Cookslavs "Specktacular" Algonquin adventure

[Cookslav]

Its been a long and cold winter and now that the ice has subsided and finally gave way to explore the Algonquin interior once again I jumped at the opportunity!

Truth be told I have been anticipating this trip since the day I left the shade of her pines last year, and it once again left me both satisfied and of course wanting more….

 

Our journey began in Kitchener at 4am…an awful hour to be up, but it’s a necessity to be on the road this early in order to make it to our destination with enough light to make camp. With 6.5 hours drive time and and 7 hours paddle/portaging to go we had to hustle to make camp if we wanted time to set up, and collect wood before dark.

 

The trip started great as we had an easy cruise along the roads until about 7am when we came across an accident…and older couple had hit a large bull Moose. We stopped to make sure they were ok, and they were, but their car was a wreck. Surprisingly in the fashion of urban….or is it “rural” legend the Moose walked away!!! There was no blood on the scene and the Bull apparently fell over onto the car as it stopped crushing the windshield, hood, and part of the roof and got up a might bit angry as it then proceeded to ram and kick another car who stopped to see the spectacle before taking off into the woods.

The accident happened out of cell phone range, so we gladly drove ahead and called the police before continuing on our way….I hoped the good Karma would come around later on the trip.

 

We set sail on time into a beautiful sunny, and blissfully calm morning…not a ripple on the water.

We roared through the first few lakes, and portages with a head full of steam, but quickly lost speed once we hit the big portage….We’ve been there before, and it’s a monster so we knew what we were in for.

Its not the longest I’ve ran, but it is by far the toughest I’ve encountered to date. It starts with a good 90’ climb over uneven rocks, and loose gravel, with no real definition to lead you in any one clear direction so all you can do it continue along checking for cut branches to lead you on for next kilometre as you rise 190’ from end to end.

 

 

The trail is just a nasty series of hills that kicks you in the teeth pretty good…but its fun I suppose. Now in fairness I’m not a light traveler…we like our beer, so we were definitely carrying a lot more weight then most would dare, so I suppose the portage could have been a bit easier.

Every portage was grid locked when we hit the end

 

 

But as far as I was concerned the pain would be worth having cold brews later and the thought of some celebratory beers complimented with fresh trout kept us trudging ahead.

 

Surprisingly we made camp 1.5 hours earlier then expected!

This year My Cousin and his young son were sadly unable to make the trip so it seemed not having a youngster needing a few breaks here and there, and the perfect weather sped us up considerably.

We quickly got to work taking advantage of our early arrival, and set up camp.

Tents were popped up, wood was collected by the cord it seemed.

We set up a 30’x 30’ tarp with a center pole(big top style), and pumped our selves a 5 gallons of fresh water from the Katadyn filter, and made some dinner all before dark!!!

Several small annoyances came to light at that point.

Last year on this same site we had erected a camp table with logs, stones and the top of an old Thunder box we had found….it was no longer there?

It appears some lazy folk thought it would be easy fire wood I suppose…..It was probably the same lazy buggers who left a Garbage bag of tin cans, and other crap tossed in the bushes!

I was pretty pissed off by this display of idiocy but as luck would have it, one of our party found yet Another 2 Thunder box lids while searching for fire wood…it seemed Karma had come back around.

So we “re-erected” a new table and this one would be even better then the old one!

 

 

We also made a cleaning table for the fish we hoped would come later out of the second lid.

 

 

So I suppose we came out ahead after all…and of course we burnt the left over garbage and packed out the tin cans left behind by the pigs who stayed there opening weekend.

(I hoped the good Karma would come back around to us yet again)

The night came fast, the beers flowed cold, and sleep came very easy under our tarp now complete with a lantern hanger

 

 

Day 2 was another beauty!

The morning was calm and clear and we hit the water around 8am.

 

 

I was running a very small silver blue fox vibrato, and my Partner was running a silver and black original Floating Rapala…it didn’t take long to find a groove.

Right off the bat My brother nailed a healthy 17.5” speck, only to be followed up with another 15 minutes later and then it went Quiet….very quiet.

The wind picked up a bit, and got the tree’s moving a bit which was fine, but it just wouldn’t stay consistent. I don’t know how you all feel about it, but variable winds in a canoe is the equivalent of nails on a chalk board to me….its nearly impossible to set up a drift, so the constant correcting was driving me nuts!!!

 

So we packed it in for the afternoon and decided to wait for it to calm down a bit, and maybe enjoy a few malt beverages. Back at camp the other guys began to check in one by one, and as it turns out they had caught a few fish as well in the 16-17” range as well, but as fate would have it all were caught right off the bat shortly after sunrise, then the Bite went cold on them as well…It seems the early birds were catching and the late comers were left fishless.

After dinner we headed out again, and managed another 2 fish for our canoe, and a few more were caught by the boys as well…only 4 were kept while another 6 were released to swim.

