Quetico Provincial Park - August 6 -10

I love bass fishing.....alot, so when we decided to go to Quetico Provincial Park for 4 days this August I was excited to experience some of the best bass fishing Ontario has to offer. Quetico is a gigantic provincial park on the border of Ontario and Minnesota that spreads 475,782 ha. and has some of the best bass, walleye, pike and lake trout fishing in Northwestern Ontario. There are alot of specal rules for the park:

1. No motors - no outboards or trolling motors.
2. No live bait - no worms, minnows, leeches or grubs.
3. Barbless hooks only.

We stayed at the Dawson Trail campground which gave us good access to French Lake, Pickerel River and Pickerel Lake. The first day we setup camp and got everything organized and got the canoe in the water and set out onto French Lake. We paddled to the island and casted plastics towards the shore trying to get a bass to hit, Renee caught our first walleye of the weekend about an hour later of a nice rocky point. We decided to head back to camp and have dinner since the fishing was getting slow. The second day we decided to go to Pickerel Lake and spend the day discovering a new body of water. The paddle from the campground to Pickerel Lake was about 45mins and by the time we got there we were ready to wet a line. The weather was overcast with no wind, so I was perfect for a topwater bait. I took out a Poppr and casted into shore, my first fish was a small northern pike, then the bass turned on and we caught dozens of bass ranging from 12" to 19" throught the day. Renee had good succes with a jig and plastic shiner we also tried hair jigs and the the smallmouth bass had no problem hitting those too. We probably caught 50 fish that day and by the time we got back to camp it was 7:00pm and we were hungry and ready for a nice fire.

When you are fishing out of a canoe it is alot different that fishing from a boat, here are some tips:

1. Pick your spots, remember you have to paddle and its not that easy to just pick up and move
to a different spot.

2. Don't take your whole big tackle bag in the canoe. Just take a small plastic case with a good
assortment of tackle is all you need.

The gear and tackle I used on our trip to Quetico were:

• 7' medium/light spinning rod.
• Gamma Copolymer 8lb test line.
• For tackle I brought a good assortment of crankbaits, poppers, jigs, plastics, splitshot and snapswivels.
• I also brought jig flies made by Jungle Joe and Mighty Mitch, I find the quality of these jigflies are the best when trying to land big smallmouth bass and always have a handfull in my tackle box. www.mmjjjigflies.com
• For plastics I used green pumpkinseed worms and senko's, also Emerald Shiner immitation minnows.

Batwing Lake

If you are looking for a lake that is within an hour of Thunder Bay and has a good population of fish consider Batwing Lake. This lake is a favorite lake of mine because I can go out after work and be fishing by 7:00 and still get 3hrs of fishing in. The public launch as alot of room for weekend camping and the Boreal Road is in great condition this year. The only part of the drive that has rocky road is the short drive off the Boreal Road to the launch, when traveling to the lake for the first time have a map and watch for the turn off to the launch because it is only marked with some orange flagging tape.

I always have great success fishing Batwing Lake a 30 fish evening is possible if you can find the right structure to fish. I usally concentrate on the many rocky points and drop-offs fishing in 8 -25ft of water. I find the wind doesn't pick up on this lake too much and if it does there are alot of spots that offer shelter. The structure and the river from Flower Lake and Whalen Lake is what makes this lake so good for fishing and we always mark a ton of bait fish.

The structure in Batwing is usually rocks I find that if I use a poor fishing line I will break off more jigs when I am snagged. I use GAMMA Copolymer 8lb-10lb line and because of the extra strength and the molecular structure in their line I retrieve 90% of my snags.

Lac Des Mille Lac - July 31 - Aug 2, 2009

There is nothing better than heading to one of the most popular lakes west of Thunder Bay, Lac Des Mille Lac. Because of the remote location and the great hospitality, when I go to this lake I prefer to go to the west end and stay at Lac Des Mille Lodge. We left Thunder Bay around 6:00pm and by 8:00pm we were relaxing in the RV planning which spots to fish. The weather on saturday was discouraging with wind and rain it made for a misurable time on the water we braved mother nature for an hour and landed small walleye and pike close to the lodge.

Sunday was better fishing, we headed out after a good breakfast of bacon and eggs and fished some spots that have produced fish in the past. Having no luck in the usual spots we decided to concentrate on the rocky shores and points, starting in 12ft of water and drifting our jigs up to 7ft we picked up 1 nice 16" walleye and a chunky bass. We made our way to Blind Bay and started our drift again accross a promising point and picked up alot of walleyes between 15- 18" with both our limits of fish we headed back to the lodge to have a fish fry and relax.

The gear we used on this trip were:

7' medium/light spinning rods
8lb GAMMA Copolymer Line
Red and black jigs and a medium minnow.
Jungle Joe and Mighty Mitch Jig Flys