Trip Report - Kearns Lake with Thousand Lakes Outfitters June 2-10, 2025

[phishfearme]

After a 10+ year hiatus away from this lake (mainly going to North Caribou Lake) our group returned to Kearns Lake and its "Taj Mahal" cabin. 

I'll get to the fishing in a moment, but the facilities are such a highlight that they need to be covered first. I posted a video on YouTube which you can see at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5G-kF7QoCw

A quick summary of what was done during our hiatus:
- installation of a solar DC to AC system - now the cabin is powered by 120V AC just like home
- two electric LG fridge/freezers - REALLY nice
- Starlink internet!!!!! fast and reliable - make calls and texts as much as you want
- a propane based "Fireplace" which is really a room heater - NO MORE HAULING FIREWOOD!!
- new mattresses which are remarkably comfortable
- whole house water filter - drink water from the tap!
- Tankless hot water heater - close enough to the shower that the usual hot-cold-hot-cold water cycle did not exist
- the HDTV has a TV package that is also almost like home.

See the video for more details.

OK - the fishing - we were very curious to see if things had changed over our 10+ year hiatus.

First walleye which we found very strange. They seemed to be missing from all the usual places IN THE LAKE. We caught some but nothing like what this lake has produced in the past.

Fishing the Grew River though (which is really a creek by PA standards) was a totally different story. Walleye were stacked into many places and were almost too easy to catch - ALMOST! Given the early season dates we were there, I thought that there would be some walleye in the river but most should be out into the lake by now. The pilot did tell us that it has been a very unusually cold spring so maybe that was the cause - and the spawn was very delayed - so walleye were still near their spawning grounds which are mainly in this river.

In previous trips we commonly caught walleye in the 23-24 inch range and larger but only two fish were notably large - my 26.5 incher and another 24.5 incher.

Now for pike - past trips produced good numbers of larger pike but this time the numbers were off the wall-eye high - we caught 26 pike over 34 inches the largest being 41 with 5 at 38 and 5 at 37. I say "off the wall-eye high" because we caught the majority while fishing twister jigs for walleye - both in the river and the lake. But even when we did troll/cast specifically for pike we caught jumbos. For such a small lake these are excellent numbers - and most were just plain FAT!

OK - that's enough - very simply - there is NO BETTER BUSH CABIN on a private lake (no other cabins on the lake). It being attached to such a terrific walleye/pike lake makes things just plain BEST!

phish