DAY 3: As we rolled out of bed, we were pleasantly surprised to see the wind had settled down and switched over to the south finally. It promised to be beautiful day with temperatures slowly rising to five Celsius. Boat control was not going to be a problem which meant we had all kinds of options open to us. We decided to start at the mouth of the river, fishing in water from 16 to 24 feet. Watching the depth finder, we noticed that the bait and fish we had seen on Day One, were really not there in any numbers. This was reflected in our success as we caught only a few fish on our first drift. After a couple of hours we decided to head up river to try the White Rock were we had caught our big fish the previous day.
After one fish on our first pass with few fish marking, we headed back down to the last stretch of river before the mouth. Here we started catching a few fish in a bit deeper water, in the 23 to 27 foot range on jigs and shiners. Unfortunately since it was Saturday, there were a few other boats around making the drift a bit tricky. We decided to move back further out towards to the lake and were quickly rewarded with some fast action. There were a few double headers and a lot of fish in the eight pound range. Later in the afternoon, we talked to a group of anglers from Montana who had been coming to Tobin Lake for 17 years. We started comparing notes on the crankbait bite and these hardcore anglers had tried it all.
NIGHT FISHING
The last two evening we had fished the same general area as these Montana anglers and they had intrigued us with some of the equipment they were using. They weren’t hard to miss since they had rod tip lights to see the bites at night. It was the first time I had seen any and with a little research I see that there are quite a few different kinds available. I would recommend these if you do any amount of trolling or still fishing at night. Another application would be night fishing for those summer time catfish. One model goes from green to red when a fish bites! Another invaluable tool is the headlamp which goes on your cap or fur hat. It keeps you on top of everything that is going on. Well, almost! The second night I was reeling my lure in to check on my bait when I noticed two bright eyes staring at me. A small walleye had grabbed on to my crankbait on the way in but I hadn’t even realized. Our fishing ended the second night in a bit of a disaster because we got some lines crossed which is easy to do especially when there is weed or debris on the bottom. My fishing came to an end because I didn’t but my extra rods away so when I dropped my crankbait back in the boat to help land a fish it wrapped around my other three rods, a rookie mistake. Keep your free of clutter at night and things will go a lot smoother. Finally work together as a team with boat control and netting fish and you will succeed.
THE FINAL EVENING- After talking to the guys from Montana we decided to finish off the day trolling. They had been having good success on the Fire Tiger Storm Thunderstick so Boyd put one on. This bait produced the first fish but Jim started catching some real nice fish on a Berkely #7 Flicker Shad in the Golden Shiner colour. I had discovered this pattern on the Red River and bought up all I could find in Winnipeg before I came on the trip. It worked extremely well for me the whole trip and now Jim was getting down to these deep fish with leadcore line.
Meantime I used bottom bounder and five foot snell to get the same result. We ended up the trip catching a number of solid seven to nine pound walleye until seven in the evening, a great way to finish!