Here are some of the fish that day,

 

 

So now of course I got to work and earned my place in camp.

I cleaned the fish up on our cleaning board, and fired up the Coleman for our first official trout fry…mmmmm

what beautiful red flesh!

 

 

That night we swapped info around the fire, and this is what we discovered.

All fish caught were no less then 15” and no more then 17.5”

All fish were caught on silver coloured spinners or Black and silver Rapala.

All fish were caught between 8-9am and 8pm all fish came off shoals or boulders in 10-12’ of water

Not one fish was pulled out of the wood. Water temps were 51 at the surface, and the fish were loaded with dragan fly nymph, & leeches….this was polar opposite of last year?

If any of you recall last year most of our fish were pulled from the wood, and chalked full of stone flies?

But then again water temps were warmer, and the fish were way less active this year it seemed…

 

Day 3 was a carbon copy weather wise but the winds were much stronger….

We trolled a lot, and our fish count was down…they were not active on the shoals, and casting the shore structure was tough while being blown down the lake. The wind was seriously strong at times….I can recall a few times paddle trolling when the wind not only stopped us dead, but also pushed us backwards!

After a fishless morning we decided to hike to a nearby lake for some recon.

The lake I was looking for was about 2.5km from camp, but had no portages so I decided to just check it out for future reference and leave the gear behind.

A couple of the boys joined me, and we headed on our merry way.

We traversed a few large hills like this,

 

 

and at one point found myself standing on the ridge of a 40’ cliff, with a view to die for….unfortunately my Batteries died(never by no name batteries for your camera…they suck)

But some of the boys took pictures and forwarded them to me luckily

 

 

When we finally made it to the lake I was a bit disappointed….I could not find any minnows, leeches or crawfish. My guess is this lake does not contain any fish….there was significant depth, and a lot of bugs, but the absence of bait fish has me sceptical. Either way the walk was fun, and it was a pretty little lake.

 

 

These May fly’s(Hendrickson I think?)

Were beginning to Emerge….very cool thing to watch them molt!!!

It literally only takes 30 second to a minute to watch them transform and fly away.

 

 

We also found countless deer, moose and wolf tracks, and found some bones left from a kill.

More then likely a Moose calf, as it was to small for a full grown adult and way to large to be deer bones.

 

 

One neat find was a couple of fresh bear tracks and droppings as well.

(little did we know how significant that would be later.)

Also the old growth was just awesome, Some of these trees were just HUGE!!!

 

 

We made our way back and fished a bit more that night despite the fact it never did calm down.

As our luck would have it we ended up catching another 3 fish that evening on the Rapalas during a troll.

 

 

This last one I caught was the laugh of the trip…we called it the football LOL!

It was only 14” long but had an 11.25” girth!

 

 

This fish had a serious weight problem so I prepared him the way he would have wanted to go…

in a rich onion infused butter poach mmmmm…..LOL!

 

 

We only kept 2 that night as they were both wounded pretty bad…the fat bugger literally took the entire Rapala in, and was bleeding like the pig he was….he had a zero change of survival.

That night we settled in, and played some cards under the tarp as the rain had finally caught up to us.

So we drank our heavy yet delicious beer and talked until midnight or so and retired for the night….

Only to be woke a few hours later by some strange grunting, and sniffing!

It took me a minute to know what was happening…We had a bear in camp!!!!

Luckily he only grazed though sniffing the tents(filled with people smelling of fish) and took off once some of the boys began to panic and yelled out a bunch or expletives that went a little like

“oh my God….what the hell is that out side my tent!!!!”

 

Guess we should have maybe washed down the fish cleaning board

 

Day 4 was windy…again

But the skies also threatened rain today so we dawned the rain gear and headed out.

 

 

Some of crew was still fishless so we made the decision to try a 3rd nearby lake.

It was a bit larger, and deeper which we hoped would be cooler, and potentially have some more active fish.

It certainly was cooler and actually still had a bit of ice in the shady areas around shore.

 

 

This lake proved to be on fire…

Spinners, jigs, Rapalas, pretty much anything you could cast and retrieve was pulling in fish.

The lake produced an additional 16 fish that day all 15-17”

Surface temps were 48 degrees in this lake and fish came predominantly of sharp cliff walls, and boulders in particular….and they hit like freight trains!

What a change between these 2 lakes?

We literally more then doubled our fish count in a matter of 5 hours.

I’m not 100% sure if the fish were on because of the cooler temps, or if the passing warm front had anything to do with it but later on when cleaning the 5 fish kept there stomach contents revealed nothing…

These fish had no more then 2 or 3 stone flies, or a passing dragon fly nymph in their bellies?

Not sure why they were not eating, or why they turned on so suddenly, but I’m glad they did so I won’t question it!!!

 

 

That’s about it….

