Hello everyone,

Planning a 10 day trip from July 31-Aug 9. Putting in at Stanton Bay. Looking to head down Bisk, Beg, Bug, Fern. Overnight on Fern. Then Olifaunt to Ram and Antoine. Back up through Twin Lakes, Dore and back into Pickerel. Will be doing some base camping for probably 2 nights at a time.

Bringing my 17 year old son with me.

Working on trying to limit the tackle I bring, but it is SO HARD as this is mainly a fishing trip for us. I always feel naked without 500 pounds of fishing gear.

Ive got way too many jig heads, Mepps, spinners, plenty of rapala crankbaits in deep diving taildancers to floating original rapalas, a bunch of topwater poppers, and whopper ploppers, some jerkaits, including 2 of my favorite 4in phantom softails, along with assorted lipless cranks and plenty of soft plastics.

My problem is that I know I have 3x as many lures and WAY Too many jigs as I really need and will probably rotate through 4-5 different baits all trip. How the heck do you cut down on what you bring? I love all of my lures!

I should be all set but was hoping to see if there are any recent "Must-bring" lures that people are using lately? I love jerkbaits, rapalas, topwater baits. I have plenty of tubes and soft plastics I like too. Green pumpkin tubes, white paddletail minnows, jerk minnows, curly tail grubs.

Paring down is the hard part. Ive got everything into a medium sized duffle style tackle bag. It isnt light but it isnt that awful for portaging. We should be able to handle it as our routes arent super heavy on long portages and we will be stopping for a couple of nights at a time.

Any suggestions or additions? I do have a stowmaster net I will be bringing (though I usually handle fish by hand).

Was also considering making the trip down to Fred Lake. Any intel on Fred?

Thanks!

I've noticed that no matter what I bring I usually end up using the same stuff over and over. So I bring that and then some extras. This last trip I had two people who don't really fish so I had to pack two extra tackle boxes. I double portage so I rarely worry about the weight. As long as the two of you can carry everything in two trips I would go with that.

we will be double carrying for sure. no need to break my 48 year old back...hehe

I wrote an article called Grand Slam Lures which will give you the basic lures for the Quetico and Boundary Waters. Just send me an email - queticomike@yahoo.com - and request the article. My most productive lure for smallmouth is the ZMAN ShadZ on a Zulu rig. Would never go into the woods there without it if fishing for smallmouth. I have an article called Zulu Magic if you are interested in learning the Zulu rig.

Here's basically everything I used on the last trip:

ZMAN ShadZ - redbone
ZMAN RaZor - bad shad
Green pumpkin 3.5" tubes with 1/8 oz jig heads
Foxy Shad and bone colored Super Pop-Rs
Berkley Gulp leech on 1/8 oz black jig heads
BooYah Chartreuse 3/8oz double willow GLOW blade spinnerbait

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck on your trip!

If your going to do any Laker fishing these are deadly!!!

walllee: "If your going to do any Laker fishing these are deadly!!! "

I dragged these for a while last week and struck out but they sure seem like they would be lethal. Lakers wouldn’t touch my tail dancers or spoons either but they loved a jointed flicker shad which I consider a walleye bait primarily. Sometimes you just never know. I would sacrifice in other areas and bring more tackle but that’s just me. We tied on everything this week!

I went into Stanton bay on May 29th, made my way down to Cache falls and came back out on the 8th. Spent most of my time around Keats and McDougal. I fished mostly with the Zulu rig (Sexy penny worked best for me) and a chartreuse lipless crankbait. My brother tied on the one purple lipless crankbait I had in my box on the first day and never changed it for the rest of the trip - out fished me by orders of magnitude. He caught everything with it, lakers, walleye, bass and pike. Only had one of these purple ones in my box, other colors did not work near as good. He lost it on the 2nd to last day and he was noticeably upset (LOL). Next time I go in I'll have at least a couple with me, but of course I won't catch anything with it! You can find them on tacklewharehouse, it's a Cotton Cordell super spot in Royal Shad.