June 2010</center>
For years now my Dad and I have been talking about taking a fishing trip together to somewhere remote, somewhere you have to go to experience nature, catch lots of fish, and catch big fish. A place where a single day of fishing is simply out of the question, you need a week or more to explore the many facets of the body of water, float in the boat, have some great laughs, and of course share in some shore lunch.
Well this year was the year for it to happen. I received a phone call from Dad at the end of 2009 who informed me of his plans to head up to Sioux Lookout and fish Lac Seul, and that he wanted my brother and I to join him. How could we say no? Why would we say no? "Let's do it" I said!
For the first few months of 2010, we prepared ourselves for the great trip. Now, I can't really say there was a lot of preparation to do, you see my Dad's cousin Tom has a son who used to live in Sioux Lookout. His name is Brad, and seemed to have all the answers we were looking for.....from where we should stay, to what bodies of water we would be going to and what species of fish we'd target. It was all laid out for us, and I was OK with that. All we needed to do was get out the credit card and secure the arrangements. Thanks Brad for taking care of everything. Now onto the adventure.......
June 10, 2010
The plan was to get up bright and early in the morning and head out. We had everything laid out and ready to be packed. I checked and double checked the gear, made sure the Princecraft was ready for the long haul, and that Dad and Tom were well rested. They had driven from Cape Breton, NS to Ottawa, 3 days prior to our departure for North Western Ontario and spent a few days at my place. They didn't say anything, but I could tell that this 3 days were the longest 3 days ever for them, just waiting to pull out while I finished working prior to my vacation.
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June 11, 2010
Finally after much anticipation, 4:00am came on Friday and before the alarm clock even went off, my internal clock called out to me while sleeping saying...."Wake up Bobber....it's time to get on the road!" Surprisingly I was wide awake and ready for the long journey, most likely due to excitement and anticipation of what the next week was to bring.
<img align="left" width="300" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 1.JPG">Off we started to Sioux Lookout. We decided we'd take the scenic route up along side Lake Superior. This route is a little more hilly than highway 11, but the views were breathtaking. With our eyes on the road and into the bush, we saw Deer, Moose, Bears, Foxes, Eagles, and other little critters running about or munching down in the fields. After a full day of driving, we decided to bunk down for the night, so stopped in a little town and slid into a cozy little Motel for a few hours of sleep until morning. Now when I say little town, I mean little town. Nothing seemed to be open and the choices of where to grab some quick dinner before bed was very far between. Even the A&W closed at 8:00, but we did manage to find one....and only one....place that was open and had a great snack. Even the locals laughed at us when we asked what was open to have a snack at. Small town for sure.
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Our week long Lac Seul guide, Brad, now lives in Edmonton. His plan was very similar to ours...wake up bright and early and begin the long journey, with his bud Kevin, meeting in the middle of Ottawa and Edmonton, at a place 4 hours North West of Thunder Bay called Moosehorn Lodge. I even love the name of that place, and what a great place it was indeed. The accomodations were fantastic, the hospitality was second to none, and the location was super. The main lodge featured a nice little shop full of tackle and clothing, a dining room if you didn't want to cook, and a very large mount of Linda's record catch and release Muskie on the wall. I had a look at the photo on the mount and her face and smile tells it all. What a beautiful fish! Down at the end of the dock there was the biggest house boat I've ever seen, and someone even told me that you can rent that out for accomodations if you'd like to. I'm not sure how true that is, but none the less it was simply magnificent.
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Moosehorne Lodge is actually located on Pelican Lake, which connects to a number of different bodies of water, including Lac Seul. It was a perfect spot to check out all the water around us and still be able to get back before dark.
So with the West meeting the East in North Western Ontario, our week long fishing adventure began. For the most part, Dad and I followed Brad around as he took us to various spots he'd frequented when he lived there and still had the tracks and marks on his GPS. Oh yeah...in case I didn't mention it, if you ever go there, make sure you have a GPS, mark your homebase and relevant waypoints, or bring a very very good map. This is a place you can easily get lost on, driving hours to get to that one honey hole that holds lots and lots of eyes, but well worth the boat ride.
