Sturgeon Lake - Sept 10/21, Smallies and mini muskie

Hit up Sturgeon again - had the entire day to explore and fish.

Almost went to another body of water because one of my weather apps was predicting stronger winds later in the day, but glad I didn’t.
Morning was light winds to start followed by a long stretch of almost zero wind (I’ll try to post a pic of the water below) and then the winds picked up later in the morning but still pretty manageable in my kayak.

Launched right around sun up again.

Tried the whopper plopper first thing - but not even a blow up. To be fair I was catching them well on other lures, so I didn’t throw it very much.

Switched over to a chatter bait and caught two nice smallies on back to back casts. I would have thought they were the same fish except the second one had a messed up lip.

I managed to find a number of grouped up and active fish throughout the day so I was getting good bites all day and landing the vast majority. They were hammering the chatterbait (best first thing), small swim baits and craw type baits.
Normally I find the fishing to be quite slow around lunch time but I managed to find a group of fish around 1pm where for about an hour I was getting a bite every other cast. My anchor and anchor trolley was my best fishing tool several times on this day.

Ended up staying on the water until about 5pm - easily my best outing this year.

Managed to catch two mini muskies - pics below but like 25” and 22”. One was on a small swim bait, the other on an craw style bait.

First smallie of the day below

Next cast smallie

Super calm water around 10am. Very unusual for Sturgeon.

Ok - that posted upside down - how do we rotate pics?

Muskie #1

Muskie #2 - how cute

Smallie spit this up - for those interested in matching the hatch

great report and outing

Nice pattern on that second musky

Those are some very nice fish. Great that you had a whole day to fish. The storm on tuesday really made the fishing in the kawarthas good this week, as well as four days prestorm. Going out to balsam tonight, It's going to be wet and very windy but this will be the last good night for fishing all night for a bit. I like the crayfish picture, there was so many out in the dark lately. Easy for the fish to scoop them up right off the sandy bottom in the shallow water. I saw hundreds since september third...another reason the fishing has been so good in the last week. As well the leopard frogs have started their journey back to the lakes for winter a little early this year from what I have seen. And there has been huge swarms of water bugs right on the surface of the water. This is a rare and perfect time to get out fishing because everything is so active, which equals more fish on the end of your line. Good luck, Stay safe.

Nice report and fish! Good job!
I also like the crayfish and second muskie pics. Nice colours on them

Thanks for the update on current conditions. As usual, excellent observations on what is happening in the lakes environment right now

Good luck on your fishing.

I am currently into casting for night salmon on lake O but soon I will be chasing walleye and also bass and pike in Kawartha again.

Nicely done Thanks for sharing all the info guys, I will be fishing there today.