Long Weekend, Long Report: two four Algonquin lakers
A bit late on this report maybe, but happy to say I finally have something to write about. On Victoria Day I got back from my 4-day Algonquin laker trip, which I had asked for advice on here http://forums.oodmag.com/showthread.php?t=57607 , thanks again to all who helped.
As is obvious from my posts I'm still a novice, I started fishing almost a year ago but have had little success so far -- a couple of little throw-back smallies at a cottage last fall, and some creek chubs in the summer that worked alright as raccoon bait. But I've been a canoe tripper all my life, and had been dreaming of lakers since I took up the rod, so I was excited to try the backcountry lake trout thing and hopefully catch a keeper for once.
I went with my friends Jason, Brett and Eddie. Jason and Brett have been fishing for a long time but never very avidly, and never for lakers. Eddie doesn't really fish at all or even like to eat fish, he just wanted to make the heads and tails into some kind of traditional soup from the old country, and he has shoulders like a grizzly bear so he's always welcome on canoe trips. On this one in particular, we had a 3 km portage to get us to Lake Louisa, where we were spending all 3 nights. Louisa's lake trout are small, as there are no fatty forage fish like cisco in the lake for them to grow big on, but abundant, from what I'd read.
Day 1: Slow on the Up-take
We drove to Algonquin on Friday morning, passing a couple of moose along Hwy 60. With all the getting organized, paddling, and grunting through that portage, it was maybe 5 by the time we were set up at our campsite, in the main basin on the west end of Lake Louisa. Once the tents and the bear hang were up we jumped in the canoes and started trolling past points and drop-offs near the site… not even a nibble, and we were starving. As we ate hot dogs and watched the sun go down, we commented that we should have eaten them when we first arrived and gone fishing now, at last light, but our eagerness to catch something for dinner had made us miss the dusk bite.
Day 2: Signs of Life
At about 6:30 on the Saturday morning I dragged Eddie into a canoe and had him paddle it back and forth past a granite cliff while I trolled. Finally I had a bite – and after a bit of a fight there was a pretty little laker in the canoe, 40 cm, which would be pretty typical here. The others cheered when we brought it back, excited that there was hope and breakfast in sight, but their efforts over the next hour or two didn’t produce any more fish. I filleted the fish and we grilled it over the fire with olive oil and garlic, and shared it. Delicious.
Took it easy the rest of the day. Eddie made his Russian soup with the laker carcass and some vegetables, Brett and I explored the portage down to Florence Lake hoping to find a brookie hole along the creek it follows, but didn’t. This time we had an earlier dinner, pasta, and Brett and I went out in a canoe afterwards. He got a 44 cm laker, pretty close to where I did in the morning. It was hooked near the surface and reeled in pretty quick, so there was still a lot of spunk in it when it landed in the boat, and it snarled at me. Anyone ever hear a lake trout snarl? Anyway, we were paddling back to the campsite when Brett caught another one (40 cm), so close that he commented he could have cast to it from the shore of the site. Made me realize shore fishing wasn’t a bad idea while we were here.
The two fish would be our breakfast the next day, and as it got dark we had a heated debate over how best to keep them overnight without losing them to animals or spoilage or attracting undue bear attention. Eventually we settled on putting them both inside my 3L platypus bag (had to trim the tails), fill that with cold water from the lake, seal it off and hang it with the food. Worked fine.
Day 3: Fishin’ Mission
We didn’t go fishing Sunday morning, we just ate the previous night’s catch for breakfast. This time we fried the fillets in a secret batter mix made by Jason’s mom. I was skeptical about frying trout, but I had to admit it was better than the first one.
The plan for the day was a daytrip down through Florence, Frank and Rence Lakes to the Galipo River to look for brookies. While on the first portage, a guy going the other way said he’d seen holes full of brookies on the creek segment between Rence and Harry Lakes. We still cruised the originally-planned river to look for wildlife and try for brookies at a waterfall (turned out to be too buggy to fish for more than a few minutes), and then we headed to the spot we were told about. Started getting excited seeing fish dash past our canoes, until we managed a good look at them and saw they were suckers – hands up if you saw that one coming. After spending some time standing on a sunny bank unsuccessfully trying to get the suckers interested in our lures (though one got snagged and had to be landed and released), we continued back towards Louisa.