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We started our adventure in Pelican Lake, which is the lake where Moosehorn Lodge is located on, and not too far from the lodge. We did manage a few small walleye, but nothing as large or plentiful as I expected, but then this was only the first day, and we only fished for half of it. By the time we got ourselves unpacked, settled into the cottage, and the boats launched, it was approaching 3:00 in the afternoon, and we were still fatigued from our drive....but that couldn't stop us from heading out for some evening action. After all.....we were in North Western Ontario, fishing for Walleye and giant Pike.....could you wait?!
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<img width="300" align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 2.JPG">The next day we decided to head to a few other places on Pelican Lake, and then make our way into Minnataki Lake, ajoining to Pelican through some pretty shallow rapids. These were crazy! You had to stay way to the right, and while going through them...weaving in and out following the shoreline, I thought for sure I was going to end up on the shore, which was about a foot away from the side of the boat. Whew....made it!
Minnitaki Lake is larger than Pelican Lake, but not near as large as Lac Seul. After fishing a few spots with the jig and minnow, Dad and I decided we'd give tolling a while....typical Quinte style. With downriggers, planer boards, and Reef Runners, we setup to troll around a hump that we found right in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't long before one of the rods started to dance, and we worked the Rhinos to get the fish in. Dad, being the trolling trout bum he is, really enjoyed this type of fishing and we hooked into Walleye after Walleye on the long lines. Using the larger profile baits attracted the larger walleye and we were on a pattern that was working for us.
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<img align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... G">Another experience, which I have to say I have never done before, and was a real treat was "shore lunch". Each morning we set out with a single goal in mind at first.......catch lunch! Once we secured lunch, we'd then start experimenting more to see if we could find spots that had produced in other places and just playing around with different techniques. Some worked.....while others.....not so much. Now that's what fishing is all about. We picked a time when the weather was clear on most days, found a nice spot on a beach somewhere, and proceeded to execute the lunchtime drill. I have to tell you, we got the system down pretty good after a while. Now when I say "we", I really mean Brad and Kevin, as they had done this before and new exactly what had to be done. Tommy, Dad, and I would collect wood and build the fire, while Brad filleted the fish and Kevin prepared the beans and potatoes. The end result was truly a work of art, that was good enough to eat.....and eat we did, lazing on the beach, shooting the poop, laughing, telling stories, and taking about where we were going next. It's a little hard for me to explain the experience, but you know how a hot dog just tastes better at the stadium.....well it was very similar to that...only with fish, beans, and spuds. What an experience and I highly recommend it for anyone who has never done a shore lunch before. Just one caution.....if you heat the oil in the cast iron frying pan too much, there is a chance that the flames will jump into the frying pan and then you'll have a littlel problem. Don't worry, there were no fishermen harmed in the taking of this photo. Luckily we had a spare frying pan and oil with us.
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On our 3rd day, we decided we'd make the trek to the "Mightly Lac Seul". Now if you think the map shows the real size of Lac Seul....you are very wrong. In print, Lac Seul is 4 large pages of map. When we were on Lac Seul, 2 of the 5 days we fished, we only covered about 1/3 of one of the maps, and we boated about 1 1/2 hours to get to where we did. The size of this body of water, and even the bodies of water around us, was simply overwhelming, and you have to be there to really appreciate the vast country side that surrounds it.
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Thousands of islands, granite everywhere, evidence of great forest fires that at one time devestated the peaks and valleys, and the new growth that has spawned in the years after the fire.
<img width="300" align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 5.JPG">Now I was told that the water levels of Lac Seul were down about 4 feet. I talked earlier about the chutes to get to Minnitaki, well the water was down so much that we actually had to Portage from Minnitaki to Lac Seul. <img width="300" align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... PG">That's right.....I said "portage"! I don't know about you, but I was pretty sure I wasn't about to pick up the 17 foot Princecraft and 90HP Merc, throw it on my shoulders, and carry it over the land to the other side.
