Ontario fishing trip(lots of fish and more!) DUW

I just got back last night from 9 days up in Ontario, fishing Upper Manitou. My grandpa started going to fishing lodges in Canada some 40 years ago, and it has sort of become a family tradition to go every summer. It was great to see family since they all live quite far away, and not to mention the great outdoors and fishing!!

Anyhoo, here's the fun stuff. I'll start with the small fish.

We arrived in the afternoon and after getting all unpacked only had a short evening of fishing. I landed 5 or so small lake trout.

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The water was high the entire time, and the first full day we were able to use the high water to hit up a rarely-fished lake that is connected by shallow stream to upper manitou. My uncle and I each landed at least 15 smallmouth bass and 15 northern pike that day.. we EASILY broke a total 60 fish for the day! The bass were pretty decent, 16-18 inches, but the northerns were pretty dinky.

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The camp is run by Bob and Judy Herschman, the family has been staying at Bob's lodge since he bought it some 20 or so years ago. Here's a pic of them at a shore lunch, with my uncle and grandpa in the background

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We had much better trout luck after the first evening. My uncle had the biggest lake trout of the trip at some 32 or so inches. These are a little smaller, but pretty chunky. The first made a great shore lunch, but we only kept a handful of smaller fish the entire trip.

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This guy's a little bit bigger, 5lbs on the scale.
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My heaviest trout of the trip, 7 lbs.
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Now I'm moving on to some of the more interesting catches. We ran into a number of very nice northern pike on this trip, and I'm excited to show them all! All of the big'uns are still swimming to grow and be fished for again.

This first one was the longest I caught this trip at 37 inches. We snapped a quick pic before unhooking because it took the lure just a tad deep and thought the release would be a bit stressful on the fish, but luckily it went as smooth as you could ever wish for.

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This chunky guy came in at around 35 inches.
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A 31 incher. She wanted some kisses.
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Another chunky 35er, maybe shade longer.
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A change of pace from fish.

While we were there, we saw a number of typical canadian animals. We saw black bears every other day around camp, some moose on shore while we were fishing(including a cow with two calves), a number of bald eagles/vultures/hawks.. But the most interesting sighting among those was a black bear swimming across the lake. Now I've seen moose swimming on manitou before but this is my first time actually witnessing black bears swimming.

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Now I've come to the absolute highlight for my fishing this trip.

While I was out trolling for trout our 2nd full day on the water, I get a hit on a size 9 rapala deep diving shad rap(for those of you who care), and I can tell it's big. I get a little worried, I'm only fishing with medium gear.

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After a few minutes I get it near the boat and it makes a huge run.
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Cranking it up to the boat again.
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15 minutes or so into the fight and she begins to seem to be tiring. Can you guess what it is??
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How about now?
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MY FIRST MUSKY EVER!!!!! AND IT'S FREAKING 48 INCHES LONG!!

Later the same day, I'm casting around for bass with a wacky-rigged yamamoto senko(artificial soft-plastic worm) and a huge fish comes and smashes it.

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Anything look familiar? It should.

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44 inches!! On bass gear!! The fight was incredible and again totally unexpected.

Here's the release :D
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Now, this IS bp.net, so I'd better get some reptile pics in here, huh? Don't worry, I saved the best for last!

The last day of fishing, I was out with my brother. Fishing was rather slow, and we figured we'd have some fun trying to chase turtles around. Another family tradition of ours is turtle-catching at my grandparents' lakehouse in michigan, so it's something we've been doing a long time and are very good at. Typically this involves spotting turtle heads when they come up to breathe, and chasing them down before they get too far away. I prefer to swim after them(way more fun and challenging than netting! Plus you can get them when they dive deep), but the water was a chilly 57 degrees so we stuck with netting from our boat.

Here's my brother with two of the half dozen or so we caught after lunch.
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About an hour or so later while we're back to fishing, my brother spots another turtle sunning on the shore a couple hundred yards away. It's a tad bigger, but I convinced Steve that it wouldn't be a problem...

Except that it didn't fit in our net.
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But luckily I was able to wrestle it in without getting bit.. Important, considering this is a very large snapping turtle. They tend to do that.
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I pose for a pic, but now we have this giant snapping turtle in our boat. What in the world do we do NOW??
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Pick it up for a better picture, obviously.
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We had a 40 lb battery to run our trolling motor in the boat. We figured, comparing the turtle's weight to the battery that the turtle was likely anywhere from 50-55 lbs.