We headed out early the next morning, and once again….battled the wind.

The last big lake was a bit treacherous in the wind as the white caps washed over the sides of the canoe a few times, but over all the blue skies made for an uneventful exit to my favourite place on earth!

 

Now I’m relaxed, sunburnt, sore, well fed, and back to work…boo!!!!

 

 

 

Cheers,

[rob v]

Nice report - thanks very much for sharing. For those of us not able to get on such outtings it's great of you to share so we can enjoy also. Nice fish too !

[ColdH20guy]

gotta love reading these reports! great job and glad you guys had a blast!

[irishfield]

Thanks for sharing Cookslav !! A beauty report, from a beauty spot.

[johnnyb]

Fantastic report, Cook! Took me a bit longer than 5 mins toread, and I imagine it took quite a bit of time to write and post...thanks for sharing! Love the detailed info on depths, temps and stomach contents I will keep those details in mind when I'm hunting specks soon!!!

[kennyman]

That was a fantastic report. Thanks for taking me on the journey with you.

[MJL]

Epic report Cookslav!

 

I can't believe how red the meat is on those brookies. At first when I saw the zip-lock baggies, I thought you were using skeins for bait which were treated with pro-cure.LOL

 

Thanks for sharing

[danbouck]

Great Report

[Zubris21]

Great report! Thanks for sharing it!

[danc]

What a pleasure to read this report. Fantastic photos. I'm a little surprised at how colorful some of the fish are at this time of year. Rapalas? I've caught more than my share of Brookies on Countdowns. I've got a box full of them that are just begging to be used. Soon I hope. To this day I've not figured out what turns on the bite for lake dwelling Brook Trout. I've caught them in all kinds of weather patterns and at all times of the day. And likewise, I couldn't buy a fish under similar circumstances. About the only thing that I've concluded is that a chop on the water is a good thing. Maybe.

 

Thanks for sharing your adventure with us.

[wuchikubo]

great report with some beautiful scenery and nice fish! Thanks for sharing

[solopaddler]

Specktacular indeed, I figured you guys would do well.

Some beautiful fish there bud, well done!

[canadian_copper]

THAT WAS AWESOME DUDE. GREAT REPORT

[b2kptbo]

Quite the adventure 4 sure, thanks...

[Musky or Specks]

That report was great. Actually made me miss early season BT's in the park. Ive avoided going for a long time because its got to be such a zoo. You may have convinced me to start doing it again.

[corvette1]

awesome trip congrats

[John]

Terrific report, thanks for sharing.

[Spiel]

Yesterday it was Solo's report with coffee and today it was yours. I could be happy starting all my mornings like this. A very enjoyable read, thank you.

[troutologist]

Great write up and photos. you guys had some good luck with the specks for sure.

 

In those lakes do you tend to catch all the fish of similar size or are there a chance of bigger fish? I ask becasuse I fish some lakes/ponds of fair size that hold seemingly only one size of fish....a 2lber would be on the large size.

 

 

T minus 96hrs til departure for me

[Cookslav]

Thanks for all the kind words folks

 

 

I'm a little surprised at how colorful some of the fish are at this time of year. Rapalas? I've caught more than my share of Brookies on Countdowns.

Ya Dan I noticed the spawning colours on a few of the fish as well?

Not sure why either...no eggs so

Yup the Rapalas took the lions share of fish on the trip, more out of situational nesesity LOL....they float, so they didn't get hung up in the event the wind blew us around and I had to stop to correct the troll direction.

 

Ive avoided going for a long time because its got to be such a zoo. You may have convinced me to start doing it again

M&S,

Truth be told we didn't see much traffic other then a small group camped on a near by lake....they came on to our lake to try the fishing, and we checked theres out as well, but that was the only traffic we saw, but then again that portage keeps a lot of the zoo at bay

Lots of Interior to explore yet give her a whirl!

 

In those lakes do you tend to catch all the fish of similar size or are there a chance of bigger fish

Troutologist,

Nope there are "a lot" of smaller dinks, and some bigguns as well....

Last year we caught a ton of 12-14" fish but also one of the guys lost a beauty boat side around 20-22" we figure, and this year was the same, my brother had a biggun on but was shook before we got a real good look at her so I'd hate to speculate on the size.

They are in there...

Edited May 8, 2009 by Cookslav

[Baptiste]

I ENVY You! (except for the hard work part) I've got to try this some day.

Fantastic report, thanks for sharing.

[BillM]

Awesome report man!! Some of the colours on those fish are gorgeous. Looks like you found the lakes with the fish

[Nemo]

Cookslav I was waiting for this one. Great report. Love the fish pics. Nothing like cracking a cold one and having a nice meal of specks.

[Bly]

Thank you for taking the time to put that together! Fantastic pictures and write up.

[Joey]

What a great report, makes me want to be there right now. Fantastic pics.

 

Joey