Turns out the rapids between Minnitaki and Lac Seul were way too low to drive the boat through, so on a little shore there was this guy, I think employed by another lodge on the Lac Seul side, who actually backed up a trailer, loaded your boat on, drove you about 200 yards over the hill to the other side of the rapids, and then backed you in again. You didn't even have to get out of the boat. Now I can't say I was really impressed with the trailer he was using, or lack of safety gear and properly functioning equipment, but a nice guy to say the least. Up the hill we went, down the other side, and launched into Lac Seul.<center>
<img width="250" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... .JPG"><img width="250" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... .JPG"><img width="250" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... "></center>
<img width="300" align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... .JPG"><img width="300" align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 10_180.JPG"> This is where we got the majority of the larger size walleye. I'd have to say that 90% of the fish we got on Lac Seul were in the slot, which was between 18 and 21 inches, and were not allowed to be kept. Nice to see actually that the fishery is alive and well up there and the regulations seem to be doing their part for the resource. Another interesting regulation there was that you were not allowed to have "live fish" in the boat, other than bait. This meant that if you wanted to keep a fish, you could not simply put it in the livewell for later, you actually had to kill the fish and put it on ice, otherwise risk getting charged with a fine should the MNR make its way to your boat. I didn't understand the reasoning behind this until later on when we had our limit for lunch, caught a bigger one, and was tempted to keep it instead of the smaller ones, only realizing that we couldn't because we already had our limit...so had to return the larger fish to the water to swim another day. Interesting technique indeed, and one that is probably meant for those bodies of water that produce a lot of fish and shore lunch is a popular practise. I get it now....ingenious really.
While on Lac Seul, after about 90 minutes of driving, with 3 intermissions to check out a few spots, we finally arrive at the place where Brad had caught hundreds of fish in the past. Well I can't say we caught hundreds, but we did manage to catch a lot, only to find out that a few of the spots he said he caught hundreds, he'd actually never been to before....in all the 8 years he lived there, and these were the spots that produced the most.
<img width="300" align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... .JPG"><img width="300" align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 86.JPG">So after a full day of fishing on Lac Seul, cruising the waterways, stopping to fish, having some shore lunch, it was time to get back to the portage before the guy went home. We made it back to Moosehorn Lodge, cooked up some dinner, debriefed on the day, and enjoyed some great company and a couple cocktails. It was then when we met another collegue of Brad's who lives in Thunder Bay and came to the lodge with his wife Gail. Stewart had worked with Brad and Kevin in the past when they lived at Sioux Lookout, and continues to work with them today. I have to tell you that these 2 people were an absolute pleasure to meet. Stewart with his stories and blunt humour, and Gail with her hospitality and pleasantness to everyone she'd just met. 2 very real and very nice people to know. One evening we arrived home and Gail had spent the day making appetizers for the boys, and stocking the fridge with a few beverages. Gail.....they were delicious, muchly appreciated, and that salad was fantastic.
Thank you so very much and I hope I have the pleasure of meeting you again. <img align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 22.JPG">On the fourth day, Stewart had hired a guide to take him, Brad, and Kevin out on a little side excursion, collegue to collegue, to collegue. That left Dad, myself, and Tommy on our own for the day....to try and figure things out on these vast bodies of water. We did pretty good really, finding spots of similar structure, using different techniques, and then we decided to try and get some monster Pike. Now we've been fishing walleye for the most part, and we did manage to see some nice Northerns. In fact, on several occasions we'd be reeling in Walleye, only to witness a Northern Pike hit the Eye on the way to the boat, pull off a few yards of line, and then let it go. The first one scared the crap out of Dad, and a couple others that Tommy had hooked around good walleye spots were lost at the side of the boat due to rather small net that Brad had in his boat. Good lesson when fishing for 40+inch Northern Pike.
We caught quite a few smaller Pike, but not the big monsters we were looking for.
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We fished for the morning and then came back in to the lodge for lunch. As we were heading out again, a guide was on the dock where I had the boat tied up. He said to me...."Hey, are you guys Fish-Hawkers?" I said why yes we are, and introduced myself. Ben Beattie has been guiding out of Moosehorn for a few years and is a Multispecies Fishing Guide and Freelance Outdoors Writer, with his most recent article published in Bob Izumi's Real Fishing magazine. <img width="400" align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... jpg">Turns out he frequents Fish-Hawk on a regular basis to see what's happening in Eastern Ontario, and it was truly a pleasure to meet him. He put us on some locations to try out for big Northerns, as the sheer size of the bodies of water made it difficult to find where the best weeds were. From that day forward he made it a point to come and say hello and we got to chatting out stuff. Really nice guy and if you ever head up that way and are interested in a guide, give him a call. I'm sure he'll set you up.
