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03/21/2025 08:23AM |
YaMarVa: "July of 2007, Crooked Lake, Thursday Bay. Caught 100s of bass on Torpedoes, lots in the 18-22 inch range. "
Those are really fun lures to fish with. and they produce explosive results
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03/21/2025 08:26AM |
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03/21/2025 11:38AM |
Long story short, our count was 191 lakers…average probably between 17-27 inches. My buddy split his pants while bending over to grab the canoe while on shore for lunch. When we went back out to the spot, he put some of his pants on his jig head. First time to the bottom resulted in a fish. Insane day. We left when it got too dark to continue.
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03/21/2025 12:56PM |
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03/21/2025 10:42AM |
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03/22/2025 02:26PM |
We heard Mille Lacs was fished out of walleyes. There was a very narrow slot length 16-18” could keep one fish if I remember. My Dad just wanted to fish Mille Lacs and the weather looked good. Grew up in Minny and he had never fished the big pond.
We hit 3 Mile, 5 Mile and Banana and we caught so many big walleyes it was crazy. We couldn’t crack the 30 inch mark but we caught so many nice walleyes that occasionally we would catch a small one we’d both go “put a measure on it I think he is close to 18 inches” and every time the fish was 22-24inches. Those “small” 22-24inchers actually looked small now. Our whole view of walleyes was distorted.
Last fish of the trip I caught a 17 inch keeper. Thanked it for the trip and let it go for good Karma :)
T
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03/22/2025 09:19AM |
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03/24/2025 08:20AM |
walter: "About 10 years ago. One other guy and me. First day, maybe three fish. Second day nothing until trolling across the middle of a large part of the lake. This was around 10 am and we snagged a laker.
Long story short, our count was 191 lakers…average probably between 17-27 inches. My buddy split his pants while bending over to grab the canoe while on shore for lunch. When we went back out to the spot, he put some of his pants on his jig head. First time to the bottom resulted in a fish. Insane day. We left when it got too dark to continue. "
That is amazing. I have caught lakers but not like this. These magical fishing days stick in your memory and help explain why we go fishing even when they are not biting.
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03/27/2025 10:49AM |
Two people
2.5 hours
42 lake trout
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03/24/2025 07:18PM |
The rest of the story...
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03/20/2025 09:12AM |
Once upon our return to Prairie Portage for our ride back to Moose Lake, we got back with about 2 hours to spare. My friend, Rambo and I decided to fish the rapids below the falls one last time for SM bass.
Our bait was a small white tube jig with a white curly tail. Casting out deep brought no bites. We switched to fishing in the shallow rapids themselves. Immediately, we both started getting bites. These were SM bass in the 12 to 14 inch range. Not big, but very aggressive. We decided to have a contest. Who could catch the most in one hour.
Every cast produced fish and many got off. Soon, our tube jigs looked mutilated but still produced. Neither of us wanted to stop and change baits for fear of falling behind.
After one hour, the tally was 100 for yours truly, and 96 for Rambo. So in one hour we caught 196 bass. I have never come close to matching that catch rate, it was truly amazing. I have caught many larger fish, muskie, pike, salmon, trout, but have never had so much fun.
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03/20/2025 11:55AM |
Lac La Croix (Day 2) - First day was a travel day and we just chilled in camp. We had no plans for day two other than to probably wander over to Warrior Hill at some point.
I awoke later than the three other participants and found the breakfast fire dwindling. The other three individuals were all down on the shore spread out around our island casting for whatever was biting. I cut some wood and stoked the fire back up, heated some water and ate my oats. Had a cup of coffee and decided to wander down to the shore to cast as well. The others had been at it for over an hour - no bites.
My first cast produced about a 16 inch smallie. We decided fish lunch was in order so we threw it on the stringer with the hopes of picking up a couple more.
My second cast produced it's twin. On the stringer it went. I now have the attention of all my trip mates. "What are you using? What color?" One of the fellas actually had the exact same lure on.
Third cast - this one's heavier - a nice big fat northern, maybe six pounds. Released it. I'm now at three fish in three casts. Everyone else is still blank.
Fourth cast was a slightly smaller smallie. On the stringer it went and we figured that's enough for lunch. Four fish in four casts.
The fella with the same lure asks, "What are you doing with it? How are you fishing?" I try to describe the twitching method to him and he tries a couple times with no luck. I say, let me show you. He hands me his rod and I cast it out. One twitch - FISH ON! I hand it back to him. It was a nice 18+ inch smallie. Five fish - five casts.
