Salerno Lake near Irondale

[Starcraft]

Hi.  Anyone fish this lake before?  Headed there shortly to a cottage there and plan on doing some fishing.  Looking more for numbers rather than size to keep the kids busy but big is good too.

[Ronzo]

Hello, I've fished this a number of times, however not in the past five years. In that area (Gooderham/Irondale), Salerno was always one of the more heavily targeted lakes because of it's population of musky and walleye. There's a good bass population and lots of panfish, musky are rare these days, and the last time I was there we got into some small walleye at dusk. There are lots of weeds, so if you've got a boat you can usually have decent luck drifting along the weedlines outside of the main channel. There are a couple rocks in the south end of the lake that are usually reasonable bass spots if you cast around.

[Starcraft]

Thanks. I'm mostly interested in bass, smallmouth preferably so will try those rocks. My kids would like to catch a musky as they've never caught one but I'd say that's bonus. Didn't realize that the lake received that much pressure. Thought it was fairly secluded. But good to know. 

[Ronzo]

Well, I suppose "pressure" is all relative. In that little area all of the lakes are secluded. You've got White that, AFAIK, has no real boat launch (although we've carried a boat down by the dam and launched that way) and no walleye, Fortescue, which is off the beaten path as well but has no walleye, and Contau, which has M/W/B, but a bit of an ad-hoc launch and is quite boggy. Salerno's got the big three species and is the nicest lake to fish of the lakes in that chain, and I would say that the number of boats I've seen fishing while I've been fishing is higher than the other lakes. It's certainly not Kawarthas-level pressure though.

[Starcraft]

Yes, White has no boat launch which I suppose is good for fishing.  I was looking at renting a cottage there but settled on Salerno mostly due to cost - the cottage on White didn't really offer more than the one on Salerno.  Thinking about it though, perhaps being on White would be better for fishing, at least theoretically.  If we caught a bunch of smallmouth a few with good size, we'd be pretty happy.  At least I've heard with Salerno, there aren't too many hazards on the lake.  Thanks for all the info.

[Ronzo]

I think you made the right choice, I'd choose fishing Salerno 10 out of 10 times over White. Come to think of it, growing up around there I've heard stories about catches on pretty well every lake, but can't recall ever hearing about anything on White, or local guys hitting it up because they heard good things. This time of year, being pretty shallow it might be pretty slow.

I used to mow an old timer's lawn in Gooderham, he was born sometime around 1910. He swore that when he was younger, you could almost walk across the muskie spawning in the creek between White and Fortescue (aka Black), there were so many of them. No longer the case, but cool to think of what once was. 

Hope you and the kids have some good luck up there.

[Starcraft]

Thanks for the replies. Up there now for a couple of days. Fishing has been on. A maybe 2 lb smb and a couple others that are a pound. Quite a few smaller ones. Our best fish was just off the dock. With the boat we've caught a few towards shore where there's structure but they've mostly been small. Seen quite a few people trolling, so we tried it ourselves and ended up with nothing. Will try going out when it cools down again. There's some rocks and the south side of the lake.  Was hoping for some bass there but nothing.  Going to try some of the rivers, falls, bridges/dams around the area.