New member, Visiting and fishing West Bay/West Arm

Hello everyone. My name is Phil and I'm new of course to this website/forum but also the northern Ontario lakes area. This is an excellent and informative source of information and all members posting have a lot of good info to share. Patti and I live and typically fish in the southern Ontario area. We are not expert fishing people by any means but do love the outdoors and spend quite a lot of time enjoying it (more on land) and especially what our great province of Ontario offers in different places. We are going to be staying in the Lake Nipissing West Arm/West Bay lake area at a lodge place over the next few days (arriving tomorrow afternoon) and fishing for mainly Walleye and Pike. We know nothing of these lake areas and where best to go however we will enjoy just being in our boat (18ft cedarstrip with 20hp, but no trolling motor) and water seeing the area from the lake. During our stay if we can (ie. internet access) or for sure later we will definitely share our experiences on how things turn out especially from a fishing success standpoint. Cheers, Phil

Philbert,

Welcome to our online community and thank-you for joining.
Many great members here, contribute and you'll make friends fast..
Please read the board rules and most of all enjoy our forums..

Phil, Best of luck. We just got back from four days fishing Lake Nip and we stayed at West Nipissing Resort. The hosts there, Ian and Lil were great.

We didn't try for walleye because we were told that the water was still too warm. We mainly fished for pike and smallmouth bass. We were not familiar with the lake but did manage about a dozen each small pike and bass to 21 inches, also one musky that was 30 inches. I thought it was pretty poor fishing; but we may not have been doing the right techniques. Best results were with casting small tubes (to imitate crayfish) or jointed minnows 4" into rocky shoreline.

Gorgeous scenery. Saw osprey, bald eagle, and beaver. West Bay is pretty isolated. Be careful! There are a ton of rocks just under the surface. I would suggest you use a chart/GPS if you venture into West Bay. Also, it seemed empty. We only saw a couple other boats. It occurred to me that if we had engine trouble in West Bay, we would be in trouble (not sure if cell phones goy coverage out there).

I would love to hear some local input to see if we should have been able to do a lot better if we used different techniques.

It would have been a great visit even without the fishing - just a beautiful lake. Enjoy.

Hi Phil,
Welcome to the board I am sure you will get some good info at the lodge but I also suggest you check some past posts in the Nip forum. SKRAMO recently posted some info that would likely be helpful.
Please enjoy the board and be sure to let us know how you did

Thanks for all your warm welcomes and info so far, especially blockislandhead. This is really great feedback of the lake area we'll be staying (we're at Memquisit Lodge). We'll definately let everyone know how our days go there. We have rods and tackle for both spincasting and trolling, with a variety of spoons and crank baits. If anyone has specific suggestions on what lures or bait have worked best especially for this current weather, it would be much appreciated. (I'd love to see my wife hook a big one which would put a real smile on her (and my) face!!)

Welcome Phil. You'll love this board. Good people here. Good luck and have fun. Nipissing is an incredible fishery.

Update on our Lake Nipissing West Bay/West Arm visiting and fishing experience. Stayed at Memquisit Lodge. Owners/operators Frank and Charlene Daoust were wonderful in friendliness, customer service and great meals served; excellent hosts. Fishing was very poor to non-existant, at least for us as others said they had caught some fish. We were fishing for bass, pike and walleye with all types of lures, mainly in the Muskgrat Bay and Cookie Island areas (which we were told were the better lake areas reasonable travel distance near to the lodge these days). So fishing was disappointing but the overall experience at our cabin, in the lodge and the beautiful lake areas was very good. We liked it so much that we plan to return but would definately go with a fishing guide for at least 4hrs as it appears knowing where to specifically go n the lake is key to success.

Got back from the West Arm August 31st. Caught 5 Muskie in 5 days. Largest was 52" just shy of 39lbs. Fishing was great as usual there in late August early Sept. Been fishing there for 20 years......seems like muskie fishing there getting better and better every year.

Thanks for the update Philbert, rest assured you are not the first to go up to a resort on Nipissing (or any other lake for that matter) and not have much luck fishing, been there done that. That's just the nature of the game and it is a game most of us will continue to play til the day we die cause we wouldn't want it any other way.

And if you are a Leaf fan you will understand this - wait until next year.

Welcome aboard Grumpa, sounds like you did alright on the muskies. 52"/39lbs is definitely a nice catch, nice to hear someone saying they feel the fishing is getting better and better each year.

Thanks for your report and next time a little porn with the report please. Would have loved to have seen a picture of the big guy.

X2 Couldn't have said it any better

Welcome aboard Grumpa.... You came to the right place.
Lots of great people here, continue to contribute and you'll make friends fast....
Please acquaint yourself with the board rules and most of all enjoy our forums....
And yes, we do love our fish porn here so pics are most welcome

Phil,
Sorry you did not find many fish. I was curious since we were also disappointed with our results and I was wondering what (if anything we were doing wrong). We did ok catching some smallmouth bass. Maybe we should have targeted musky since Grumpa caught some in the same area we were fishing. We tried trolling with large swimming plugs ~12 feet down along the deep spots as you enter the bay, but only did that for a couple hours.

Here is one of our better bass. Would appreciate some input about what techniques work in this part of the lake in early September.

I only hard water fish Nipissing so I cannot offer you any advice, just wanted to say nice smallie

Thanks for your report and picture, well done

As requested see attached fish porn from the last week of August down on the West Arm