phishfearme

We did a trip to Aba back in 1993 with Nakina Outposts - flew in with the new Turbo Otter and stayed in the cabin nearest the Opichuan River inlet. That cabin was old then - needed lots of maintenance - the other cabin was almost totally collapsed. I recall having a walleye blast at the Opichuan River inlet - and also in the many holes along the Albany River - especially just below Frenchman's Rapids. Like you guys, we tried for the alleged trout - especially in the deep hole out from the cabin - lots of indications on the sounder but only caught one nice VERY deep green pike that felt like it came out of a refrigerator. No brookies and no sturgeon - and we set sturgeon lines out every day. Like all "River Lakes", the levels can fluctuate significantly and we were kinda cursed with very low water that required the outfitter to build an auxiliary dock well out into the lake so the plane could get it. The low levels also made us have to get into the water and drag boats upstream. A pain but the fishing was worth it. In the attached photo, that rock island behind the tail of the plane frequently has a few feet of water over it. We had done a two week canoe trip on the Albany two years earlier (from Osnaburg to Miminiska Lake (just before the Lodge there came back to life) and had some of the best walleye days ever. Although we never caught anything big, the numbers were off the charts. And we did get two nice sturgeon - they are there. phish

see the following thread and link to wiki: https://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=630418 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhynchobdellida

not sure where scott lake is but for this time in june (and given the early spring) you may want to try this; first - get one of those thermometers that you can drop over the side of the boat and find out where the thermocline is. this is the depth where the water temp drops fast - usually to a temp in the low 50's to high 40's. you want to focus your presentations maybe 5 ft below this. you may be surprised to see that the thermocline is less than 20ft - maybe much less. while fishing with way north outfitters, at both their north and south trout lakes we found the thermocline at 12-15 ft over the first week of july and were able to troll very deep diving lures to get to the trout and did very well. if the thermocline is 20 ft or so you'll need some type of planer boards to hold at 25-30 feet - troll a wobbly spoon maybe 4-5ft behind the planer. try different depths below the thermocline. focus on the depths where you see baitfish on the sounder. the bottom should be 70ft or greater. another trick is to get large (1oz) jigs and attach a dead minnow to it and verticle jig where you see clouds of baitfish on your sounder. turn up the sensitivity to see the bait fish better. rip the jig up 5ft or so and let it sink - repeat. hope this helps, all of the above have worked for us. phish

go to walleyecentral.com - click on "canada, eh" and do a search with "hearst air" - lots of good and recent info. phish

check out this option: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183179&highlight=kearns+lake

my piranhamax 210 portable gets a good 7-8 days on one set of 8 AA alkaline batteries - just turn the darn thing off when you're not using it and don't use the backlight!! i think this is a much better option than either the 8 D-cells (which should get LOTS more run time than the AA) or a costly rechargeable and charger - (both of which will also find their way into the trash stream - and rechargables fade with use) - especially on a fly-in where weight is an issue and there may not be AC power around. new sounders are MUCH more power efficieant than the older models. phish

try dwayne at thousand lakes outfitters - he's out of TB - i think he knows where every moose is within 25 km of his camps. phish

best trip report on ANY board - thanks, phish

here's a few goodies - i got a million of 'em phish

moose - we only drive to pickle to get to the float planes!! just like armstrong, red lake, ear falls, etc.. while driving past all that water getting to these northern outpost towns, we frequently wonder if we should try some drive to resorts but with limited time and $$ we stick to one flyin outpost where isolation is guaranteed. in addition to kesagami we also fished evans lake in quebec and also detour lake with cochrane air service - these are all "james bay lowlands lakes" (outside of the schield) and i guess i just like the "hunting" aspect of structure fishing that the schield lakes provide. we'll probably never go back to this region - just not our cup of tea. i do recognize that other people love this area - a friend of mine can't wait to back to evans every year and troll and troll for monster pike. to each his own i guess. i really enjoy your reports - must take a ton of time to put them together - thanks for posting them. phish

larry - i beat you onto this board by a day - probably the extra day or two it took you to drive to nevada! welocome! also, note that larry took that photo posted in the wettlaufer lake trip report. although the fish looks great, the phisherman looks even better!! phish

