I'm heading to Saganaga the first week of October. I have never been up there that late in the year - typically I'm up there in July/August. Any guidance on fishing? The water temp will obviously be colder, but suggestions for catching walleye and big pike?

Nobody responded to my post, so I thought I'd go down and reply to someone else's empty post. I fished Sag last year the first week of October. Never fished the lake before so we hired a guide. If you have any ability to do so I highly recommend it because that lake is so massive. You could fish it all season and not learn much about it. Our guide was Jessica from Seagull Creek fishing camp. She is the daughter of Steve Berg who is probably one of the most famous guides on the Gunflint, she was spectacular. We stuck with jigs and minnows, apparently "mustard" colored jigs work great if you can find them. Depth will be important as we fished anywhere from 25-30 on most spots. There was one shallower hump right near the narrows that may have been around 20 but the main lake structure we were considerably deeper. We only caught 6 walleyes all day but two of them were 28 inches. We also caught several lakers (out of season) and a few big whitefish.

The lake is challenging no doubt. I wouldn't plan on pulling up to a spot and catching fish all day, you will have to move. Fish around the edges of humps and use your electronics. Jocks narrows is where we started, then we headed to fish main lake humps on the Canadian side of the lake. I would recommend this as we spent most of our day fishing humps or breaks around the islands.

Hope this helps get you started, it's a big body of water, but such a cool place with lots of big fish.

How did your trip turn out?

Thanks for the tips and follow up!
The trip went well. Fishing on Sag was tough, but the weather was also super strange. We arrived on Monday, 9/30 and the temps were in the mid-70s, the water temps were in the mid 60s. Then the weather changed and got incredibly windy for the next four days, and the temps dropped into the mid 40s and low 50s. We left on Friday, 10/4 and the air temp that morning was 32, so it was a bit crazy in weather swings over the course of a few days.
A friend on the lake took us from Sag to Northern Lights Lake to fish walleye and we were pretty successful - catching our limit over the course of 6 hours. But it was definitely a challenge to find them. I think the fish are equally as perplexed by the crazy weather patterns.
I will say - I love being up there at any point throughout the year; however, not having mosquitoes and black flies was a real added enjoyment!