Part Three, Ben Beattie and Lost Lake
 |
| Ben with a nice walleye caught dead sticking |
Day four finally saw us meet up with Ben Beattie, muskie fisherman extraordinaire and a darn good outdoor writer. Ben has been guiding out of Moosehorn Lodge for seven years, with a waiting clientele to book his services. We arranged this trip so we could work around Ben’s schedule but unfortunately none when the muskie season was open. So on this day we were going to try our luck on walleye, bass and pike on Lost Lake, a small body of water just south of Lac Seul but connected by water. The day started out dead flat calm, not the best conditions for catching walleye, or most fish for that matter. After a slow morning, Jim and I convinced Ben we should try for some smallmouth bass. We headed back to a shallow bay, a spawning area for the smallies.
 |
| Jim with first jumbo |
After working a couple shoreline points we had two smallmouth in the boat, not an overly productive pattern so far. We then tried pike fishing for a bit, with just a couple small fish to show. Ben was scratching his head a bit, trying to figure out the next move when the wind started to blow in earnest. Both Jim and I knew that given the direction, those fish in that back bay might start to go now that a good chop was blowing in along the shoreline were we had caught the smallmouth and some small walleye. As soon as we got there, I knew the conditions were right!
I was pitching a 1/16 ounce plain lead head jig tipped with an Impulse brown ribbon jig leech, tipped with a medium live minnow. While I caught a few fish on the straight jig leech, the addition of a live minnow really got the bite on the go.
We started pitching our jigs right next to shore, hooking fish after fish including jumbo smallies, some decent walleye and a few pike for good measure.
All were gorging themselves on mayfly larvae that had been moving to shallow water because of the hot weather. This shallow pattern for the second day in a row, once again provided some great springtime fishing action.
