MISSISICABI MAGIC. 2 DAYS=200+ WALLEYE. (17 pics) Report.
Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2005 1:43 pm
WHOA 
First off I was wrong about where I was going. I thought I was going to the Harricanaw River but as it turned out Missisicabi is it's own river further east in one of the least travelled places in Ontario. Weather was supposed to be great, and real hot, for 4 days. We left Moose Factory at high tide and made our way to the muddy saline ocean where we'd cross the southern expanse of the bay to the east shoreline towards Quebec.
Super Paul brought the compass and overshot the destination a little North. He enjoyed my GPS thereafter. Note the mud of the Bay.
When we got inside the mouth of the Missisicabi River after crossing the vast shallow sand flat, we found Moose Cree's established Goose Camp.
Abandoned for now, but inside each are a couple of rooms, a wood stove and some form of seating.
Paul and I took off up a little further. We stopped at a creek mouth to try some fishing. I took time to put some sunblock on and tie on a jighead. Paul took that same amount of time to boat 7 walleye
Then I got my first. We hadn't been there 10 minutes yet. 
First walleye of the trip.
Paul gets lunch faster than a MacDonald's drive thru
We take off from that spot and head up river, continuing to take advantage of high tide. As we troll jigs up the river we catch countless walleye, and stop now and again to cast at places where we got double header while trolling. When we stop for lunch Paul catches about a dozen or more while I take 10 minutes to heat up two bowls of chili, then we move up river having to get out once to haul the boat up through some shallow rapids. Dead fish lie everywhere in the water and weeds. The water is so hot this year and shallow. Same thing is happening on the Moose River now and MNR says it's the heat. Most of the dead fish are carp with a few pike thrown in. Anyways, we get to our camp site and set up by around 4 pm.
After supper it's back to the walleye. They're right there about 100 or more feet from our site. Here's a couple. The hot lures, 3" pumpkinseed curlytails and my olive, orange and red bucktail on 3/8 oz heads.
Lots of great fish came out thursday evening but the bite shut right down when the mosquitoes came out. Ohh well, walleye that only feed during sunny times
I guess. Paul and I finished the day having caught by our best guesses 50 or more walleye each.
Braided line was getting outfished 10 to 1. I stuck to mono using 10lb XT after Paul schooled me for a while when I was trying with braids. These walleye were insane. Leaping out of the water at times to grab your jig, and getting hooked 3 or 4 times and coming off then coming right back to get hooked again. I caught a bunch of fish when I accidentally let my jig fall in the water when I set my rod down to do something else. IT WAS SICKLY UNBELIEVABLE behaviour for walleye.
Next day we got back to it.
If there's one guy that knows weather, fishing, hunting and water it's this guy. The few times I've gone out with Paul he's astonished me. I have sooooo much to learn still. And Paul's eye.... man he spots everything before you do.
Hey, not all of them were good size, but actually only a handfull were caught this size.
Mid afternoon we went back to camp to get out of the sun. Turned out I was burning right through my thin white shirt. We took a swim and cleaned up. The water was like a hot-tub but strangely I learned that over the sand it was hot, but over clay it felt like 10-15F colder, and the same around big rocks. That must be how some fish survive the heat in this water that was only 4 feet deep at the max. Most of our walleye were taken out of light current areas 2-4 feet deep. Anyways, after cleaning a bunch of fish too, Paul says to me, "can you smell that?" I look up river and a haze is building from the east, smoke is in the air. As it turns out, 31 forest fires are burning between Kirkland lake and east coast James Bay, where we were. But, fires a burning we weren't going anywhere and after a little of this we headed out for the evening bite.
Shore lunch...errr... supper. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Turns out on the water the bigger fish were out to play. Paul was having some difficulty getting these fish. We hadn't lost a lure to a fish or a snag at this point and that was after about 10 hours of fishing total. Now we were giving them up. But it was because we changing tactics, fishing our lures across and downstream instead of mainly up. It worked. The addition of worms to my bucktails was increasing the numbers too. I only fished bucks, and Paul stuck to the plastics, we stayed pretty even. That was until I caught a bullet 27 incher and a 25.5 5 minutes after it.
