So...after a 2 year Covid hiatus, my sibs and I resumed our annual walleye & northern trip to NW Ontario. This year was a fly-in with our new favorite outfitter, Slate Falls Outposts (our 2nd time with them - 1st class outfit!)
Mostly, these trips are focused on jigging for walleye with spin rods and plastics - sassy shads or curly tails, usually. This year I was determined to fish my fly gear more, and had brought along my 8wt BAG and 11wt NRX. The 11wt to toss the gigantic tiger muskie flies generously sent to me by @clarkman in hopes of tempting a big pike. I had also tied a variety of jiggy flies to drop to the walleye with a type 7.
Flight in was awesome, cabin & boats were great, and the lake (all to ourselves) was gorgeous.
Now, we've been doing this trip yearly (with various lake destinations) for maybe 30 years (OMG we're getting old!) and my BIL is a certified walleye guru...so it's not like we were clueless out there. We know how fish in these lakes typically behave, and last time out (different lake but same chain), same week of the year, they behaved like typical walleye and pike.
This time, things were a little weird...
Where walleye typically school up on bottom structure, and at any given time will tend to be found at a consistent depth throughout the lake, this time they were completely scattered almost uniformly, as were the northerns. We caught fish fom 2 to 35 feet deep, and almost always only one or two per spot. We would often pull one walleye and two pike from the same area - also odd, since walleye aren't usually fond of hanging out with their predators. For the first time ever, we fished our jigs on steel leaders after having walleye bite them off! On one occasion, a smallish pike shredded my steel leader.
We opted not to go swimming after that.
Adding to the strangeness was that probably 95% of the 'eyes were 17-20", with the largest at 22". I only saw maybe 4 smaller ones the whole week. Pike were more variable, with two 32"ers the big fish for our group - both caught on walleye jigs. I got lots of pike in the 24" range on topwater, but no big guys on the tiger muskie flies. Another oddness - usually we can call what species we've hooked after a few seconds based on how they fight. Northerns bulldog and dive deep when they get to the boat. Walleye thrash a little then come in like a wet sock. This time, walleye were fighting like crazy and diving under the boat, and we had several pike that ran straight out and then went airborn like a freaking trout!
Toward the end of the week we managed to find a couple deep humps holding more than the usual couple fish, and since some of those were bigger pike, I swapped out my jig for my 11wt, and dropped one of Clarkman's 7" baitfish patterns down there on a T5/7...and promptly started catching walleye on it!
I even put a 5" spoon on my BAG (how's that for dirtbag fishing!), and caught walleye trolling it through weed beds in 4' of water.
We all had the distinct feeling that we were actually in a holodeck, participating in a beta test of a Canadian Fly-in game, where the programmers didn't quite have their shit together yet. There were other odd things, like wind whipping trees around wildly but leaving the water dead calm, and a distinct lack of wildlife. One bear, one caribou, one woodchuck, and maybe 5 ducks.
We had a ball, the fish tasted great, but dang, was that an odd trip!
Mostly, these trips are focused on jigging for walleye with spin rods and plastics - sassy shads or curly tails, usually. This year I was determined to fish my fly gear more, and had brought along my 8wt BAG and 11wt NRX. The 11wt to toss the gigantic tiger muskie flies generously sent to me by @clarkman in hopes of tempting a big pike. I had also tied a variety of jiggy flies to drop to the walleye with a type 7.
Flight in was awesome, cabin & boats were great, and the lake (all to ourselves) was gorgeous.
Now, we've been doing this trip yearly (with various lake destinations) for maybe 30 years (OMG we're getting old!) and my BIL is a certified walleye guru...so it's not like we were clueless out there. We know how fish in these lakes typically behave, and last time out (different lake but same chain), same week of the year, they behaved like typical walleye and pike.
This time, things were a little weird...
Where walleye typically school up on bottom structure, and at any given time will tend to be found at a consistent depth throughout the lake, this time they were completely scattered almost uniformly, as were the northerns. We caught fish fom 2 to 35 feet deep, and almost always only one or two per spot. We would often pull one walleye and two pike from the same area - also odd, since walleye aren't usually fond of hanging out with their predators. For the first time ever, we fished our jigs on steel leaders after having walleye bite them off! On one occasion, a smallish pike shredded my steel leader.
We opted not to go swimming after that.
Adding to the strangeness was that probably 95% of the 'eyes were 17-20", with the largest at 22". I only saw maybe 4 smaller ones the whole week. Pike were more variable, with two 32"ers the big fish for our group - both caught on walleye jigs. I got lots of pike in the 24" range on topwater, but no big guys on the tiger muskie flies. Another oddness - usually we can call what species we've hooked after a few seconds based on how they fight. Northerns bulldog and dive deep when they get to the boat. Walleye thrash a little then come in like a wet sock. This time, walleye were fighting like crazy and diving under the boat, and we had several pike that ran straight out and then went airborn like a freaking trout!
Toward the end of the week we managed to find a couple deep humps holding more than the usual couple fish, and since some of those were bigger pike, I swapped out my jig for my 11wt, and dropped one of Clarkman's 7" baitfish patterns down there on a T5/7...and promptly started catching walleye on it!
I even put a 5" spoon on my BAG (how's that for dirtbag fishing!), and caught walleye trolling it through weed beds in 4' of water.
We all had the distinct feeling that we were actually in a holodeck, participating in a beta test of a Canadian Fly-in game, where the programmers didn't quite have their shit together yet. There were other odd things, like wind whipping trees around wildly but leaving the water dead calm, and a distinct lack of wildlife. One bear, one caribou, one woodchuck, and maybe 5 ducks.
We had a ball, the fish tasted great, but dang, was that an odd trip!
