We slept in until 8am this morning. It was a cloudy day and it looked like rain was on the way. I stumbled into the screen house and fired up the MSR Reactor. In a minute, I had boiling water for coffee and oatmeal. I had been looking forward to this first cup of coffee for months. There is just something special about camp coffee in titaniuim mug. It is wonderful!! Jody exited his tent 20 minutes later. There was plenty of hot water for his morning tea. After a leisurely breakfast we spent the next hour organizing our fishing gear. We take this fishing thing very serious and it is no small feat to get poles and the canoe ready. It had been 20 years since I have fished this fantastic lake. At that time we did not even make it to this end of the lake. Most of the fishing was done on a mid lake reef that I stumbled upon in the huge main basin of the lake. I hoped to find this reef again, but my mind was a bit fuzzy as to its exact location. It was a Walleye factory and I’m sure it will be again if we were lucky enough to find it. As I surveyed the lake from camp I noticed a rock jutting out of the water 200 yards to the south. It was centered between the island we were camped on and another small island. This area looked fishy to me so this was our starting point on our first morning of fishing. As we pushed off I decided to slowly troll to the area and start with a 3/8 oz jig tipped with a 3 inch white twister tail. Jody chose to cast his #4 mepps as we were close to shore. Jody’s first cast landed close to the rock filled shore and was immediately smacked by a nice size bass. After a few acrobatic leaps Jody landed the energetic fish. After a fast release, Jody makes another cast to the same general spot. Wham!!!!! , his lure is met again by another bass. This was bigger than the first as this fish measured 17 inches. “WOW”, he said. “Two casts and two nice fish…I think I like this lake”. He then put his casting pole down and picked up his jigging rod. Time to get down to some serious Walleye fishing. As he dropped his jig and yellow twister to the bottom I turned the canoe toward the exposed rock that was 200 yards away.

As we began, I kept an eye on my depth finder and found the depth to be 30 feet and flat which made for some nice snag free trolling. I mentioned to Jody that I’d let him know when we started to shallow up so he could avoid those dreaded snags that we are so familiar with. Just as we started to get settled, my rod arched to the water’s edge. I thought, “Crap, not a snag out here!!!” I grabbed my pole that was resting on the gunnels and quickly realized it was a fish and not a snag. “Hmm….” I said, “Must be a stray Northern cruising around out here, and a good one at that.” The fight went on for a couple minutes before, to my surprise, a nice Lake Trout appeared. As soon as he saw me back to the depths he went! After a couple more minutes and a few powerful runs I was able to hoist the 27 inch fish into the canoe. A quick picture, and back to the lake he went. I mentioned to Jody, “Three fish in less than 5 minutes, I think we picked the right lake this year.” He agreed!! When we planned this trip I told Jody my goal was to catch at least one Laker, as I had never caught one in canoe country. I had caught many in Lake Athabaska, and a few Arctic lakes, but never in the boundary waters. It was great to get that goal out of the way so early in the trip. As we continued to troll Jody soon hooked into another fish. He said it felt like a Northern, and in a couple minutes we see he guessed correctly as a 33 inch northern was landed. Five minutes later my rod is met by a heavy strike, I set the hook and after a good fight a 30” laker was landed and released. We never did make it to the rock area that I intended to fish this morning! We worked the same area just off our campsite most of the morning and it produced fish after fish. We did not catch any more Lake Trout but caught Walleye, Bass, and Northerns almost nonstop! It was strange; we would catch a few walleye, then bass, and then a Northern, then Bass then Walleye. There was no consistency in what we caught and when.

Today all the fish were hanging out together. I had my grand slam done the first hour but Jody was still missing his Laker, so we decided to give this area a rest and headed a little further from camp around the next point. I positioned the canoe on the edge of a ledge that went from 20 to 60 feet. We dropped our jigs down to the bottom next to the ledge. Jody quickly hooked into a nice fish! He fought the strong fish for a few minutes before he landed the 26 inch Laker. “YES” Jody shouted…” My grand slam is completed!!!” At around 12:30 pm the wind began to kick up and we saw the rain coming across the lake from the south west. We quickly made it back to camp before the rain started. Just as we got comfortable in the screen house, the rain came down in buckets! We prepared lunch and discussed the great fishing we had just experienced as we watched the rain falling all around us. The rain subsided after an hour, so back to the lake we went. We decided to stay close to camp this afternoon as the weather looked like it could again turn ugly in a hurry. As we pushed off camp, we headed the opposite direction than this morning. About 40 yards directly off camp to the north east I spotted a reef coming into view on the depth finder. It was a narrow band of rock that was 50 yards long and surrounded on all sides by deep water. I watched the depth finder and tried to keep the canoe in the 14 to 20 feet range. It was not long before we hooked up with our first Walleye, a 19 “hard fighting fish. This area kept producing Walleye, after Walleye, after Walleye. We had our first and second double of the trip. All the fish were between 19 and 23 inches and were the hardest fighting Walleyes I remembered catching in a long time. These fish were mean!! We caught over 30 Walleye, 8 smallmouth, and 4 Northern.

The great thing about this spot is that it was less than 75 yards from our tent. At 4:30 the rain started to fall and the wind picked up fast. We decided to hurry back to camp. As we began our short paddle back, another canoe rounded the bend. It was a group of 2 canoes with 3 people in each canoe. They seem wet and tired, and were disappointed we are at the campsite. I asked if they would like a cup of hot coffee, and they were more than welcome to share our camp spot due to weather conditions. They declined our offer, and asked if we could direct them to where the Conmee portage was located. I pointed in the direction of the portage and they continued on their way. I hoped they decided not to tackle the portage that evening… they sure looked like they needed some rest! When we got back to camp, we both put on some dry clothes and retreated to the screen house. We spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening sipping hot coffee and Brandy as we watched the rain gently falling on the lake. A great end to a great first day!!!!!