BEEEEEE UUUUUUU TO THE TTTTTTTT's. BOOO YAH. Happy guy I was.
Paul and I finished friday when the mosquitoes came back out at sunset. Orange bucks in the sun, and black bucks at sunset reined supreme. Paul finished the day a dismal 30+ walleye and myself, after a slower start but fast and furious evening, caught 40 or more. It got really annoying because these walleye were tough fighters. It was like they were walleye on steroids but yet their sh!t actually smelt sweeter than most other walleyes I've ever caught. I actually enjoyed the aroma of their slime on my hands.
Missisicabi sunset.
Saturday morning I was up at 4:45. We packed up camp and got on the river at 6am. When we moved down river about 5km's or so we found no tide was in. For the next 5km or so we paddled, poled or briefly ran shallow drive through 6 inches to a foot of water. It was slooooow and tedious, but by 8:20 we hit that first creek we stopped at on our way up river 3 days earlier. With the tide completely out I figured the fish wouldn't be sitting in 1 to 3 feet of water. MAN WAS I WRONG.
I took a second to put some sunscreen on my face and neck again
tie on a black bucktail and snap a worm. Paul had already caught 6 or 7 fish. Just AMAZINGLY, after 13 minutes of fishing in water 2 to 3 feet deep I lost count at around 17 (10 for Paul and 7 for me I thought). That was just in 13 minutes of fishing. We stayed for 1 hour and 15 minutes to the minute and Paul and I would be lowballing it at 25 walleye each. CAN ANYONE EVEN BELEIVE THAT. Am I wasting my time with this post. This is without a word of a lie. The fishing was this amazing. This true. It died and went to heaven a thousand times on this trip. This place called Missisicabl is the real thing, a true walleye NIRVANA.
One more for the road....
So at the end of our trip, exhausted, dehydrated, sunburnt and smelly, chased by fire, paddled out and with a long ride across James Bay home we revelled in the fact that Paul and I just caught 220+ walleye.
Truly brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it now
First off I was wrong about where I was going. I thought I was going to the Harricanaw River but as it turned out Missisicabi is it's own river further east in one of the least travelled places in Ontario. Weather was supposed to be great, and real hot, for 4 days. We left Moose Factory at high tide and made our way to the muddy saline ocean where we'd cross the southern expanse of the bay to the east shoreline towards Quebec.
Super Paul brought the compass and overshot the destination a little North. He enjoyed my GPS thereafter. Note the mud of the Bay.
When we got inside the mouth of the Missisicabi River after crossing the vast shallow sand flat, we found Moose Cree's established Goose Camp.
Abandoned for now, but inside each are a couple of rooms, a wood stove and some form of seating.
Paul and I took off up a little further. We stopped at a creek mouth to try some fishing. I took time to put some sunblock on and tie on a jighead. Paul took that same amount of time to boat 7 walleye
Then I got my first. We hadn't been there 10 minutes yet. First walleye of the trip.
Paul gets lunch faster than a MacDonald's drive thru
We take off from that spot and head up river, continuing to take advantage of high tide. As we troll jigs up the river we catch countless walleye, and stop now and again to cast at places where we got double header while trolling. When we stop for lunch Paul catches about a dozen or more while I take 10 minutes to heat up two bowls of chili, then we move up river having to get out once to haul the boat up through some shallow rapids. Dead fish lie everywhere in the water and weeds. The water is so hot this year and shallow. Same thing is happening on the Moose River now and MNR says it's the heat. Most of the dead fish are carp with a few pike thrown in. Anyways, we get to our camp site and set up by around 4 pm.
After supper it's back to the walleye. They're right there about 100 or more feet from our site. Here's a couple. The hot lures, 3" pumpkinseed curlytails and my olive, orange and red bucktail on 3/8 oz heads.
