As I laid in my tent this morning, I remembered today was my anniversary!! I can’t tell you how lucky I felt today. There was no other place I would rather be than here on Poohbah, and I am lucky enough to be married to my soul mate. I wished she was here with me but she decided this trip was more then she wanted to tackle. (We will do our annual fall trip to her favorite lake which is Crocodile off the Gunflint. It is another great fishing lake packed full of Walleyes.) Today was hot and sunny, and a gentle breeze out of the south west. We decided to head to the spot that was so good to us yesterday morning. Although the fishing was not as furious as the previous day, we managed to land 30 Walleye and a dozen bass.

No Northerns this morning, which did not break our hearts. Since we had not spent any time on the north end of the lake we decided to head up that way after lunch. We headed to a point off one of the islands and I positioned the boat in 15 feet of water and slowly trolled the point. In no time we both connected on Walleye. We ended up with another dozen Walleyes before the action slowed and we ventured to the next small island to the north. As we rounded the point, Jody snagged another nice Walleye. As he reeled in his fish, my rod doubles over and I set the hook and felt something big…..really big!!!! It was way too big to be a Walleye, and this was not an area that would hold Lake Trout, it had to be a Northern. I told Jody that as soon as he released his Walleye he was going to have to grab a paddle and position the canoe for me as I fought this huge fish. I could tell we were going to have to chase this fish around for awhile, and boat position was going to be a factor in me landing this fish.

I had very little hope I was going to come out on top in this battle. I had no leader, and 6 pound test would not be my line of choice at that moment. As I kept pressure on this fish, it made hard long runs of 50 to 75 yards. Jody watched the fish and moved the canoe where it needed to be. I made little progress in the next 15 minutes as the fish made run after run. After 20 minutes, I got my first look at the fish as it swam by the canoe. That thing was BIG!! I had landed 2 twenty pound Northerns in my life and this fish was much bigger. I told Jody it was at least a 25 pounder, maybe close to 30. The battle went on for another 15 minutes before the fish showed signs of tiring. He made one hard short run of 10 yards before he slid next to the canoe. I dropped my pole and quickly grabbed the monster with both hands and hoisted him over the side of the canoe.

Jody and I could not believe the size of that thing. His tail was sticking above the port side, and his head was above the starboard side with the massive mid section draped along the inside walls and bottom of the canoe. Jody and I both turned to dig out our cameras and in a split second the fish made one violent flop and was over the side of the canoe. I lunged to try to catch it but couldn’t get a hand on it. Jody and I just stared at each other in disbelief as to what just happened. We both started to laugh at our circumstance and said nobody was going to believe it! As we regrouped we looked up to see three Aluminum canoes with three bikini clad girls in each canoe. They were young college age kids that were camped on one of the islands. They said they enjoyed the show! I said I did too, although we were talking about two different things!!!

They waved goodbye and headed for their camp. After the Northern episode we decided to once again try to find the lost reef. Looking at the area from the north gave me a better perspective as to the general location of the reef . I kept my eye on the depth finder as we got close to the area. As we slowly traveled along in the 130 foot depths the reading on the depth finder began to change: 130, 125, 100, 70, 65, 50, 45,40,35,,30,20,10!!!! I had found it!!!!! The reef that was so good to me 20 years ago was directly under my canoe!!!! I quickly marked the spot on my GPS and we started to fish. We began catching fish right away. The shallow spots on the reef produced Bass and Northerns, and the deeper spots delivered Walleye after Walleye. The reef was about the size of a football field and the entire reef seemed to hold fish of one species or another. We had our 19th double of the trip. WOW!! We fished until about 5pm and estimated our fish count at 60 for the afternoon. (Have I said how much I LOVE THIS LAKE!!!!!!)

We headed in for dinner then finished the evening fishing the honey hole by camp. Again it produced fish in astonishing numbers. Jody and I called it a day at 9:30. As we sat in camp and reflected on the day we both agreed it was the best day of fishing we have ever had in 20 years of canoe tripping.