New Trip Report posted by timatkn

Trip Name: Back to Quetico.

Entry Point: Quetico

Click Here to View Trip Report

Nice TR, glad you had a nice trip. Chair/pad combos are great, comfy, easy to use.

Nice trip report! Glad you and your wife could enjoy a trip this year. I bet it help recharge your batteries. Also surprised how good you did fishing especially with the Trout for the time of year.

Very nice trip report and photos. In spite of not feeling well, it looks like you still had a good time. You had some nice campsites along the way, and decent fishing too.

Nice report with great fishing stories. The unknown big one that gets away haunts you the most. You'll be thinking about that one in your rocking chair days.

Thanks for your report Tim. All in all, it sounds as though you and the Misses had a wonderful adventure. Great photos too. Too bad about the one that got away. It must have been a monster!

quote wawasee: "Nice trip report! Glad you and your wife could enjoy a trip this year. I bet it help recharge your batteries. Also surprised how good you did fishing especially with the Trout for the time of year."

I was shocked at the lakers on Sarah too. I can catch some lakers in August but typiclaly with a deeper diving crank. The one in 30' didn't make sense. The water must be cold in that lake.

T

Thanks for the report, I really enjoyed it, especially the fishing details! (Some chairs! Nicer than in my house.) --Goose

Very fun to hear you had good fishing as I'm heading that way soon. The big one you lost sounds like a very big trout or a monster northern. I know they're in there. I caught my biggest Quetico smallie in Sarah. I don't have a pic and didn't measure it but it was something. I could barely get my hand around its back. This was 1988.

Well, the chairs looked really comfortable and it's nice to see your wife having a good time as well. Thanks for the report.

I am pretty sure it was a trout. I don't even know if there are Northern in Sarah? But the fish kept going deeper and deeper as I fought it. I find northerns tend to run out/away but not run down deeper--at least not liek this one did. BUT I will never know.

The other thing that could have happened is the trout were hitting the lure and rolling over it. I watched a few of them do it and miss. Maybe I snagged a really nice trout---a snagged fish can feel 10# heavier when they fight sometimes.

I still feel bad when I think of the fish with my lure still in it. Hopefully the barbless hooks will help it get rid of them. I tried to tell it it would be better just to have me land it and take the hooks out but apprarantly fish can't understand you 50' below the water ;)

T

Thanks for the report, Tim. It sounds like you two had a pretty good trip given the illness. You also paddled a fair amount for people with "no energy"!

Was the first campsite you stayed at on Sarah for two nights site PG on the PCD? That's where we stayed during the storm last year. It was a God-sent haven. I'm also curious which site you stayed at on the island near the Side portage on Sarah - TZ? I've never checked that out but it looks pretty nice from your pictures, and if there are several sites there, it would be good to know in case of a late entry into Sarah. Not that I want to camp right next to someone, but it would be nice to be able to count on a site there in the even of portaging into Sarah at the end of the day, which could definitely happen if we tried to make it there in one day.

Thanks again.

Really enjoyed your report, T. I can relate to snagging a big fish. Two years ago, I snagged a 30-incher on McIntyre and could not pull him from the depths for at least 15 minutes (MH rod with 10-pound mono). When I finally got him up, I saw he was hooked just below the dorsel fin. The way he fought I was sure it was at least 35+ inches. Thankfully, it lived to be caught another day.

I was wondering if it'd be ok to email you with a couple questions re your lures, techniques, and depth finder.

quote PineKnot: "Really enjoyed your report, T. I can relate to snagging a big fish. Two years ago, I snagged a 30-incher on McIntyre and could not pull him from the depths for at least 15 minutes (MH rod with 10-pound mono). When I finally got him up, I saw he was hooked just below the dorsel fin. The way he fought I was sure it was at least 35+ inches. Thankfully, it lived to be caught another day.


I was wondering if it'd be ok to email you with a couple questions re your lures, techniques, and depth finder."

Pineknot email me any time.

T

quote Ho Ho: "Thanks for the report, Tim. It sounds like you two had a pretty good trip given the illness. You also paddled a fair amount for people with "no energy"!