Lots of great fish came out thursday evening but the bite shut right down when the mosquitoes came out. Ohh well, walleye that only feed during sunny times
I guess. Paul and I finished the day having caught by our best guesses 50 or more walleye each. Braided line was getting outfished 10 to 1. I stuck to mono using 10lb XT after Paul schooled me for a while when I was trying with braids. These walleye were insane. Leaping out of the water at times to grab your jig, and getting hooked 3 or 4 times and coming off then coming right back to get hooked again. I caught a bunch of fish when I accidentally let my jig fall in the water when I set my rod down to do something else. IT WAS SICKLY UNBELIEVABLE behaviour for walleye.
Next day we got back to it.
If there's one guy that knows weather, fishing, hunting and water it's this guy. The few times I've gone out with Paul he's astonished me. I have sooooo much to learn still. And Paul's eye.... man he spots everything before you do.
Hey, not all of them were good size, but actually only a handfull were caught this size.
Mid afternoon we went back to camp to get out of the sun. Turned out I was burning right through my thin white shirt. We took a swim and cleaned up. The water was like a hot-tub but strangely I learned that over the sand it was hot, but over clay it felt like 10-15F colder, and the same around big rocks. That must be how some fish survive the heat in this water that was only 4 feet deep at the max. Most of our walleye were taken out of light current areas 2-4 feet deep. Anyways, after cleaning a bunch of fish too, Paul says to me, "can you smell that?" I look up river and a haze is building from the east, smoke is in the air. As it turns out, 31 forest fires are burning between Kirkland lake and east coast James Bay, where we were. But, fires a burning we weren't going anywhere and after a little of this we headed out for the evening bite.
Shore lunch...errr... supper. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Turns out on the water the bigger fish were out to play. Paul was having some difficulty getting these fish. We hadn't lost a lure to a fish or a snag at this point and that was after about 10 hours of fishing total. Now we were giving them up. But it was because we changing tactics, fishing our lures across and downstream instead of mainly up. It worked. The addition of worms to my bucktails was increasing the numbers too. I only fished bucks, and Paul stuck to the plastics, we stayed pretty even. That was until I caught a bullet 27 incher and a 25.5 5 minutes after it.
BEEEEEE UUUUUUU TO THE TTTTTTTT's. BOOO YAH. Happy guy I was.
Paul and I finished friday when the mosquitoes came back out at sunset. Orange bucks in the sun, and black bucks at sunset reined supreme. Paul finished the day a dismal 30+ walleye and myself, after a slower start but fast and furious evening, caught 40 or more.
It got really annoying because these walleye were tough fighters. It was like they were walleye on steroids but yet their sh!t actually smelt sweeter than most other walleyes I've ever caught. I actually enjoyed the aroma of their slime on my hands.Missisicabi sunset.
Saturday morning I was up at 4:45. We packed up camp and got on the river at 6am. When we moved down river about 5km's or so we found no tide was in. For the next 5km or so we paddled, poled or briefly ran shallow drive through 6 inches to a foot of water. It was slooooow and tedious, but by 8:20 we hit that first creek we stopped at on our way up river 3 days earlier. With the tide completely out I figured the fish wouldn't be sitting in 1 to 3 feet of water. MAN WAS I WRONG.
I took a second to put some sunscreen on my face and neck again
tie on a black bucktail and snap a worm. Paul had already caught 6 or 7 fish. Just AMAZINGLY, after 13 minutes of fishing in water 2 to 3 feet deep I lost count at around 17 (10 for Paul and 7 for me I thought). That was just in 13 minutes of fishing. We stayed for 1 hour and 15 minutes to the minute and Paul and I would be lowballing it at 25 walleye each. CAN ANYONE EVEN BELEIVE THAT. Am I wasting my time with this post. This is without a word of a lie. The fishing was this amazing. This true. It died and went to heaven a thousand times on this trip. This place called Missisicabl is the real thing, a true walleye NIRVANA.One more for the road....
So at the end of our trip, exhausted, dehydrated, sunburnt and smelly, chased by fire, paddled out and with a long ride across James Bay home we revelled in the fact that Paul and I just caught 220+ walleye.
Truly brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it now