and some final trip reports for this board. we did 4 seperate trips of 10 days each to bow lake using north of 51 outfitters out of pickle lake. you can see the reports on walleye central (the complete threads make for better reading and i can't afford the time to cut/paste the whole things) at: first trip 2003: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72197&highlight=bow+lake+albany second trip 2006: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75613&highlight=bow+lake+albany third trip 2007: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75613&highlight=bow+lake+albany fourth trip 2010: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169140&highlight=otoskwin i've also included a nice photo that north of 51 uses on their web site - it's really a snag!! enjoy, phish

i posted these trip reports on walleyecentral in 2008/09 and thought it would be a good addition to this board that i just joined. the wettlaufer cabin has beeen totally overhauled since our two trip there so this would be even a more acceptable option for a flyin housekeeing, private lake option - and i've attached my favorite all time fishing photo - that of me and my 29incher, my all time best (from wettlaufer lake): first report 2008 My group just returned from our annual 10 day "week" at Wettlaufer Lake using North of 51 Outfitters out of Pickle Lake. This is a fly-in outpost, single cabin, 11 mile long lake about a 20 minute Otter flight due west of Pickle Lake on the Meen River. We were given the honor of "de-bugging" (literally and figuratively) this cabin that hasn't been used in about 3 seasons so we really had a "fresh" lake. And the results showed it!! Without exageration, the 4 of us caught about 2000 walleye!! We found 4 or 5 really-hot spots where it was just plain un-challenging and decided to move on. One spot we considered to be the best single fishing spot we've ever found. We also caught 2 "blue" walleye. The walleye size range was unique for us. Probably 60% of the walleye were less than 15 inches (the future of this lake looks VERY bright) but there were plenty in the "sweet spot" range of 16-19 inches. Then there seemed to be a hugh gap in the 20 to 23 inch range as we only caught about 10 in that range. But the jumbos were excellent: 3 - 24's, 2 - 25's, 2 - 26's and the largest caught on day one was Wil's 27 incher. The pike fishing was darn good also - even though we didn't really target them - with numerous fish in the 29-32 inch range. Tom's 37 incher was our best. There's a pike-only portage lake - Larsh Lake - that is supposed to hold trophy northern but during our day there (in a square back, man-powered canoe) we only got 4 pike - 29 to 31 inchers - and no small ones. A tough portage for this level of fishing when Wettlaufer was sooooo good. As a bonus, while walleye fishing, we caught about 30 jumbo perch up to 12 inches. One windy day, my partner and I parked off a weedbed in the lee and specifically targeted perch with small twisters and worms and caught 5 in about an hour or so (along with a number of walleye). The outfitter had the cabin setup just fine (the new shower was wonderful on cold days) but there's clearly alot of work that can be done there - didn't bother us at all though. Boats and motors were excellent - 14 foot dry Lunds and 9.9 hp Mercury's. The outfitter plans to have this cabin upgraded and the lake available for next year's fishing season. The cabin's location was also notable - in a protected bay with a wonderful sand beach right in front. We practically never used the dock. Gary caught a 32 inch pike on the second cast off the dock the first day. Questions? Feel free to ask away!! phish second report 2009 my group of 4 just returned from a 10 day trip to wettlaufer lake using North of 51 outfitters out of pickle lake. this was our second trip (my previous report is posted) to this fly-in lake which is about 10-11 miles long with a single housekeeping cabin on the meen river about 40 miles west of pickle lake. in summary - bad weather! very cold then rain then a 40 knot wind storm (which spawned the tornado near ear falls that killed 3 guys at the fisherman's cove resort). the high temp for the first 5 days was 52degF with lows in the upper 30's. the only reasonable day reached the mid 60's. the consequence of all this cold weather was cold water in the lake. surface temps were 56 or 57 degF (last year at this time it was in the low to mid 70's) and many of the fish we caught felt like they came out of a fridge. but in spite of all this, we did have some excellent fishing days - especially early in the trip - with 125-150 walleye in the boat per day (2 guys) the first few days. there was a hugh difference between fishing in the main lake and fishing in the four flow areas (inlet, outlet, first narrows and second narrows). the main lake produced scattered small walleye (12-15 inchers) and the flow areas were packed with larger walleyes. clearly we spent alot of time at the flow areas but in an effort to acheive some variety, we fished the main lake areas over and over only to get the same results. for the main lake, the "sweet spot" was around 12 ft deep (last year it was about 7 ft deep and we caught all sizes all over the lake). fishing shallower yielded few fish. the fishing results in the flow areas though were pretty incredible - especially in the first narrows. in the first narrows at dusk, i was fortunate enough to land a 29 inch walleye - beating my previous personal best by 2 inches. it's remarkable that this small lake can produce such large fish. the first narrows also produced 4 - 24 inchers, a 23.5 and 2 - 23's not to mention numerous 20-22 inchers and others. what an excellent spot - it may be the best single spot we've ever experienced. for pike, we finally broke into the trophy range with a 39.5 incher - just couldn't get it to 40 - at the second narrows and a 35incher at the outlet. there was also at least two that got away. we also got maybe 8 or so in the 32 inch range but you'd swear they were larger due to their girth and large heads. these were all caught fishing for walleye. all in all, a wonderful trip in spite of the weather. the wettlaufer cabin will be undergoing some major improvements this month (but it was still quite acceptable to us as is) including a new deck and i think a fish cleaning house. the outfitter provided all we could expect from an outfitter - boats and motors were excellent - and i'd highly recommend them. any questions - feel free to ask. phish