The second was a trip to Crooked where four people, all in solos, went out one morning and all four came back with stories of a personal best fish. Four fisherman - four personal best fish in one morning - a 22 inch smallmouth, 38 inch northern, 27 inch walleye and 25 inch walleye.
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05/11/2025 07:56AM |
My largest was 5.7, we then proceeded to catch walleyes for a shore lunch. Blue sky, sunny August day.
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05/11/2025 08:32AM |
QueticoMike: "We were at the end of the creek where it met the colder lake water on this late May trip. We both had ZMAN ShadZ tied onto the end of our lines and what was about to happen that morning is almost beyond belief. When we began casting towards the opposite shoreline it quickly became apparent this hole was stacked like cord wood with smallmouth bass. Every cast there was a fish. If we had to twitch the lure more than twice, we started to wonder why there wasn’t a smallmouth on the other end of the line. We tried to count doubles, but after 50 some doubles we started to lose count. We were somewhere in the 150 fish range at that period of the figurative slaughter. There were times when only one of us was hooked up with a fish during the outing, but it was a rare occasion. I had never encountered any fishing like this in my life. These weren’t little smallmouth either, they averaged in the 16 to 19-inch range for the most part with a handful of 20s thrown into the mix. All of these fish were caught in less than a 20-yard stretch of the lake. If I didn’t see this happen, I wouldn’t have believed it happened. I also witnessed my fishing partner reel in a smallmouth and when it was maybe 10 feet from him the lure pulled loose from the fish. The lure went about another 3 or 4 feet in the water towards him. In an instant the smallmouth bolted towards the lure and sucked it up again practically at his feet. This incredible fishing went on for hours until things began to slow. When I say “things”, I mean the fish biting and us being tired from all of the action. In the end, Mike speculated we must have caught 500 smallmouth. I told him to come back down to earth. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 350 smallmouth bass during that outing would be a more realistic number. It was just unbelievable fishing."Wow, sensational., I have not had this kind of luck ever in terms of size, but have caught many smallmouth in one day. Way to go and great storry
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05/11/2025 10:23AM |
Early afternoon, we anchored over a rock reef ledge area and my wife and daughter started catching fish, mind you nothing large at all, mostly rock bass less than 5-6", but they were having fun. As a dad fishing with his family that is all that mattered. I was so busy helping them I hardly fished at all. My daughter said at one point "Dad I'm sorry you're not having any fun." I still can't explain to her how much fun it was. She'll get it someday.
Occasionally a larger smallmouth would follow their tiny fish in, and I'd toss out a ZMAN minnow and catch it - that was fun.
We ended the day at 99 fish, because we were out of the leeches we'd been using as bait. I'd even started cutting them into pieces to stretch them further. I had artificial bait but these tiny fish were not interested in that. My daughter refused to give up until we got 100, trying everything from raisins from the trail mix to a bare hook.
We finally called it a day and headed back to camp, only to hear that a five year old had hauled in an 18'' smallmouth from the dock - with a barbie fishing poll....
We still refer to that as the day of 99 fish!
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05/11/2025 06:50PM |
Best fly rod pike: 39" C&R Still trying for a 40 " fish.
Best number of walleyes: 3 hours of non stop bite for 16"-18" fish and two guys. I used plastic, other guy used minnow/jig. All C& R. Just one of those flukes, every bait and every presentation worked. Called time because of weather and distance back to camp.
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05/07/2025 07:03PM |
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03/27/2025 03:29PM |
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03/22/2025 01:56PM |
My favorite was Lake Trout: Took my Dad on his first trip he was nearly 60. My brother and I packed him in my Souris River Quetico 18.5 and 10 hours 16 portages and 25 miles later we reached our secret camp exhausted. Well we thought it was a secret… I met a fellow poster there in the camp we had targeted LOL.
Anyway we had a 4-6 hour window where we trolled for trout and it was just one after another all what I would call lunkers. Every fish was 34 inches or bigger and THICK. My Dad caught a 38 and 40 incher. All caught on silver black or blue DT 16. This was early May, right out in the middle of the lake fishing maybe 15-20 feet down. They were feeding on a HUGE school of Ciscoes near the surface. We just happened to find them by accident. We were fishing a point then moved across the lake to try to find a reef but kept our lines out and boom there they were in 80-100’ of water. We didn’t keep count, but wasn’t as many as you would think. We would all troll, one would hook up, everyone else reeled in, then we would net the fish in a rubberized net…repeat. The whole process took time. Later we thought if we jigged we could have done better but I can’t complain. Each catch we all felt a part of. Our net broke at some point the aluminum handle couldn’t handle the weight :)
Further it was a great trip, because it was my Dad’s first Wilderness trip. Up until that time my Dad was always in charge of trips/vacations that he went on previous to this, he couldn’t believe how efficient we were portaging, setting up camp, cooking etc… I remember after the first portage he asked how much longer and my brother and I thought “oh no” we had told him it was a rough trip, but he didn’t believe us LOL. He did great though!
