Best Trip Yet!

[JeffB]

Where to start? This trip started off about 4 months ago when my wife told me my dad was still looking for someone to fish with out of his boat in Canada this year. Lake of the Woods in Nestor Falls, Ontario to be exact. So I asked him the dates and checked my summer schedule for school and there was an open window for me. My uncle told me he would pay for my stay at the resort and my dad told me he would cover all fuel costs, so that just left me with a plane ticket to OK. My wife told me we could handle that. So I flew to OK on June 1st and pretty much headed to Canada as soon as my dad picked me up from the airport. We made pretty good time and got across the boarder about 9am on the 2nd. We picked up our licenses and fished one of the lakes across the street, Bass Lake. Right away we found bedded bass which is what we were hoping for. We fished for a good 6hrs before we headed in. We caught in the neighborhood of 70+ smallmouth. From there we loaded up the boat and headed across the street to Lake of the Woods, and I mean literally across the street. We unloaded the boat and headed to the island were the resort was to check in (Young's Wilderness Camp). This was my 6th year here and my dad's 14th. My uncle, the one who paid for my stay, it was his 16th and his son's 8th trip. We were the first to arrive, everyone one else in our group did not show up to till the night of the 3rd.

Day 1 on Lake of the Woods was great (June 3rd). We started off fishing for pike, it did not take too long to pick up a pattern. My dad struck first and started to put it on me catch 3-to my-1. I changed up on blade sizes and colors a couple times and quickly caught back up. About 4hrs into the morning I had a big fish follow my blade up to the boat. I yelled at my dad that I had a muskie following me up. Once I was all the way reeled in I did a figure 8 at the boat. The fish missed it twice and slammed my blade the 3rd time. My dad netted the fish and it ended up being my PB Muskie measuring 36". I was extremely excited. Not a monster muskie, but still a really nice fish. We ended fishing off the day with close to 60 pike, 40 smallmouth, 1 muskie, and 4 walleye.

Day 1 on Lake of the Narrows was an okay day (June 4th). We went over to fish it with my uncle, cousins, and family/ business friend. We unloaded the boats and all we our separate ways looking for bedding smallmouth. The first spot we stopped we found a couple. There was a bunch of roaming smallmouth, but they were not too interested in what we had to offer. I figured they were males looking for their own spot in the cove. My dad and I headed over to a 2nd spot and aging only found a few beds. We were about 5hrs into the day and only boated maybe 15 fish. We made a few more runs and found a handful more beds over the next cpl of hours. We managed to put about 10 more smallmouth into the boat. We were not too impressed with the fishing and were debating on heading back to Lake of the Woods a little early. I asked my dad if we could hit one more spot before we gave up. Note the fish we did catch were not that big, they were all in the pound and half to two and half pound class. So we made the last and final run all the way to the back side of the lake. We found my uncle back there fishing as well. We wound putting about 40 more fish in the boat all in the 3-4lb range over the last few hours of fishing. It ended up making for a good day. We took off at 5:15pm back to Lake of the Woods to make it back to camp in time for supper. We finished the night off catching a good amount of pike.

Day 2 on Lake of the Woods, probably the most exciting day of the whole trip (June 5th). I told my dad the night before that I wanted to fish Turtle Island. It has always been my favorite spot to fish over the years. We got to the island and my dad didn't waste anytime. He was whipping my butt on smallmouth. I switched baits around a cpl of times before I finally found something they liked. I was only catching a few fish, but they were nice smallies in the 3 1/2-4lb range. So I was not complaining. There is a little cut on the island that make almost a "T" shape in it. My dad was going to skip past it, but I talked him into hitting it. He has never caught a fish in the cut over all the years he has fished the lake. Firsst cast into it I caught a nice smallie, then a few cast later caught a 2nd. I told my dad, "see, and to think you wanted to just skip this area". In one of the corner's of the "T" was an old beaver dam. My dad tossed up into and hooked up. He had a big ole smallie doing a gymnastic routine for us. My dad kept telling it to jump again and again. We were discussing how big the smallie was while it was jumping right at the boat, when all of a sudden I hear a big whooosssshhhhh and saw a big swirl and no smallie. I figured my dad accidentally bumped the trolling motor. Then I noticed my dad's rod was half way into the water and drag was being pulled out of his reel. My dad was doing everything in his power to hold onto his rod. I was still trying to register what was going on. My dad was now at the other side of the boat when I saw a huge flash of silver. A big muskie had slammed his smallie. The muskie let the fish go and he went to pull the smallie out of the water. I told my dad to put him back in the water and just let him swim around for a second. No sooner than he did that, Mr. Muskie came back up and slammed the smallie again. He ate him this time. All you could see of the 20" smallie was about 2" of his tail and maybe an 1 1/2" of its head. I went down to try and scoop it up when my dad tried kicking me back "?ing" what I was thinking. He told me to grab his net and I looked at him dumb founded and laughed. I told him there was no way in hell over a 5' fish was going to fit in that little thing. I wound up getting a hold of the tail of the fish. The tail was so big that I couldn't get both of my hands around it. I am 5'4" and the fish was longer than me. The fish dove down one last time and my dad's line snapped. Talk about an adrenaline rush. My heart was pounding and I wasn't even the one holding the rod. My dad could not talk for about 5 minutes after that. We ended up moving and catching a lot more smallies, well I did. My dad only caught maybe 3 more for the rest of the day. It started to rain around 3pm that afternoon, so we moved to pike fishing. We thumped their butts! We caught probably 70+ pike that evening.

