Just back from a trip with my dad (72) and son (19). We stayed in a cabin near the cook co access and took day trips in on our 16 ft boat.

We’ve been doing a Sag trip every year for about 5 years now, this year was the toughest bite we’ve ever experienced. Between 20+mph winds, high 80s temps, and a crazy bug hatch directly on our lake trout spot, we rode the struggle bus for much of our time. Had two days where we felt very defeated with nothing but a few small bass to show for 7 hours of work. On Friday night while we were consoling ourselves with pizza, beer, and billiards at hungry jack, some clouds rolled in, the wind shifted, and the temps started to fall. That was a good sign as our luck shifted and we had a great day on Saturday. Our lake trout spot on the Canadian side was empty of boats and full of hungry fish. That’s what we come up there for so they made the whole trip worth it.

Bass: largest 18.5” — caught from 1 inch from shore out to about 8 feet in bays. Whopper ploppers , tiny torpedos, frogs, flicker shads, jointed shad raps, and of course leech/crawler under a slip bobber all took fish.

Pike: largest 30” — caught off a rocky points , weedy shorelines, and in 15 fow while pulling spinners for walleye. X-rap, ploppers , little Cleo, crawler harness. The best fish was caught on crawler harness with a spinner. We were just clearing a known hump so running our rigs near surface and gettting ready to drop as we knew fish were holding immediately on the other side of the hump. This pike breached the surface twice swiping at my crawler, I dropped it down a few feet and he hit it immediately. Really fun fight on that one!

Walleye: largest 16” — caught in 15fow near shorelines on crawler harnesses. Nothing else worked.

Lakers: largest 27” — caught at 40-45 ft anywhere from 50–100 fow. The only thing that worked was a firetiger crocodile spoon on 5 colors of leadcore. Nothing else worked, period. Our average size was way down this year. In the past we’ve caught a lot of trout in the 22-25inch range but this year, beyond the 27 it was mostly 16-20” fish.

Good trip overall. Learned a lot as always!