Broke the net
An average trout
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03/22/2025 02:36PM |
We were having a great trip, fishing was better than normal. Then the last day the weather warmed up perfectly and there was a thunder storm looming….in 4 hours my Dad and I caught our limit of 30 crappies. All we kept were 11-12 inchers. The majority of the fish were 13-14 inches but we let them go. It was a fish on every cast basically. You would have to cast as far as possible and they hit way out so you got your moneys worth on every fight. We were using swim baits, and the crappies would just hit them hard. Sometimes almost pull the pole out of your hand.
They were all staging for spawn we think all at once. Almost never happens, the weather is usually too sporadic. I don’t think I’ll ever see this again in my life. We had this bay/creek arm all to ourselves.
Came in to eat lunch, huge thunderstorm unleashed for 4 hours. We had another day of fishing planned, but we all just boated up and left. Anything else was going to be a disappointment after that :) and we had our fish. Didn’t keep a fish for the rest of the year after that.
T
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03/23/2025 01:56PM |
Had a similar day on McIntyre in Quetico 2023. Mostly smallies around a small island close to the 5 star site at the north end. Darkness probably prevented this from being a bigger day, but I had to stop fishing in order to paddle back to camp in the dark. We tried to fish our way back, but kept having to stop to remove a fish.
In both cases, we had "doubles" so many times we stopped counting...I'd guess about 20 give or take.
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03/20/2025 11:32AM |
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03/20/2025 12:23PM |
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03/20/2025 02:33PM |
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03/20/2025 08:42PM |
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03/20/2025 02:49PM |
I'm with my oldest son and he hooks into something big, down deep. We think it's a laker or a big northern, but as he's bringing it up, we see the white on the tail and it's a monster walleye! He plays it and we get it in the canoe and we can't believe it. We head to shore and the other two canoes join us to take measurements and pics. A 32" beauty with a nice wide girth (can't remember the girth measurement off hand). We have the release on video and a beauty of a replica mount on the wall.
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03/20/2025 04:21PM |
One - Brother and his son, and I took our 81 year old stepdad to Sylvania. My nephew and stepdad were in a bay that was visible from the camp site. Brother and I watched them catch (or miss due to barbless requirement) fish on about 50-60 percents of their casts for about 30 minutes. They wound up keeping about 15-20 bluegills. Our stepdad, who fished a lot in both WI and AZ, said it was his best day fishing in his life. So his best day fishing became one of our best days fishing - just from being a part of it.
Two - Returned to Sylvania the next summer with three other guys. One of my buddies and I took the canoe in a small bay and started out catching a few (and missing an equal amount) for the first 20-30 minutes. Then we hit a spot where we were catching (some misses) fish on about 90 percent of our casts. I was in the stern and had the stringer. My buddy started catching keeper bluegills. He'd toss the fish to me or I'd grab the line and fish in the back and start to put it on the stringer. I'd get that done and I'd toss it back into the water while he resumed casting and he'd catch another one. He did this with about 5-6 straight casts and I had to tell him to stop so I could fish as all I was doing was putting his fish on the stringer. He just looked at me and laughed and said it was the best fishing day of his life! He did pause and let me cast and catch fish just about a often as he did. We probably caught about 80 fish in about 45 minutes. Non-stop action!
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04/01/2025 02:35PM |
Moonpath: "YaMarVa: "July of 2007, Crooked Lake, Thursday Bay. Caught 100s of bass on Torpedoes, lots in the 18-22 inch range. "
Those are really fun lures to fish with. and they produce explosive results"
I've since switched to Whopper Ploppers and the results are even more explosive. I still keep a few Torpedoes in my tackle box because for about a decade they were my go-to summer SM lure.
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04/01/2025 09:09AM |
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04/01/2025 06:09AM |
The day began with perfect weather, not only in the morning but throughout the day. There we just enough clouds and just enough breeze and I remember thinking "It's a great day to have a great day".
