Lake of the Woods/Clouds/Rain/Lightning

[muskeybugged]

A little late on the report as I pondered on doing one at all, as I imaged my first report being so full of fish pictures........

 

The trip went like this..... We drove to the cottage (Bobcaygeon) Thursday the 9th to pick up my fish gear and other stuff.... Woke up Friday the 10th @ 6:30 and drove and drove and drove all the way to Thunder Bay, we rolled in around 10:30pm Friday night.... Hit the sauce for a few hours with the cousins aunts ..... We spent 2 nights in TB with 2 hours of fishing the second day from shore, notta thing. We then Left TB Sunday the 12th around noon to go to Fort Frances and visit with grandma, with a stop at Kakabeka Falls, very nice water fall along the highway to Fort Frances. We got to Fort Frances in no time as we found ourselves in the next time zone over and made up an hour. Great little visit there, Monday morning before everyone woke up I thought I’d take a run to timmies as grandma only has a one cup coffee maker, she lives by herself. On the way back I stop by my little honey hole of a fishing spot by the river, I only had one rod in the car with one lure ( Zara Spook ) the one that was tied to the rod, bass was all we caught there our last trip to Fort Frances so I figured giver a go'...... First 5-10 cast nothing....I was starting to lose interest staring off into space, thinking about how the coffee was getting cold when I hear it a decent splash after my top water even better the weight of a fish....expecting a small mouth it wasn’t a jumper. I get the fish close enough to realize it was a Walleye / Pickeral.... And a pretty decent one. First thought dang I hope I have the camera quick check of the car no camera no phone.....it was probably about 22-23" but had a wart of some kind, skinny, and discolored. So I put it back, no pic, no din din (Believe me or not, Sorry GCD). Nice visit with grandma none the less....

 

Tuesday the 14th it was off to the lodge time with excitement. Stop for groceries, beer, and stuff. Our beer stop came in this town called Emo and this fellow behind us at the Emo LCBO I noticed was wearing a Lake of the Woods lodge shirt..... I was like “No poop, that’s where were going"..... So we got to follow him to the boat launch and he helped by bringing some of our stuff on his boat as it started to rain by this point. 15 min boat ride to the Island where the lodge is and we settled in to out little cabin still raining outside, we had a nice little dinner in hopes that the rain would subside after dinner. Which it did, so we where getting all ready to go out when I noticed this big black cloud coming over the tree tops and thunder rumbles in the distance.... I say “I’ll get everything set up and ready to go for the morning.” Which we did and it was a good call, quite the storm it was that came through that night, but a cool light show.

 

We wake up the next morning to clouds and a brisk wind so we just trolled around for the morning and got nothing, the rain and wind had picked up and I said that it’s I’m hungry, cold and we ain’t catching at this point.... Back to home we went. Later that night the rain stop the wind calmed and we head back out around 6ish.... Pull into our spot and I start casting my top water bait twitch, twitch, twitch, SMASH a musky comes out of nowhere and erupts out of the water happening 15 feet from the boat it scared the carp out of me and I might have pulled the lure away from him. But hey we was onto something that makes em' bite... The tough part of the Musky game.

 

Kind of like this guys vid link below.

 

 

To make this long story short that happened to me 6 or 7 times where they would just miss getting the hook stuck, the first couple of times I can say angler error, but I mean to miss that many had to be some kind of bad luck. On a couple of different occasions while I was using bucktails, I had the 2 biggest fish I ever seen in Ontario freshwater follow my bucktail back to the boat with their nose right up the tails behind but they didn’t eat, sure gets the juices flowing though.

 

So we were seeing more musky then I had ever seen on a trip before and were getting some to bite.... The GF had 3 blow ups on her top water and 1 followed her back to the boat. No pictures to show for it though. One of her blow ups that she missed our lines had crossed and after it missed hers and mine was 10 feet beside hers, it went straight after mine. At last the weight of a fish, after a quick scrappy battle a few pics and we released this beat up 36"ish, the only one in the boat of the trip.

 

Man was she (The GF) a trooper this trip, the plan was to give musky a shot if we wasted to much time we'd go bait fishing. The Ski's kept us interested and she was interested in chucking baits with me, she even developed a blister. Every day at the lodge had clouds/wind and 4 out of the 6 times we went out on the water we were interrupted by rain, we didn’t see the sun the 4 days at the camp, except the morning we left, figures. She had more fun then I did, she wont say that but I could tell.

 

Stopped back at Grandma's in Fort Frances for dinner on the way back to TB that night. After leaving we encountered 4 moose while driving to TB, that was cool!

 

Man what a fishing trip..... I can’t blame anyone for only one fish, we just suck, well were good enough to make em bite, we were seeing all kinds, we just suck at hooking them.

 

On dropping the boat off in Bobcaygeon, I decided to try my new found confidence on Pigeon Lake..... Not a fish sighting in 2.5-3 hrs before I packed it in.

 

I’m going back to LOTW next year, possibly the same lodge as it's Canadian owned and operated! Thank heavens for family up that way or else it would look like I have a fishing problem! Lol

 

Thanks for reading...

[TC1OZ]

Catching one fish like that one would make up for a weeks worth of fishing with no bites!

 

Good read! Nice post!

[Joey]

Nice report, sounds like you had a good time despite the lack of fish. But you did catch a nice musky and had lots of follows. That's worth it right there. Plus the pickerel you caught, so not bad at all.

 

Thanks for sharing.

 

Joey

[solopaddler]

Great story thanks for posting. I think we've all had to deal with turbulent weather this summer so I can definitely relate.

It's a fantastic area, just being out there is worth the trip.