner of prime rib, steak, turkey ,etc….each evening. The mornings were no different as you had fresh made to order eggs, sausage, hashbrowns, toast, etc….

This was my first time to a all inclusive lodge like this and I have to say, truly a trip of a lifetime!
Thanks again Tom!