On the way we spent a little while fishing in Frank Lake. Jason hooked into what he said was a big fish, but lost it just as it came boatside, partly because our only net was in the other canoe with me and Brett and we were out of shouting distance. Jason said the fish looked like a lake trout. “Jeff’s map” says it’s only brook trout in Frank, so it would have been interesting to land it and confirm the species. Oh well.
The sun was getting low by the time we were back on Louisa so we started fishing in that spot by the cliff without going back to the site first. Brett got a bite first, and though he was in the other canoe now we were close enough to share the net and he landed the 40 cm lake trout. After that Jason finally caught one, at 37 cm.
By now it was getting dark so we went back to the campsite. Jason and Brett went to the fish-cleaning rock to clean the fish, Eddie worked on the fire, and I went to the rock with the steep drop-off to try to catch one from shore. I figured I was given this “chore” out of pity for not having caught a fish that day, but pretty soon into it I actually had one on. I pulled it up on shore and then chased it around the rock for a few frantic seconds until I had the 44 cm laker in hand. Then I took over the fish-cleaning file by headlamp light and we feasted on the 3 lakers.
Day 4: Two for the Road
We had all agreed that there would be no fish for breakfast on Monday (departure day); anyone who caught anything that morning would take it home to share with the wife/girlfriend. At 6 am I was up, hoping to get in a canoe with Brett, but he sounded like he’d be a while so I started casting from the shore. Felt a few nibbles I couldn’t hook, but at 7:00 I had a bite, pumped in and scooped up the biggest laker of the trip at 47 cm. Right about then Brett got out of his tent and I said “hey sorry man, I broke your… uh… record.”
The two of us got in a canoe and headed for the cliffside honey hole, where Brett quickly landed one. At 38 cm it was on the small side and he briefly considered releasing it, but decided it would do just fine as a skillet dinner back home.
The campsite had a slab of ice still hanging on in a shady spot. When we were packed and ready to go, I broke a chunk off the ice, lay it in the back of my canoe, and put the fish on top of it, covered in a soaked bandana. When we got to the portage I did away with the ice, wrapped the fish in the bandana, put them in the net and twisted it off, and strapped the net to the outside of a backpack. Once we were done the portage I just kept the fish in the net and dunked them in the lake every so often. I’d left a cooler back at the car, so we bought ice as soon as we started going.
A couple of days later I filleted the big fish in the comfort of an indoor kitchen, brushed the fillets with a mix of lemon juice, maple syrup, mustard and crushed ginger, grilled them out on the patio and at them with the girlfriend.
Main Take-homes:
• In spite of everything people say about springtime lakers feeding near surface all day, the trout of Lake Louisa were very much early- and late-day biters. The only bite anyone felt between 8 am and 8 pm was the one Jason lost on Frank Lake.
• Two of the three biggest fish caught on the trip were from shore. This makes sense, since there are minnows near shore but lakers dwelling further out have to subsist on insects and plankton, given the lack of deep-water forage fish in the lake.
• As the least experienced angler on the trip I held my own (3 out of 8 lakers), but every one that I caught was caught while I was the only one with a rod in my hand. I guess what I lack in skill I make up for in fishing more?
Two of the lakes I caught were using a Wabler and minnow rigged blasted_saber’s way (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/blas..._0149.jpg.html), but with a single hook instead of treble, and a store-bought preserved minnow instead of a homemade salty. My third was using an unbaited Wabler with the treble hook it came with. Brett’s fish were caught on various spoons and spinners, all unbaited. Jason’s fish (including the one that got away) both took a scented artificial minnow on a single hook, no lure. I was using 8 lb flouro
And yes, we ate all the lakers we caught. As you can see from reading this, we fished very conservatively, and we could have clocked a lot more rod hours and caught a lot more fish if we wanted to catch and release a whole bunch (eg we didn’t fish Sunday morning and only some of us on Saturday). All the ones we caught were perfect eaters and we never limited out completely as a group.
Now for some pics.
