MANITOBA
The weather has settled down a little bit since our last fishing report two weeks ago. Temperatures are back up to the hot/hot range so fishing early and lake becomes a better option.
EASTERN MANITOBA
Crappies don’t mind a little warm weather and will rise off the bottom as the day goes on. I have good luck on the Lee River. We find the bigger crappie a bit deeper that this time last year. Look for larger fish came in 16 to 20 feet on the edge of big mud/sand flats. While they are easy to find at this time of year , not so easy to catch.
TERMINAL TACKLE
We have had our best success with a light bottom bouncer rigged with a small smiley blade tipped with a once inch pink power tube. Funny as it sounds, when you pick up the troll speed it seems to trigger more bites. It always pays to experiment and we try a variety of techniques including jigging and trolling with Ripping Raps. Cover water and you will catch fish!
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Wes David was in Manitoba last week filming at Bakers Narrows Lodge and this is the pattern that worked best for him.
Bakers Narrows Lodge, Northern Manitoba. Wes David-Fishing the Wild West t.v.
Bakers Narrows Lodge, can accommodate any angler’s needs with self-guided or fully guided fishing adventures. Bakers Narrows Lodge is well known for its quality lake trout fishing. However, it also has excellent northern pike and walleye fishing.
FOCUS ON LAKERS
I spent four days fishing Bakers Narrows with my main focus on the lake trout. We were fishing in tough weather conditions with extreme heat during the day and rolling thunder, lightning, and rain during the evenings. However, we found lake trout on sunken pinnacles in 88 to 110 feet of water. Spinnows from BuzzBomb Tackle worked in the evenings, but in the morning, lake trout were caught with 1 or 2 oz jigs, tipped with soft white plastic baits, resting an inch off the bottom. I believe the soft subtle bite in the morning was due to the pressure change of the thunder, lightning, and rain throughout the night.
If you plan on booking a trip to Bakers Narrows Lodge, I highly recommend hiring one of the lodge’s guides. The guides are extremely knowledgeable about the lake and the movement of the lake trout and will turn your fishing trip into a fun fishing adventure.
NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO
Mike Corrigan
With the warm weather, the Musky in the smaller lakes seem to have moved into their preferred summer locations. Weed growth has now filled out in the usual spots, albeit a bit late. Fishing was very good early in the week, but with the current heat wave things have slowed; I am seeing lots of “lazy”, noncommittal, follows. Poppers in orange and black have been successful in the early morning. Surface water temperatures in some of the small lakes are approaching 27C, which makes releasing a Musky tricky, so take care or consider trying larger water bodies to reduce angling mortality.
I had the opportunity to fish the Winnipeg River and Dryberry Lake this week. On both days the Musky gave us opportunities as well as some big fish sightings. An orange Diablo brought one fish to hand while poppers had lots of looks. Surface water temperatures were below 20C at both venues.
Tight lines!
Mike Corrigan
SASKATCHEWAN
Not far away from Bakers Narrows is another great lake on the other side of the border. I have done some t.v. shows there in the past and Wes got to visit our friends at TD Amisk, Cindy and Nick Ouelett.
You can check out there website at https://tdamisk.com/
Amisk Lake, Northern Saskatchewan-Wes David
T & D Amisk Camp is a drive-to fishing camp with all the comforts of home. The camp is located at the south end of Amisk Lake and is loaded with islands and shallow bays. We found the walleye holding on sunken humps, points, and inside corners on every island we fished. We located active feeding walleye bottom-bouncing a Dakota Disk from PK Lures baited with a jerk bait from Liquid Mayhem, and a 1 oz bottom-bouncer.
It rarely took long to find a walleye willing to take our offering and it was very common to pick up doubleheaders. I spent two days fishing walleye on Amisk Lake calling T & D Amisk Camp home and caught well over 100 walleyes.
Don’t forget about the northern pike on Amisk Lake.
When the sun rose high in the sky and the water temperature heated up, we turned our attention to the weeds in the shallow bays for northern pike.
Northern pike were exactly where they were supposed to be, tucked in the weeds with cabbage weeds in nine feet of water producing both quality and quantity northern pike. Casting and retrieving a #2 Len Thompson Lure into the weeds and along the edges of the weed beds would pull the northern pike out of hiding. Some weed beds produced better than others, however, every weed bed with eight to 12 feet of water and cabbage weeds produced pike.
If you are looking for a drive-to-lake where you can catch both quality and quantity and maybe your new personal best walleye or northern pike, T & D Amisk Camp, in northern Saskatchewan, should be on your list.
ALBERTA
Crawling Valley Reservoir, Southern Alberta
Crawling Valley Reservoir is well-known to Alberta anglers for its walleye and northern pike fishing. Created in the early 1900s and stocked with walleye in 1993 & 1994, the reservoir has become an amazing walleye fishery. Due to the extreme structure, Crawling Valley Reservoir is considered to be very hard on boat props. A boat can be floating over 30 feet of water and within two boat lengths be sitting in two feet of water on top of a sunken hump. However, the structure is what holds the walleye.
I fished Crawling Valley for one day last week. The wind-blown side of steep sunken humps on the northeast side of the reservoir was holding both walleye and baitfish. Walleye were hitting a Big Sky Jig tipped with a frozen minnow or a paddle tail jerk bait from Liquid Mayhem. Vertically jigging the bait or casting the bait onto the top of the structure and jigging it down the steep slopes produced both quantity and quality walleye. During my six hours on Crawling Valley Reservoir, I fished three sunken humps all within 200 yards of each other and lost count of how many walleye we caught and released.