A Canadian Fishing Report...

My home lake, Sam Rayburn Reservoir is great fishing. It's so good that I am often not concerned with fishing anywhere else and I travel with a been there done that kind of attitude in regards to other water bodies. On our recent trip to Canada visiting Lake of the Woods and staying with my daughter and family at their cabin produced some good fishing for a first visit to the area and had us enjoying several tasty fish dinners. 

Seems that the lake is home to 70 species of fish with most anglers chasing muskie, walleye, smallmouth and largemouth bass, northern pike, lake trout and even crappie in spring. I won't get into the ice fishing side of things but I saw many anglers using familiar tactics and lures and once when passing close to a guide boat I saw paddle tail plastics nearly a foot long tied on their rods. I don't know what they were after but we caught smallmouth, Walleye and northern pike. 

Cathy caught this walleye on a Chartreuse curly tail jig with a 1/4 head. I had one walleye break my line at the dock and another that spit the hook back at me. If you heard walleye is tasty you heard right. 

I managed to catch 5 smallmouth and one throw back, all on a yellow curly tail jig. All fish caught from the dock except one caught from a paddle boat. We had a motor boat as well as canoes and kayaks available but fishing was good enough from the dock and paddling is work. Later a couple of guys came by in a bass boat casting the shoreline just like in East Texas and they said they always hit our dock for a few fish. 

That's a northern Pike on the right and I caught him on the yellow curly tail when I cast it behind a family of half grown mallard ducks swimming along the shore. Later I visited a store called Canadian Tire which is kind of like our Tractor Supply but with an extensive fishing section and saw duck lures for $30. I had visions of grandchildren whipping the water to a froth and catching big bass but to buy each a duck lure would have set me back $270 Canadian which really would have been $196 USA but I decided against it. The curly tails worked too well and I got plenty of them. 

Hamish tries his luck from the dock. The kids caught lots of crawfish on hot dogs and in traps and I could see that Cathy wanted to use them for bait but the kids crawfish raced and when I cleaned the smallmouth their bellies were full of crawfish. Probably smuggle in one of my dad's old crawfish pattern Bomber crankbaits next trip. 

 

If you visit Lake of the Woods take a pole.