Fished Thursday and Friday last-week on Bayley and the weather was great. Fishing was great for smallmouth and pike but walleye were tight lipped. There are so many baitfish in the water out deep yet that i'm thinking they have no need to bite anything else. We caught some really nice smallmouth up to 21" and northerns averaged 26-28 inches. Every fish we caught was just plumb full of ciscoes. You can troll deep cranks right across the bay in 50-80 fow and catch all the northerns you want but we did not get any walleyes or lakers.

Lake needs to cool down a bit to push those baitfish shallow to get them to bite on that end of the lake in my opinion. We did not venture down to the west end as the water is so incredibly low it's like a minefield. Had a ton of fun and caught lots of fish however. Hope the report helps someone out.

sounds like fun!

I took my lower unit out. Having a hard time getting parts.
We need to get manufacturing back to U.S.A. China made parts.

Sorry to hear about the lower unit. There was a boat at our resort who hit a shallow reef and put a hole the size of a soccer ball in the hull. Very low water and very dangerous year for that. That is one reason why I didn't chance the other end of the lake.

How'd they get back to the dock w/ a hole that big? Unless it was somehow above most of the waterline....which is also not likely

So you got there via Moose and were able to get RABC and all that for fishing in Canada?

Amazingly enough removing the outboard and applying tape over the hole was enough to tow it back. I did go in via Moose lake and praire portage but we did not need a RABC since we stayed on the US side of the lake.

Was also on Basswood (via Moose chain) on a boat all last week (4-11) and we had very similar experience. The SMB fishing was excellent on the reefs in Bayley Bay. We ran into school after school of 18-20" fish on light tackle fishing top water and/or just under the top. We trolled deeper as well and did well on walleyes on 2 days but nothing the other 4 days on the water (25" catch/release as the biggest). We ran down the lake and avoided all shallow rocks (thankfully) and did well on top water down there as well. Caught bigger pike in the weeds (couple of 36"). When processing fish that we kept, they all had 6-8" cicsoes in their belly....gorging for sure. Saw that boat being towed in and heard they hit the reef going full out over a well know shallow reef. surprised the motor survived. While eating lunch on an island saw another boat hit a reef while they were heading to a campsite for lunch. It's definitely a challenge.

Anyone know when the boat portage at Prarie closes for the year?

I'm pretty certain starting on 9/15 every year they are on an "appointment" schedule meaning you need to tell them the time of day you want to go over to Basswood and what time you want to come out and back onto the chain. I don't know for certain when that ends, but I think it's Sept 30.