Day 3: Poohbah Lake We woke up and Brett and I started to make pancakes and bacon for the crew. We wanted to focus on lake trout on this day, and check out some new areas of the lake. Everyone had already caught their “grand slam” and we switched fishing partners for the day. As Greg and I worked our way down to the southwestern lobe of the lake, we paddled right over a great-looking walleye reef and couldn’t resist tying on some jigs and giving it a go. The steady action of both ‘eyes and smallies, with the occasional pike held our attention for about an hour. It seemed like the fish were stacked up in any shallow rocky areas, especially in the shallow ends of the reefs and points that we usually seek out. We moved on to the larger bay to troll, as ominous-looking clouds were gathering overhead. I noticed that the water temps were almost 2 degrees warmer (63 deg) in this corner of the lake as compared to the rest of it. On our first pass along the southern shore, my rod bent over and soon we saw that my trusty Magnum Hellbender had produced again, just as a few raindrops began to fall.

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For the next two hours, we (along with Steve and Brett’s boat) worked the bay, and it seemed like one of us had a fish on pretty much nonstop during that time. Again, we saw no small fish—all of the lakers here were at least in the low-to mid 20” range, with some in the high 20’s. The magical depth seemed to be about 25-35’, proof that the cold winter and late spring had delayed things. We usually trip in the first half of June (often finishing up the trip before Father’s Day), and by then the lakers are usually a bit deeper. We kept two for a foil-baked lake trout dinner on our stringer.

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We met up with the rest of the group for lunch, cleaned the fish, and put them in a plastic bag to cool, trapped under a rock near our poor landing. We took down a couple of standing deadfall widowmakers for firewood, putting the hatchet and the two Sven saws to work. The rain had proven to be just a shower and didn’t stick around long. After some more hammock time and laying around, it was time to try for some walleyes in some areas of the lake we hadn’t explored yet. Greg and I worked the bay just to the south of camp, but didn’t have any consistent action. We met up with the rest of the group later on, and the other boats had found some very productive points, with good-sized walleyes biting willingly. Since we already had our trout back at camp, none of these were kept, and the three boats headed back to camp together, swapping stories of our evening. From a distance, we could see that there were several large seagulls perched on the rocks in front of our camp. We all had the same thought at once: the gulls had gotten into our fish stash. We hightailed it back and found that one of the trout was still mostly edible, but the rest of the meat was a loss! Would have been nice to keep some of those ‘eyes or any of the other trout we caught… Since it was almost dark, we tried right around camp for some more fish, but decided it was time for a dinner of chili-mac instead. We had a bit of cloudy sunset, and after some more wine, it was time for bed. Another great day in the park!

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