http://www.dunlopfishing.com/
Dunlops is a lodge about 3/4's the way up the province of Manitoba on the little Churchill river. Lake Waskaiowaka is a classic pike lake roughly 21 by 11 miles long with a few other rivers and smaller lakes to explore thrown in. We saw no more than half of it and fished some small percentage of it.
The wildlife was remarkable.
Pelicans this far north...who knew?
..and for the first time I saw a bald eagle's nest with chicks in it.
There were also some awful purdy things to look at.
The lake is noted for the tall sand dunes at the south end of the lake. As it was explained to me the lake was given it's native name after these bluffs. Wish I would of had time to get down that far and climb them, they are supposed to be remarkable. Above is a pic of the dunes on our way out.
On to fishing. The lodge has 8 boats and never has more then 16 guests at one time. Jerry and his wife run a tight ship but you couldn't ask for more considerate staff. There is nothing that Jerry wants more than for you to catch big fish.
The place has been in existence for many years and when Jerry bought the lodge it was abandoned. My wife commented that they put their money into the right things: first class boats, fine linen and decent beds...and the best cook one could imagine so far north.
The first days were hot for this lake. Ice was out early and it stayed relatively warm. The weather had been extreme according to Jerry. The previous year "ice out" was in the second week of June. On our hottest day water surface temps were up to 70 degrees in some places. Jerry had never seen the season so far advanced and a lot of cabbage beds were already tired. My lesson for this trip was catching large pike in summer conditions on wind swept shorelines.
These were hot lazy days.
This lake was loaded with pike, classic walleye structure could be dominated by pike. We did catch a few walleye.
What was unusual about this lake was that the action didn't cut out with the heat but the big girls showed little interest during this time. Only the odd trophy was caught by the 16 guests but few had problems catching fish.
Those first few days we were masters of 2 to 2and 1/2 foot pike. Nothing over 33 inches those first few days.
What was also unusual about this lake is that even when it was hot pike just nailed lures. No hesitancy whatsoever. Compared to other pike lakes there was less T-boning and more aggressive chasing down of lures. Initially I was fishing plugs with double trebles but it was just too time consuming to take such a plug out of a pikes mouth that it had swallowed. I never lost so many lures on any trip. This was partly due to fishing wind swept shoreline but several times I would be fishing and the next second my line would go limp. My theory is that the larger pike simply inhaled the lure and leader and cut off the line above the leader.
We tried it all those first few days...going to deep spots on the lake.
Switching up lures which got us Leslie's 24 incher.
...and fishing after supper.
We were catching fish...just no big ones.
Eventually the weather broke and a cold front moved in. Here we are outracing a thunderstorm.
After the cold front moving in we still couldn't get a trophy in the boat.
The hope with the cooler weather was that we would find a trophy shallower...nada.
What I haven't mentioned till now is that Leslie was sick when we arrived. She had an ear infection. I offered to fish with a guide but she wanted no part of sitting in the cabin all day. We were still usually one of the last boats back each evening. But when the cold front moved in she couldn't take the pounding of the larger waves when you went into the open lake.
I did go out alone a few times but eventually got to know the cook who went out twice with me. We got into some serious action quick. We went out twice when the weather was stable in the evening. Usually we didn't go out till after nine when the kitchen was clean. We still got one or two hours of fishing in. The first night we had a 40 and 37 inch pike.
On our last day we stayed off the main lake until late in the day. Others were going in for dinner. I drove the boat out to some choice spots. Here is Leslie's 37 inch fish. Back at the lodge I tried to talk a few of the other guests to come out predicting that we would get at least a 40 incher.
The night was magical. By the time we got out there another party had already scored some big fish. In under two hours we had a two 40's a 37 and lower 30's. At times it was chaos like when we had 32 and a 40 on at the same time. The blood on this pike is his own after a treble buried itself into his thumb.
This is later in the evening and you can see that he cleaned himself up somewhat. Even though we caught lots those two nights we missed some big fish too. Lovely way to end the trip.
Before you knew it was all over and it was time to go.