as i mentioned before, i've just joined this board but have been doing flyin outpost cabin trips for over 25 years. i've posted lots of reports on walleyecentral under the "canada eh?" board and thought i'd include a few here that may provide a little different viewpoint than is commonly posted. one is on kesagami lake - this was posted in 2009 so things may be a bit different there now but some things - like the lake characteristics - do not change. enjoy: let me give a little different perspective on this lake. our group fished kesagami for a week portaging in everyday from partridge lake - the guy who runs partridge has a boat cache LUP on the western shore of kesagami - the lodge is on the eastern shore. first, we had a terrible weather week including being snowed in at cochrane the first day (july 1) and then had 4 straight days of storms and strong west winds. kesagami - like most all james bay basin lakes is very shallow (4-6 ft in most places) and featureless (flat bottom practically no structure). these storms really stired up the water and made it extreemly muddy so besides fighting hugh waves we were also fighting the poor visibilty - as such, fishing was not very good although we did get a half dozen 40"+ pike and one 28inch walleye. the average size of the walleye though was dissappointing - maybe 15-16inches. you also need to recognize that all of the structered areas are marked with bouys and are hit constantly by freighter canoe after freighter canoe every day all season. we talked with a few people in the canoes and they're weren't doing any good also. i believe guides used to be included in the package and required but not sure now as they advertise a daily rate for guides. to summarize, 1 - this shallow lake can get seriously muddy during storms and seriously impact pike fishing, 2 - DON"T expect the structure fishing that is the norm is schield lakes like in NW ontario, 3 - winds can seriously restrict where you can fish. the surrounding land is flat and wind breaks/islands are few and far between 4 - better expect to spend in the $2500 - $3000USD range for a week. tips, guide fees and booze can really add up. otherwise, other groups i've talked with had an enjoyable trip but if you're used to structure fishing you'll totally have to change your ways. phish

here's a home made rod holder solution we've used for fly-ins. 1 1/4 inch pipe wired to the seats as shown. the pipes and wire role up with your bedroll and not much weight at all. phish

many thanks for all the wecome notes! i look forward to "meeting" all of you. in addition to my kearns lake report on walleyecentral, i've posted numerous other trip reports which you can view on their "canada eh?" board - - it's just too hard to re-post them all here. howdy to you all, phish

does naybody have any experience with Green Wilderness Lodge in the Gogama area - amd specifically their truck-in, boat in outpost cabin? considering a fall trip there. thanks, phish

i noted in reading moosebunks excellent article that: "The Attawapiskat won't be wild and free for long, it's fish will be dammed....." is this true? is there a dam planned for this river? anybody know for sure? thanks. phish

i just joined this board after reading the latest moosebunk "short story" on his trip to the attawapiskat - a link to which he posted on walleyecentral.com under the "canada eh?" board where i'm a charter member. realy enjoyed moosebunks posting and have scanned the topics here and decided to join in. i note from the member map that this is mostly a board consisting of south eastern ontario members - most all of my trips are to NW ontario and i go to fly-in outpost camps on private lakes. i post trip reports annually as "phishfearme" on WC. (i joined here as "phishfearme" also but for some reason only "phish" comes up - no big deal.) my latest trip report can be seen at: http://www.walleyecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183179 i have no economic interest in any of the outfitter i use - i only want to provide experience (good and bad) for others to refer to in the future. i note that "tooski" is also on this board - watch out! those clevelanders need constant monitoring. i'm looking forward to adding to this board and to "meet" new fishing buddies. phish