After speaking with Ben, we headed to the first spot he mentioned, which was just around the corner from the Lodge. He told us to go into this bay as far as we could and start casting in there. As we headed into the bay, we cast all the way in and made it as far as a beaver dam in progress, with what looked to be nice water on the other side. Now there was still water over the dam in progress, but it was clearly too shallow to drive over. Now I was pretty sure Ben had said to go as far as we could, and it looked really nice on the other side, so I decided....we can get over that! I just might have been my imagination though, looking at the deeper and weedier water on the other side, but in any case, I took a couple of tries with the trolling motor only to get stuck 1/3 of the length of the boat, so I decided to use the main. Sparked it up and took a good run at it, with the plan of shutting it down and simply coasting over it to the other side. That plan worked, only that we didn't make it to the other side, we made it about half way the length of the boat, to the point where it was almost teetering on the dam.
Now what do we do? Perhaps if we rocked the boat from back to front we could shimmy it over. With Tommy in the front, Dad in the back, and me in the middle, we started to rock the boat up and down, up and down. We didn't do that long when all of sudden we hear "SPLASH". Turns out Tommy's foot had slipped from the gunnel and he was hanging on....one leg in the water, one leg in the boat, and his entire upper body supported by his arms holding onto the trolling motor. That lasted about 2 seconds before he was imersed up to his armpits in water. After we realized he was ok, both Dad and I burst out laughing....followed shortly after by Tommy himself who at this point was yelling "I'm OK, so while I'm down here I might as well just pull over this thing." So he did, got back into the boat, emptied his pockets, laid out his wallet and stuff to dry, and we continued fishing. The worst thing about it, is that we were laughing so much, I'd forgotten to get the camera out and snap a few pics.....but I'm sure you can put your imagination to work and visualize the insanity of 3 grown men laughing their butts off as we tried to dry out money and paper from the soaked wallet. Getting back over was easy after that, with only one fish being caught in there, and nothing huge. Back to the lodge for a change of clothes we went, and continued our Pike hunt afterwards, catching lots of rockets, a few good ones, but not the elusive 40+ inchers we were after. That night when the guys got home, we debriefed again, had some dinner, and Dad and Tommy went off to check out "downtown Sioux Lookout." Well, I'm here, it's nice out, I may as well head over to Frog Rapids and see if I can catch any fish, so off I went, all alone with my headlamp, bug jacket, and fishing pole with a 4" Rapala. So here I am, pitch dark, tunes cranked in the Princecraft, headlamp on, covered in these white flying things, casting all around the fast moving water and pulling in fish after fish after fish. What a blast that night was! In about 90 minutes I must have caught over 4 dozen walleye, some of them small, many of them in the slot, and a couple over 21 inches. I was giggling to myself, and sometimes even out loud, like a little kid finding pieces of candy, and mom and dad not knowing you had them.
What en evening that was. <img align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 4.JPG">The fifth day had Dad and I really searching now for the larger Northern Pike. We remembered the types of conditions were we saw largers ones and continued to try and repeat the patterns. We talked to Linda the day before to try and get a handle on what we should be looking for, and she pointed us into the direction of some spots where she had been successful. Once again, we caught several nice size Northerns of many different sizes, most of them coming from along the shoreline in shallow weeds. We tried small baits, fast baits, slow baits, meduium baits and large bucktails, but could only get hooked up to smaller fish. Seeing as how the shallows were not working too well, we decided to try deeper water in about 10 feet, close to the weedy areas in the mouths of small bays and looked for rock. We found a spot that looked good and continued throwing and throwing until our arms were about to fall off.
Finally, while throwing a depth raider in 10 feet of water, thinking bigger fish need bigger profile baits, this beautiful 42" Northern Pike slammed my bait and the battle was on.