Was the first campsite you stayed at on Sarah for two nights site PG on the PCD? That's where we stayed during the storm last year. It was a God-sent haven. I'm also curious which site you stayed at on the island near the Side portage on Sarah - TZ? I've never checked that out but it looks pretty nice from your pictures, and if there are several sites there, it would be good to know in case of a late entry into Sarah. Not that I want to camp right next to someone, but it would be nice to be able to count on a site there in the even of portaging into Sarah at the end of the day, which could definitely happen if we tried to make it there in one day.


Thanks again.
"

HoHo,

The island on Sarah has three camps on the western side. One on the north part, one on the south tip and the one we occupied on the middle western side. THey are all pretty close. The one on the south west tip is barely usable but would work for a night. The one we occupies is great. Swimming awesome, landing just okay, viewe awesome, one to 2 tent sites. I never saw the other one but at least 8 people camped there and they said they do it every year so must be decent. THat group used it as there jumpin goff poit on Sarah they apparantly always arrive late in the day and camp on that island. So it seems you can count on one of the spots being open.

T

HoHo,

To answer your other questions. We stayed at RC site. The PG site is the one we should have stayed at in my opinion especially with all the sun and heat we had, but we came upon RC first and we were tired. We almost moved the next day but were too lazy :)

For the island site near Side we stayed at a site not on the PCD. It is in between TZ and U5. U5 I think was more towards the southern tip than marked though.

Also our first nite on North Bay should look familiar to you as it is the same site you stayed on a few years back when you were going to Sarah with David.

T

Tim,

I think there are a lot of myths about lake trout that I learned when I was younger, and then I spent the last 30 years trying to make sense of them all in the face of what I have experienced.

The biggest misunderstandings I have come to know about lakers stems from lumping them all together. Lakes are dynamic and so are their resident trout. Take for instance their requirement for a certain temperature of water. In actuality, a lot of the lake trout studies prior to 30 years ago were done on great lakes trout. What lake trout biologists have learned since then is that inland trout in the southern part of the shield and great lakes trout might as well be different species. In fact they actually used to stock Superior trout in inland waters and had very little success. Inland trout have different temperature and dissolved O2 requirements. To make it more interesting, small inland trout have different light tolerance, O2, and temperature preference than larger trout in the same lake. Another interesting tidbit, I believe a paper in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, around 2002 or so, had research results demonstrating that females do the majority of their feeding in 2 months of the year, July and August, prior to spawning in mid to late October. When I read that, it finally made sense as to why my favorite time to fish for large trout was July and August (I still haven't figured out September.)

Since you like to fish for trout, I thought you would find some of this interesting. Thanks for the nice trip report.

My wife and I routinely have trout scream up from 90 foot to hit lures on the surface, and even jump completely out of the water, in July and August, but only on certain lakes. Sarah would be one of those. Other lakes I almost never see streakers from the depths.

Thanks for the info, Tim. Now that I look again at my own link, I realize that our site was actually RC too, not PG. Doh! I think the weather was so bad the day we paddled there and it was such a refuge in the storm, that it will always be a favorite site to me. But that just goes to show that campsite ratings are very subjective and depend on countless factors that change from day to day. Glad to know about the island sites too. And I thought that site on North Bay looked familiar.

Thanks for the thoughts The Talkign Guide.

I have seen fish bustign the surface in August as well. I had one on Earl just out of the water and grab my crankbait on a hot sunny August day--right when the sun was the highest.

I used to use 3 ways and weights but over the years I just troll and crank and let them come to me. I catch enough to make me happy. I usually do use a deeper diving cranks like DT 16 or DT 20 or YoZuri but was pleased with the shallower minnow rap this year. My wife used a crank a little smaller and problably maxed out at 13-15' and that did seem to make a difference she had very few bites for trout.

I have really gotten ito trout---just becuase they are so easy. They aggressively strike cranks and will travel a long distance to hit one. Make sit fun change of pace from coaxing walleyes to bite. Plus I can jsut fish for them as I stroll around the lake soakign in the sites very relaxing. Except when the Kracken hits ;)


T

T, As always a nice report. You have a hardcore partner and it's always nice to read about your Q trips.

Great report Tim, thanks. Bummer about being ill and losing that monster fish. I've had the line run out on me only once in my 40 some years. It was an amazing fight as I'm sure yours was.
So is Prairie Portage always a mad house?