We have 5 trips together under our belts and our goal was simply to catch fish. We had decided the night before to fish the following day as long as there was enough light to see. We would only stop to eat. We targeted reefs, points, and cobble lined banks. Early morning we used topwater baits. Once the sun came up we started going below the surface with 3 and 4 inch plastics on 1/8 oz and 1/4 oz jig heads. Later in the evening we fished topwater exclusively. When we came across coves filled with grass or cabbage weed we threw Frogs and Flukes.
The surprise lure was an in-line spinner that I made and I tied the treble hook not only with a very specific color but also the hair extended beyond the treble hook 3-4 inches. Two of my PB fish came off that spinner bait. We made several videos and took a lot of pictures on our Go Pro.
Rather than dribble on and on about what we used and how we used certain lure I'll just share the final count:
Smallmouth : 347 ( largest was 8.2 lbs and 26.5 inches long ... a true hog)
Pike: 82 (largest was 45 inches estimating weight to be 22-24 lbs)
Lake Trout: 6 (largest was 22 inches; I know they were small but it was June and we had never caught LT before so we were happy)
Walleye: 116 (largest was 33 inches caught on my in line spinner)
Crappie: 6 ( largest was 23 inches and weight was right at 6 lbs. Fish of the trip. This fish was also caught on my inline spinner.)
I have never had a day like this and I attribute most of our fish to the inline spinner and the hair I used on the treble hook. It was actually a combination of 3 colors and I can't disclose anything else as I am in the process of getting some utility patents with Damon John and Laurie Greiner with the hopes of going on QVC in about 2 months.
We fished approximately 16.5 hours that day and the day ended with my son throwing a Zara Puppy around a beaver dam only to get it snagged. We eased over to the dam and he , my smart son, decided to get out of the canoe and try to stand on the dam (I know, I know) and both of his legs went straight through to his waist. Apparently, momma and daddy were both home and grabbed onto his legs. He clutches onto the side of the canoe and tries to pull himself out but both beavers are pulling on his legs ................... just like I am pulling yours.
Happy April 1st
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04/01/2025 04:01PM |
gqualls: "The best single day fishing story for me was when my son and I were in the BWCA on this beautiful late June day that is etched, no, burned would be more like it, in our memories.
The day began with perfect weather, not only in the morning but throughout the day. There we just enough clouds and just enough breeze and I remember thinking "It's a great day to have a great day".
We have 5 trips together under our belts and our goal was simply to catch fish. We had decided the night before to fish the following day as long as there was enough light to see. We would only stop to eat. We targeted reefs, points, and cobble lined banks. Early morning we used topwater baits. Once the sun came up we started going below the surface with 3 and 4 inch plastics on 1/8 oz and 1/4 oz jig heads. Later in the evening we fished topwater exclusively. When we came across coves filled with grass or cabbage weed we threw Frogs and Flukes.
The surprise lure was an in-line spinner that I made and I tied the treble hook not only with a very specific color but also the hair extended beyond the treble hook 3-4 inches. Two of my PB fish came off that spinner bait. We made several videos and took a lot of pictures on our Go Pro.
Rather than dribble on and on about what we used and how we used certain lure I'll just share the final count:
Smallmouth : 347 ( largest was 8.2 lbs and 26.5 inches long ... a true hog)
Pike: 82 (largest was 45 inches estimating weight to be 22-24 lbs)
Lake Trout: 6 (largest was 22 inches; I know they were small but it was June and we had never caught LT before so we were happy)
Walleye: 116 (largest was 33 inches caught on my in line spinner)
Crappie: 6 ( largest was 23 inches and weight was right at 6 lbs. Fish of the trip. This fish was also caught on my inline spinner.)
I have never had a day like this and I attribute most of our fish to the inline spinner and the hair I used on the treble hook. It was actually a combination of 3 colors and I can't disclose anything else as I am in the process of getting some utility patents with Damon John and Laurie Greiner with the hopes of going on QVC in about 2 months.
We fished approximately 16.5 hours that day and the day ended with my son throwing a Zara Puppy around a beaver dam only to get it snagged. We eased over to the dam and he , my smart son, decided to get out of the canoe and try to stand on the dam (I know, I know) and both of his legs went straight through to his waist. Apparently, momma and daddy were both home and grabbed onto his legs. He clutches onto the side of the canoe and tries to pull himself out but both beavers are pulling on his legs ................... just like I am pulling yours.
Happy April 1st"
I honestly thought you were expecting us to believe you for awhile!