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What a battle it was, with the fishing taking drag on several occasions. My knees where knocking and my adreneline pumped. We landed the fish, took some pics, and release her back into the lake. High fives all around.
Our final day brought us back to Lac Seul once again, over the portage, and through the winding water ways, back to some spots that were successful the last time were were there. Fishing one spot, the fish had stopped biting, so dad and I decided to do a little exploring. <img width="300" align="left" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... 10_203.JPG"> We saw an island in the distance that looked very similar to where we had success before, so we told Brad we're just heading over there and to meet us when they finished in their spot. Off we headed at 30mph in 45ft of water. Now remember I told you the water levels were down about 4 feet. Well nothing was marked on the GPS, map, or buoy on the water, but that 45ft came up real quick to 9ft, I backed off, then 3 ft as I coasted and worked the motor up, and then all of sudden we're in 1 foot with the canadian shield just below us. In all but about 2 seconds we hear "bang bang" from the back of the boat.....and I knew we had hit.
As we tried to figure out what had happened, like it wasn't obvious, I really didn't want to see if I still had a prop....let alone a skeg, so in typical fisherman style, we said.....hey, this looks like a good place to fish....so we dropped the anchor and just slayed 'em. Fish after fish we pulled in until Brad joined us, while we're waving him off the rock. Turns out he actually had GPS tracks right over that spot. I guess there was more water there when he did go over it. The trechery of unknown waters, but the motor started up, with a little wobble, and we headed back to the portage. I didn't even want to look to see what the damage was until I get the boat out of the water.
On the way back to the Portage we decided to stop in a few good bays where we thought there may be some larger Northerns. I put on a Hog Head Lures Tail Bait, in 4 ft of stained water that had stumps all around, threw out a few casts, and BANG....I was doing battle once again. Another 42" Northern Pike was calling my name. Not as thick as the last one, but a good fight none the less.
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Well the day has now come to an end, and what a trip it was. We headed back to the portage, again before the guy left, and I reluctantly decided to take a look at the prop. Miraculously the skeg wasn't damaged at all, but the prop took a couple of good dings on 2 of the lobes. Could have been much worst, but better to happen on the last day than the first day.
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All in all, definately a trip to remember, with lots of memories and I'm sure I'll be doing it again. The only disappointment of the trip was the fact that my brother could not make it, due to some personal reasons that that prevented him from travelling long distances. Don't worry bro, we'll do it again and this time you'll be there with us.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Brad and Kevin for the excellent guiding services and shore lunches, Tommy and Stewart for all the laughs, Gail for the wonderful appetizers and company, my Dad for putting up with me in the boat for over a week, and of course the staff of Moosehorn Lodge.
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I didn't meet everyone, but Linda and Nicole showed us extreme hospitality, Ben helped us find some spots and was great to talk to, and the person who I would vote as the most dedicated and hard working member that I saw the whole time, but didn't even get a photo of her since she was always on the go.....Sonny. This girl worked the docks, cleaned the boats, fueled them up, cleaned cottages, distributed the minnows, and I"m sure did a lot more during the day. She just didn't stop, and has my vote for hardest working staff member of Moosehorn Lodge! Kudos to you and thanks for everything. This was truly a trip of a lifetime, and one that I will remember for years to come.
The trip was finally over and we headed back to Ottawa, tired, excited, anxious to get back home, and disappointed we were leaving all at the same time. This time we took highway 11 all the way back, through several small towns and saw some interesting sites along the way.
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Good time for a little nap after the Great Northern Fishing Adventure while on our long 2 day drive home.
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<a target="_blank" href="http://www.canadafish.com"><img width="300" align="right" src="http://www.fish-hawk.net/photogallery/a ... PG"></a>If you or anyone that you know would like to experience the adventure of a North Western fishing trip and need a place to stay, I would highly recommend <a target="_blank" href="http://www.canadafish.com"><b>Moosehorn Lodge</b></a> be the first establishment you give a phone call to. They treated us like royalty, have an excellent setup in place, have dedicated staff to cater to your needs, and as for the fishing......well I hope the story tells it best.
Until the next adventure, Bobber out!
