Our group (mostly family…occasionally friends based on who’s available) has gone into the same lakes now on our spring fishing trip for getting close to 20 years. We did trips on other routes in the park before, but since we discovered how many trout are in these lakes, we just can’t bring ourselves to go anywhere else. The portaging/travelling isn’t crazy hard or far, but just enough to leave the majority of trippers a lake or two behind. Our previous ‘canoe trips’ used to be a group of either 4 or 6 of us getting maybe 20-30 trout in 4 days. Since we found this route, we started getting 50 some trout. Then 70 something, then in the 90’s… each year thinking there’s no way we can beat our previous record. it became our annual ‘fishing trip’ rather than canoe trip, and as
we dial in the lakes and locations more and more, our numbers just keep going up. We were getting used to catching 120-150 trout per trip until this year….we crushed it. Going to be hard to beat this one. 230 trout between 4 of us, Fri-Monday. I think going a week later than usual helped, as the water was that much warmer and the fish were more active. We generally try and go before the bugs, but a couple weeks after ice out.
We have an old copy of the ‘fishing in Algonquin’ guidebook where it not only shows which species exist on each lake (as the new books have), but also a rating…excellent/good/fair/poor for each species/lake. If you can get your hands on an old copy, although it hasn’t been published in years now, I can attest to its accuracy…it still mostly holds true in my experience.
On our way in, on the southern end of one of the lakes was a giant white ice sheet the size of a dump truck clinging to a north facing rock face. It’s not unusual to find some ice on our spring trips, and we’ve even canoed up and chiselled some off with a hatchet in the past to keep our frozen minnows or food cold. However, with the recent warm days, and the fact it was 30 degrees, we were surprised there was still so much ice there. So after just mentioning the ice, we’re looking at the opposite shore, trolling a sand bar, when BOOM!….CRASH….sounded like and explosion or a plane crash…we look over and there’s no ice on the cliff anymore, just waves and a big bobbing iceberg in the lake. Then I think…imagine we were sitting at the bottom of that thing in the canoe when it let go…what a way to go.
Friday and Saturday were smoking hot 30 degree days, Sunday some very localized storms blew through, and drastically changed the fishing. They were no longer in the shallow, sandy areas where we were catching them and we had to adapt and try other areas. We found them slightly deeper and more relating to rocky structure. Whenever we could identify a hatch of some kind happening, we could usually get a fish or two trolling through. If there seemed to be a pile of fish in an area, or if I could see a few around my lure, or we had followers right to the canoe, I would usually switch rods and put a piece of minnow on a small jig head and drop it down to them where I could catch a few lakers in a short amount of time. They were definitely quite willing to bite once we found them.
Saturday we ventured into a favourite lake of mine, off the beaten path and surprisingly didn’t do as well as normal, catching 9 lakers in about 3 hours in our canoe. The other guys stayed back at camp and had an afternoon nap.
Sunday afternoon we ventured to another lake for a couple hours, and caught a few specks and a laker over there. Tried to let the nicest speck go (16”) but it was bleeding pretty good and went belly up, so we grabbed it and added it to the lakers the other guys had for our dinner.
On the way out Monday, there were some suckers at the bottom of a rapids, and I figured there could be a brookie or two in behind them eating up the eggs. First cast in a foot of water…Bam! .. fish on nice 16” speck. Second cast, fish on…it’s got no depth to run, so zooms all over the place under the canoe, taking drag…I see it a couple time, looks decent….then comes unhooked…gone. Man that was a good looking speck. Cast again…bam! … fight another one for a bit, it gets off. Cast again….way up by a log in shallow…reel a coupe cranks…snagged for sure….nope!..fish on!. This one’s going all over the place again, fighting like mad…left, right, taking drag, upstream, downstream…wow what a fight. Finally net it, and it’s a chunky one. 19.5” brookie, or as I like to call him, #76. My biggest and last fish of the trip. He came home for dinner that night.
So, now we have our work cut out for us, in the years ahead. I think we kept a total of 12 trout, eating 10 in there, and bringing 2 home. All lakers were under 2.5 lbs and the biggest speck was about 3 lb.
There’s not much chance of getting anything bigger…only the one lake holds bigger fish. But numbers…we go to these lakes for the consistent action rather than a chance at a few big fish.
Record breaking Algonquin fishing trip, another Park report
