Day 4: Poohbah Lake We decided yesterday that we were going to stay another night on Poohbah since the fishing had been so good. We switched fishing partners yet again, and on this day Brian and I got an early start (Brett wasn’t even up yet…maybe due to some excess wine!) and set out towards one of our spots. Another sunny day, with some high clouds and the breeze started picking up early. The wind made boat control an issue again, and we kept getting blown off of our reef after Brian picked up another mid-20’s walleye.

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We decided to move to sheltered area, where Steve and I had been into them a couple of days before. The bite was much slower, and we kept moving, finally gearing up to troll for lakers. We each caught one on the way back to camp for lunch.

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The others were still out fishing, so we got some quality time napping the hammock and helping ourselves to the new spicy GORP that Brett had brought (a must-bring next time!). The rest of the group had similarly spotty fishing. At lunch, we all decided to hit it hard again this evening, and then pack up and move up the Maligne to Sturgeon, but only after some careful discussion. Could the fishing be much better up there? Do we want to blow a day moving, dealing with a fast-flowing Maligne? We had seen a Mackenzie Map with two portages marked that would go from the north part of Poohbah eventually ending at the upper Maligne. The info that I could gather on the internet about the portages was sparse, and an old posting on them marked that they were very difficult. We still thought it would be worth looking for them, if it meant avoiding the upriver paddle. Out fishing again in the late afternoon, and we decided to head down to the productive southern bay. I picked up a decent laker on our first pass in, and Brian got one shortly thereafter. We trolled back and forth between two productive points, with Brett and Greg following a similar line (with similar results).

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Bill and Steve were around a small island, apprarently sitting there on walleyes. As we made a turn, I saw that Brett’s boat was making a beeline towards Bill and Steve’s boat. Something was amiss, and as we looked, we could see that neither Bill nor Steve was in the boat, but their torso’s were visible next to it. They had dumped, and we were surprised since the weather was calm and they weren’t even moving. We moved quickly towards them, and saw that they weren’t in any obvious distress, but were wading in the water trying to pick up some of the stuff they had dumped.

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It had happened quickly, with some uncoordinated weight shifting in an unloaded kevlar canoe. Luckily, they were over only about 3’ of water, and miraculously hadn’t lost anything. We gave them some of our dry clothes and they began to paddle back to camp to change and get a fire going to warm up. We decided to stay and fish a bit longer, picking up several walleyes on the shallow reef just off the island. Brian and I moved north to hit one productive point at the mouth of the bay, and the walleyes were still biting. Poohbah Lake had not disappointed this time! At one point, I got my jig snagged in about 6’ of water and opened my bail to paddle upwind and get “above” it to see if I could get it out. It was really wedged, so I reached down with my hand and gave the line one final tug. To my surprise, the jig popped out, and I started to retrieve all of the slack line that I had out. As I tightened it up, I felt a huge pull and my drag began to sing. After a 10 minute fight, a 39.5” pike showed up and I was able to hand land it. It was my biggest ever, and I saw some markings on one side, apparently propeller marks from one of the First Nation fishing boats.

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Greg and Steve paddled up as the fight was on, and were able to see the landing. They had found another spot just off the reef where we left them. They vertically jigged off of a dropoff, and they found some big lake trout were willing.

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A great sunset was our reward, and the other two were just fine, having laid their stuff out to dry and gotten into some dry clothes.

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