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Newsletters>
Honeymooner's Fishing Vacation Journal
January 28, 2007
Well I can say the wedding and honeymoon are over, but the
memories will be with me forever. So will the fishing
during our honeymoon. We spent a week at the Little Moose
Lodge (www.littlemooselodge.com) on a chain of lakes known
as the Pipestone/Clearwater Lake Chain just north of Emo,
Ontario. It is 80 miles of connected water and the fishing
was great.
The fishing was tough going at first when we got there, new
lake, new structure, new everything to me. We were also
unlucky enough to be there after a cold front went through.
I was able to find a hot spot for us. It was the best
smallmouth hole I've ever had in my life. Although we were
looking for walleye I didn't care what we caught. My wife
Susan and I both caught personal best smallmouths. They
were both 21" long and were very healthy fish feeding on
crayfish.On this night we were jigging H2O jigs, tipped
with leaches. Well I should say I was jigging she was using
slip bobber. She had out fished me 8 fish, one being this
monster, to my 2 small fish. I refused to switch to her
method and it cost me. We were in 8'-10' of water fishing
around an island near a rock ledge dropping off to 20'. I
was hoping with the winds that day the walleyes would be
there, but I was wrong. This wouldn't be the first or last
time either.
We decided to start trying our luck at trolling spinner
rigs instead of jigging. I was pretty confident with the
winds and the little bit I heard from people fishing I
could find some walleyes. WRONG....we did manage one
walleye, but I'm sure it was a total fluke. It was a 27"er.
We caught it trolling crawlers in 8' of water. I also think
they weren't all that interested in crawlers.
I was getting pretty disgusted and talked with the lodge
owner Terry again. He told me forget everything I know
about fishing, especially walleye fishing and try a few
areas where other guests had luck. He also pointed out a
couple of his favorite spots which I would have never found
in a million years. I did the opposite of what I know
walleyes to and it worked. Instead of looking at wind blown
shores we went to the other side in the calm water. We
found fish; we also forgot about crawlers and minnows and
went to leaches again. It worked. I caught my personal best
walleye at 30" and tipping the scale at just over 11lbs. I
then released her back in to the water. We ended up
catching several more fish there the smallest being 27". We
also fished a couple of mid lake humps catching 8 eaters.
They were all around 16"-18".
There was also a guy in camp that had taken a 32" walleye
the day before in the same area. It ended up not living
because of the hook placement. He was very sad he couldn't
CPR it. I also was amazed at the number of people that
weren't CPR'ing fish. We saw several people keep 27 and
bigger walleyes and taking them back to eat. I almost
wanted to cry. Most of the lodges push for CPR and we were
rather disgusted to see someone keeping these big fish.
We were told that you didn't always catch a lot of walleyes
on Clearwater Lake but the ones you would catch would be
BIG! They were right.
I'm pretty sure the mayfly hatch had something to do with
our lack of numbers, but what we lacked in numbers we had
in size. The bugs also weren't too bad. The mosquitoes
weren't bad at all unless it was right at dusk or near the
fish cleaning shack.
I know the talk had been about bait recently with people
coming and going to Canada, as far as prices. The leaches
were $60/lb or $7 per dozen for jumbos, crawlers were $4 a
dozen and minnows $4 a dozen. The only thing we noticed
that was higher than other years were the leaches, and of
course that is what worked best on spinner harnesses or
jigging.
Also I advise people to get passports. They told us they
are talking about extending the deadline to 2009, but the
deadline is still right now January, 2008. We had no
problems at all, we were only detained for 5 minutes going
up and coming back.
I have to say we did a lot of fishing and there are so many
little things that made the trip special. From Susan's snag
that was a fish to the sunsets. I have to say this special
time in my life will live on for a long time in my
memories...not only for the events, but the special people
we met and talked to.
The trip wasn't always hectic as you see here, we had
plenty of time to relax an unwind and the wildlife and
scenery was worth every minute we spent there. I'll post
some more photos and please check out the Little Moose
Lodge and give Terry and Monica a call for an unforgettable
experience. They make a Canada fishing trip affordable and
unforgettable.
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