Well..It has been sometime since I last posted a report. Few changes in my life this year ended up with me working more and definitely fishing more!! Not much sleep this summer it was pure fishing, work, guiding and weddings. In that order! Haha even with no reports from me this summer, I was still checking out the board pretty much daily. Didnt want to miss a Bunk or Mike B report ( dunno where those guys find the time!! Seriously). Now to the fishing.
My summer fishing began fishing the St. Marys in the boat for Atlantic Salmon and Steelhead/Residents in both the Upper main river and rapids. A cold summer combined with the gates opened up in the rapids again kept the St. Marys in the 50s for most of the summer. This kept an abnormal amount of bows around gorging on various minnows, insects and crayfish. The Atlantic bite was great this year. We had a ton of fish in the 3-6 pound range with a few pluggers in the mix.
My sis with one of the best fish of the year, if not the biggest!
All kinds of bows were hanging around
Once the Sun went down we would drop our Atlantic and steelhead tackle and switch gears to night time walleye. Pulling stick baits at night for walleye is one of my favourite ways to catch eyes on the St Mary's. One of the best ways to catch big fish too.
Fidel (HighDrifter) from the board was in town one weekend. We have communicated a few times over the past 2 years I would say and this year it worked out that I had an evening free while he was in town. We hooked up for 3-4 hours out on the river and had a ball. Maybe he will chime in with a few pics if he reads this and if you are. It was great having you out buddy! Anytime!
I dont normally like to post pic or reports about my guide trips but there was one trip this summer, that made my year for guide trips so far. Mid summer lakers on the fly! Quite possibly a guides nightmare! I knew going into this trip it was going to be a great 2 days/1 night or it was gonna be a real long, exhausting, fishless trip for the 2 fly anglers. There was one spin fisherman so I knew he would smash them. I had them set up at my motel for one night and they spent a week camping in the park with a home base at Agawa. I met them part way through their trip and took them to my fav lake trout lake in LSPP. Weather was too good to be true with warm, windless days. We paddled over to the campsite for the night, set up the gear and hit the water. 10 minutes into the fishing one of the fly anglers hooks up on the tip of a reef that is in about 8-10 feet and drops into 40 then 80 off the side. Im thinking laker forsure until this beautiful brookie graces the net. A PB brookie to start the trip, which was never measured before being released but was a solid 20 inches. 2 more lakers were lost on the fly and the spin fisherman hooked half a dozen lakers before we pulled the to go in for a laker fry.
Day 2 we went to other part of the lake where I knew the lakers would be and was our best shot and getting good numbers throughout the day in a few different spots that were close to eachother in case we had to deal with wind. Well the wind just never came again so we hunkered down on a spot and laid into some beauty lakers on the fly.
We even managed two double headers and one triple!!
The spin angler laid a beat down on the fish, I had him in my hobie kayak on day two and he landed 8-9 lakers himself.
Next up was a bit of yak fishing at two new spots east of the Soo. One was a large river system and the second two inland lakes connected by a small river
About two weeks after this trip was my annual trip up to Lake Nipigon! We have always fished the SE part of the lake but this year we ventured up to Onamans on the NE part of the lake. Well, Im sure glad we switched it up this year. Robert at Onamans is great, I dont have a bad thing to say about our stay there. It was absolutely fantastic there! We fished Lake Nipigon for 3 ½ days and onamans lake for one due to weather on the big lake.
3 ½ days on the big lakes is nothing..We barely touched the area. We fished a few recommended areas (which were huge) and when we found the fish we were looking for we worked them over hard. Trolling was the best tactic for covering water looking for the speckled beautys. Thing was your gonna be dealing with a million pike in the 30-35 range on your troll..which was great!!!!! Once we did put a speck in the boat we would stop and work the area. These areas were typically rocky structure between the weeds that littered the bays. We only went 3-6 on the brookies between everyone but there were some serious brook trout..I am to this day still haunted by the one that broke my 15# pp like dental floss
These were the two from our boat
Ted hit the speck of the trip coming in at a little better than 25 inches
We would typically target brookies until 6ish and head back towards camp and do some piking at the mouth and a few other areas. We caught hords of big pike with most in the 36-38 but a few 40s were thrown in the mix.
Walleye fishing in the river wasnt very good, so we didnt mess around with that much. Onaman Lake is where we got our fix. Of course on the last day the weather rolled in and the big lake was a no go. We were satisfied with our pike fishing already so took the tour to Onamans and laid an absoulute beat down on walleyes. We fished the lake about 5-6 hours and put so many walleye in the boat I couldnt guess how many. 80 fish a boat? Id say 75% of the fish were 22-24 inches with a few bigger (biggest was just under 28")and maybe 4 under 18. We didnt even catch enough small ones to keep a full limit lol. Thats ok with me!
Got back from Nipigon and headed out on the St, Marys River the following weekend and fish the first Annual St. Marys Small Jaw Slam hosted by the Lake State University fishing team. Fished the tourney with Kevin King and our plan pretty much went the way we wanted it. We put together two good bags on both days that weighed just under 36 pounds for the 10 bass. Good enough for 3rd and only .5 out of 2nd. This might be a tourney some of you southern guys might be interested in fishing next year. Heres the link to the Fb page. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=723216211079668&id=474306409303984&ref=bookmark
Big fish was a 7.33 largie!!
Not long after, I headed back out for some bass with my cousin Ted and my buddy Nate and we put some solid bass into the net on this day again.
Killed one rainy Sunday afternoon chasing bass again. The fish moved to deeper water so it took me a little while to figure them out. The average sized dropped for me but I still managed around 20 largies with a few descent bites.
We had a ton of rain this fall here on the northshore, so I had Superior steel on my mind early this fall. Fished the north tribs a bit after work for a few hours each time in late sept early October and hit some silver coho and a few squirrelly steelhead.
A few weekends ago, I took as ride out on Superior with my buddy and float fished from his boat up one of my favourite tribs. We didnt have an amazing day but we hit some nice fish. What the day did do, is open our eyes up to a few new places to try
Was able to get out in the boat on the upper that same weekend and hit a few in the cold conditions
I haven't been out the last two weeks. Too busy with a few other things as well as the early days don't help. My last outing was in the rapids chasing some steel and whatever else bites
Hoping to get out this weekend for steelhead and brave the freezing cold weather they are calling for. Hope you all enjoyed!!
TDunn