Best release pic ever. Superman snapping turtle!
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Hope you guys enjoyed the critters :D

Too beautiful, too hard to leave.

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WOW! That really looks like fun! Let me know if you want company the next time you go :gj:

I would have loved to hook into ANY of those awesome fish you caught!

Great write up and really nice pictures too :bow:

That looks like you had a really nice fishing trip. That Muskie was pretty impressive. It's been a long time since I have been able to catch fish like that. In the olden days we used to catch Northern Pike that size on the lake that our family cabin is on in Northern Michigan. We would troll using rapalas (shad raps were not invented yet), U20 flatfish, and pikey minnows.We would catch one after the other, most over 30". Their were big Rainbow trout that we would catch at night using white gas lanterns hanging off the boat in deep water using worms for bait and dropping canned corn over the side. There still is plenty of good size small and large mouth bass. But you can't beat the fun of catching big pike. Those days are gone in Michigan the Pike are much smaller today. There were no expressways to travel up North on back then and not many people went up there compared to today. That was back in the late 50's and early 60's. It would also be nice to go where the wildlife hasn't gone nocturnal to avoid man. You must have had a ball up there.

Man I love fishing myself! I can't believe you caught a pike on the wacky rig that's insane:bow: I live in Socali and can't wait for the tuna fishing to heat up.:banana: Good job on all those nice whoppers!

Thanks guys! :D Hope you enjoyed the pics as much as I enjoyed taking them :)

:O...NICE!!! I wish I was that good at fishing, the only thing I ever catch is friggin crabs and innocent bystanders.:D:D:D

On the trip my brother also was lucky enough to run into a huge musky - 45 1/2 inches! This is a pic of my uncle holding it. I didn't get a look at the pic until today, but either the fish's mouth is deformed or the pic was taken from a weird angle or something weird with how my uncle is holding it.

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/6...evemuskie2.jpg

I can't believe how awesome the fishing was on this trip.

Awesome pics!!!

When I was about 12 or 13 I went fishing with my uncle and dad for musky. I was only young (and not very strong) so I was only using light-medium gear for perch... well I felt a good hit so started reeling in and saw that I had a pretty nice perch on my little jig. Out of nowhere I see this large dark object in the water come up and just smash my perch. The force of it pulling nearly pulled me out of the boat. :rofl: My dad grabbed me by the waist and started yelling to not let go. He grabbed the rod and ended up landing a 40" or so musky! Probably the biggest (and strongest) fish I've ever caught in my life.:gj:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

This is a pic of my uncle holding it. I didn't get a look at the pic until today, but either the fish's mouth is deformed or the pic was taken from a weird angle or something weird with how my uncle is holding it.

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I recall reading in InFisherman some time ago that you are not supposed to hold big fish by their jaws. Only bass have a jaw structure that can support their body weight. So this fish's jaw may have been broken by it's own weight. The best method is to use plastic "lip grippers" with one hand, and support the body with the other.

Congrats on the great fishing! Always nice to get a mixed bag on a trip - keeps things interesting. And big fish like your Muskie on light line is as good as it gets, IMO. One question: some of the fish appeared to have sores/cuts on their sides, are those from leeches?

yeah i don't know why he was holding it like that, heck he'd be the first to say that you shouldn't have all the weight of a large musky on the be pressing on the gill palte.. best way to hold a musky or pike is to grab hold of the gill plate(like my uncle was doing) but support all the weight by placing a hand underneath the belly. Never use grippers with musky or pike, they'll toss and flip if you don't know how to hold by the gill plate correctly, and dropping them is bad for their health.

as for the sores and such(especially on one of those pike, very strange), good question. Many muskies have scars(especially on the tail).. from other fish biting them, wear and tear during beddind in the shallows during spawning, and sadly from bad fishermen trying to snag 'em which is against ontario regs.

I once saw a musky follow my dad's lure some years ago, it had about a dozen or so 6 inch long scars from cuts of some sort across its back. These are tough critters!

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Originally Posted by Ranger

One question: some of the fish appeared to have sores/cuts on their sides, are those from leeches?

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Probably from Lamprey which came to the Great Lakes from overseas on freighters. Musky and Northern Pike probably bring them from the Great Lakes up tributaries to inland lakes in Ontario.

AWESOME trip!!!! My 4 year old would have LOVED that!!! He's so into fishing right now, it's not funny. We're thinking about getting him his own pole. Great pictures! Thanks for sharing!

wow great pics looks like you had a great time!!!