Key Harbour Fishing Report
Here’s the report from my trip to the Key harbour area from June 27 – July 4.
The fishing was on and off for bass and pike, and unfortunately for us the walleye fishing was totally off. We put in some serious time fishing our usual walleye spots as well as trying some new areas around the French river. During the course of the week, I marked a couple of spots where my fish finder was full of fish (walleye), but they wouldn’t bite no matter what we tried. I realized half way through the trip that the walleye bite was so tough because of the mayfly hatch. There were times when you would be trolling through a bay and there were 1,000’s of mayfly nymphs on the surface... the fish had their buffet already going for them. I did speak to a couple of other anglers about their luck with walleye and one said that they had caught nothing and the other said that there was another group at their lodge who caught 2 walleye, but there were nice sized (6 – 8 lbs). So that made me feel better knowing that we weren’t the only ones having problems catching walleye.
Luckily on our last day we managed to find the smallmouth bass pattern. We ended up trolling and drifting a shallow channel between some islands and were able to catch a number of them and of course lose a few. During the week, we also had some luck with pike, the biggest being 10 lbs.
What had to be the fish battle of the trip was my first and only encounter with a channel catfish. I was trolling my worm harness in an area that had produced walleye in previous trips. After several minutes of no action I went to put my rod into the rod holder when I felt a sudden strike. First thinking it was the bottom, my reel starts to scream. Then I have visions that it’s a large walleye, so I get super excited. When I start to try to put some pressure on this fish, I realize it’s either the world record walleye or a large pike or musky. It’s literally peeling line off my reel to the point that I thought it was going to spool me. My medium action rod is bent in half and I tighten the drag so that it doesn’t spool me. I keep trying to make up ground on the fish, yet it keeps running. Finally we get a glimpse of the beast and we see it’s a large catfish. It makes a couple more runs straight down before we manage to net it - I’d say 10 minutes of fighting beforehand. I try to pick it up by putting my thumbs in its mouth (noodling style) and it bites down on them...ouch! So I decide not to pick it up, but measure the fish and then release it from the net. Its measures 29” and I’d guess it was around 15 - 20 lbs. This thing fought like a tank and it was a fun battle trying to get this fish in. Definitely a big surprise as we were trolling around 1.2 – 1.4 mph and my worm harness wasn’t stationary. So much for catfish being lazy bottom feeders!
All in all it was still a fun trip as we covered a lot of water and beautiful country; we went to the Bustard Islands, French River, Pickerel River and all around the Key Harbour. I should be back there at the end of July, so I’m optimistic that we can find the walleye then.