Day 2 on Bass Lake (June 6th). We found all the beds the prior trip, so we already knew where to fish. So the game plan was easy for us to establish the night prior. We got onto the lake early this time, we skipped breakfast this particular morning. We had to fish randomly for about an hour while we waited for the sun to position itself high enough to see the beds. We started of catching a nice pike and a few smallies. We saw a small school cruising, but they were spooked by us easily and took off. Once the sun was high enough, about 7:30am, we started catching some nice bedded smallies. They were a little bigger this time around. There was a new group up onto the beds. We fished pretty hard all morning and put a lot of nice fish into the boat. It seemed like the more we moved the bigger the fish got. We ended up in one cove and found some nice beds. The fish were really good size, but still not the 5lb+ monsters we were searching for. We came upon what we thought was a small school of cruisers. It ended up being a big school of 4-5lbs smallie just lolly gagging around. There was one that I had spotted and pointed out to my dad that was every bit of 7lbs. We threw everything in the boat at them and could not get them to hit crap. It was so frustrating. We spent an hour on them probably. They were not really spooked by the boat, so they hung around us the whole time. I told my dad that they had to be big females coming up to check out which stud had the best bed. We ended up giving up on them, and moving onto new beds. My dad kept saying he would love to see someone like KVD in there to see what he would have done to get them to bite. We finished the day with about 90+ smallies. We hit every single bed that the lake had to offer, well at least all the ones shallow enough to see.

Day 3 on Lake of the Woods (June 7th). We wound up heading back to Turtle Island. We caught a decent amount of smallies first thing, but then it slowed down a bit. We moved on and hit a few other islands in South Bay and it was the same story. We made our way back the camp grounds and fished the area around there. We spotted about 4' muskie just laying around. We could not get it to hit anything. We got up beside it and my dad poked it with his rod and it swam down into deeper water. It was funny because my dad thought it was a log the whole time. You know the fish is big when you mistake it for a log. We hit a big rocked point and slammed some good sized smallies. Then we headed straight across the the island we were staying on and fished around the docks. My jumped off onto the docks and headed up for a quick little nap. I went over to fish the south side of the little island. I started catching some nice pike and a couple small muskie. Then all of a sudden I hooked up into a big fish. I got it up to the boat and was attempting to net it. The net just wasn't quit big enough. I was guessing the fish was about 40"-42" long muskie. I wound up knocking it off my bait. So I headed back over to the docks and picked up my dad. I told him about the muskie and he kind of gave me a yeah right look. I be damned if the second cast I made with him in the boat I had another 4' fish follow me up. I did the figure 8 in the water again, but it just swam away. "I told you dad that there are some big fish around here". We both wound up catching a few more small muskie and some nice sized pike. We limited on our pike in a matter of minutes, keeper size ones that is. We moved to the back side of the island right before we called it quites. I had another big fish small my blade, but it came off. It came back a second time and followed me all the way up to the boat. Another 40"+ fish. Once again I failed with the figure 8. After supper we went looking for some top water action on smallmouth around the local islands. My dad caught a couple and missed a few. I was throwing a tube and my dad wound up throwing a shad rap. We started catching walleye of all things bass fishing. We caught probably 10 a piece, no big ones though. It ended up being a really good day of fishing once again.

Day 4 on Lake of the Woods, last day of our trip (June 8th). The weather was a little nasty, so we went looking for some more pike.We caught a few and fished for some smallmouth as well. We were not catching a lot of fish, but still catching. I wounded up catching a few more small walleye on tubes. We bounced around looking for a new spot with them same characteristics that we had been catching fish on through out the week. We found one spot that had monster pike written all over it. My dad caught one nice sized pike and then I had a big walleye of all things slam my blade. Another PB for the trip measuring 23" and weighed right at 5lbs. We made a move and fish a coupe more tiny islands. The last one we hit I caught once again my 3rd PB of the trip. A 35" pike this time. I caught it on a tube and managed to get it into the net before it broke my line. The fish was retarded though. It had a massive headed on it with a skinny skinny body. The tail of it was bleeding really bad as well. Even though the pike spawned back in April, I think this was a late spawner, had to have been. Finished the day off fighting 30-40mph winds at the island where we camped and caught some more muskie, nothing big though.

We boated well over 450+ fish this trip. We had an awesome trip, my dad and I. It was the first time I was able to spend more than 24hrs alone with my dad ever since I graduated high school back in 03'. My dad and I both needed this trip badly. It was cool too because we did not argue about anything the entire trip. We were also about to talk about stuff we have never been able to talk about before. This was easily the best fishing trip I have had to date. I am really hoping that my schedule works out like this next year so that I can go back again. My uncle already told me that the trip will be covered once again. Well here are a few pix that we took of some of the fish. I also have video from the GoPro that I am working on putting together, I hope you all enjoy!