Spent the past weekend plus a few days boat camping and fishing some crown land up in Temagami. My friend and I arrived Thursday morning at the launch for 10am and were at our campsite unloading our gear by 11:30am, ready to get back out on the water and wet our lines. The lake was calm, (and would remain so for the rest of the day) with barely any wind to show for. Surface temperatures were in the low 60's, the forecast clear right through the weekend, conditions looked stable.
A black morel at camp growing right where I would pitch my tent:
We headed to a productive location we had fished last year, a ledge structure beside a shoal that comes up from a 65' basin. It wasn't long before we were on some fish.
First fish of the trip, an aggressive suspended cisco:
A lake trout I caught right off bottom in 45':
By mid afternoon, the air was heavy, the lake completely still and the fishing had slowed down. We decided to head back to camp, we had a few fish in the cooler and needed to collect firewood to cook steaks over the fire.
Steaks with homemade ramp butter to finish them off (zucchini and potatoes were the 2nd course, couldn't fit it all on one plate):
Over the next 2.5 days, the smoke from the wildfires continued to build and between the poor air quality and constant sun, I'm a bit hazey on the details in terms of the order of photos- what I do know is that we caught many more fish and made significant blood donations to the black flies and mosquitoes!
Here are some more photos from Friday to Sunday, in no particular order, with what details I can remember to go along with them.
A new friend we met at a local lodge we stopped in at on the lake. He was eager to try vertical jigging so we took him out and he ended up catching his first open water whitefish, about 30 minutes into us getting out:
A decent sized, albeit weathered looking whitefish:
Typical smallmouth for the lake, they were hitting just about anything we threw at them, 3'-10' seemed to be the ideal depth range for them. The pike were mixed in there as well.
We had a fresh bass, shore lunch, fish fry (not the first fish I think to harvest but given how abundant their population appears to be, we figured we'd give it a go) and were not disappointed with the results:
The cisco were the most common catch for the trip and we managed a double-header the last day, coming close a few other times.
1" soft plastic minnow, rigged on a high hook was the ticket:
Cookie-cutters, perfect for smoking:
Finally, on our last night, my friend caught a small walleye to complete our near full-species checklist for the lake: cisco, whitefish, lake trout, smallmouth bass, pike and walleye (excluding panfish species, largemouth bass and burbot).
Temagami Crown Camp June 5th-8th, Hot and hazey
