Got back to Algonquin Park to camp for the first time in a while. Went with my friend Dave. Stayed at a campground which I’ve never done outside scouts base camp before trips as a kid. I generally only do backcountry. Brought my boat. Went for brookies for about 3 hours total over the course of two days there. Lots of driving around exploring the lake with graph. When we got there and set up our camp we set out on the lake around 11:30am. Water was 48f on surface. Nice and calm. About 30 min boat run later we found some moving water at 52f. High noon. No suckers to be seen yet. First cast I landed a nice brookie. Awesome. No luck for Dave yet. I’m using a slip float and plastic bug imitation. I know green is generally the money right as the water starts to warm. Float goes down, nice fight, looks like about a 3lb brookie, pops off the hook during one of its figure eight manoeuvres. We are fishing 2-4fow. Toss it back in on the other side of the boat into a swift, and down she goes again, another nice brookie, this one is really silver/mildly purple in colour. I hook Dave up with my only other slip float. We had to recover out floats many times as snags were plentiful lots of sticks. A quick maneuver with the spot lock and quick scoop of the net and retired within 2 min and fishing again. It’s now 12:30.
Dave gets an OOs Bass, released. Dave’s float goes down again, he has a brookie on, pops off after about 5 seconds, almost had his first ever brook trout! Tosses it back in, gets another small bass released. I fire my rod over to the rock edge and have about 3-4 poles at my bait before I finally hook another nice brook trout. Three in the well and it’s 1 pm. We fish until 1:30 and each miss another fish each and call it. Head back to camp and done for the day we relaxed and drank a few beers and cleaned fish.
Next morning we skip breakfast and head right back to that spot and get there around 7:30am. Cold morning. Spot is all shaded. We fish half hour and nothing. Sun starts to hit the shallow side of the spot, Dave has a hit, missed it. I have a hit, missed it. Dave has another hit, small OOs bass. I catch a small OOS bass. Then Dave finally gets his first Algonquin Brook Trout. It’s about 12” and stunning. He released it for good mojo with the fish gods for brook trout moving forward. Dave is ecstatic. I manage another nice brookie about 17” before we called it quits at 10am to go back for glorious breakfast.
After noon the wind really picked up and was gusting or constant at 30k, we decided it was time to try for whitefish. Around 2pm we Went for a 40mim run into another lake in search of Algonquin Whitefish, as they weren’t at the usual spots with flow yet due to lack of suckers. This lake was warmer, as it was much shallower. We had some good marks in 30fow and one or two interested follows, very much like whitefish, who knows could be suckers moving up to spawn soon. We tried with no luck for two hours, then suddenly the graph lit up, suspended chase, slam! Dave lands his first Algonquin Lake trout! He is over the moon. A beautiful golden fish. Best trip ever for Dave.
We packed it in around 4:20pm and headed back to the boat launch and pulled the boat out and went back to camp to eat a victory steak and finish off some beer.
On the morning of our departure we saw a moose right by our campsite and was pretty cool to see.
One fantastic trip with a great friend.
Algonquin Trip, May 9-11
