Well we are
part way into July and things are starting to get a little bit uncomfortable
temperature wise (at least for us Canadians). Honestly I have been praying for
a day under 80 degrees for the last two weeks, but the temperature just seems
to get hotter and hotter. Fishing is still good but every day seems to be a
little more of a puzzle than the day before. This is normally the point of year
where things get a little tougher, but who doesn’t like a little challenge (of
course we all love to beat up on fish as if they were rented mules but in most
cases it doesn’t happen that way).
Last week I
spent most of my time out on Loonhaunt Lake with Bob and Chuck Baker and it was
phenomenal. I really can’t say enough about this lake and if you’re a walleye
or bass fisherman it’s a hard lake to top. The walleye fishing in the lake
usually produces great numbers and the quality of fish is top notch. Actually,
it is hard to catch a walleye in Loonhaunt that’s smaller than 17”. When it
comes to walleye they are far from my favorite to fish for, but Loon is the
exception. I usually do the best fishing for walleyes with Lindy Rigs and night
crawlers. I usually use a 3/8oz bullet sinker and a 4-5’ snel line. Also, I use
a worm pump or syringe to pump air into the worm so it floats a little higher
off the bottom. This is a little trick I learned during my guiding on the
Pipestone/Clearwater chain of lakes that converts really well to Loon.
Bass fishing
on Loonhaunt is even more impressive than the walleye fishing. The Baker boys
and I laid a serious beat down on the smallmouth and largemouth. The first day
we caught a pile of bass that ranged from 2-3lbs. Most of our success the first
day came on wacky worms but we did catch quite a few on Zoom Flukes. We did the
best around the deep cabbage weeds and on the edge of the pencil stems/reeds. Our
second day we started out with wacky worms around the same type of structure
but things were going a lot slower than the day before. Around 11am the wind
completely died and we switched over to top water and immediately started to
blast all sorts of big bass (It was like something you dream of). For the next four hours we had some of the
best fishing I have ever had in my life. It was 3lber after 3lber with the
occasional 4lber mixed in. It got to a
point when Bob or Chuck lost a good fish they would just shrug their shoulders
and say “I’ll get another good one in a few casts”. One of the last spots of
the day (before we were chased off the lake by a ginormous lightning storm)
Chuck hooked into a huge largemouth on a popper. As he was bringing it back to
the boat it blew up out of the water and spit the hook. The hook came back to
the boat like a missile and tagged me right in the butt (I was lucky and no
barbs sank in my skin). Chuck was a good sport about the whole thing and helped
pull the hooks from my shorts while Bob laughed and snapped pictures. It was a
pretty humorous end to a great day.
Something
else note worthy, this week I went and picked up one of the camera cards form
one of my trail cams. It was a camera I put in on the 20th of May
and I didn’t check it until last week. I had 1600 photos on it!!! I had tons of
photos of deer (three bucks), about 700 photos of bears (two that sat in front
of my camera for 15 hours and swatted my cam 5 times… Not cool), and one moose!
The moose was the coolest by far. I couldn’t see if it was a bull or a cow
because my cam only caught form its front shoulders back to the hind end (a
result of my camera being spun out of whack from Yogi the Bear) but it was for
sure a full grown adult. The only thing I put in front of the camera was a
mineral lick I got from Tompkins Hardware called the “Rack Rock”. I don’t know
how much this little thing was a part of the high traffic but as far as I’m
concerned it’s a great product.
Since I’ve
been slacking in the blog entries I plan on writing another one as soon as I
can. Thanks again for reading and all the support.
