Small Lake in Haliburton, October 2019
As I highlighted in a earlier post in August of 2019 I bought a fishing kayak
By the end of the summer I had been out a few times with my daughter on some local lakes and I had done a few hours with my brother at his cottage.
By October I was really keen to do a full day on the Yak. Chatting with my brother he mentioned he would love a hand picking up his boat from the local marina and getting it stowed away. I was in, with one caveat, could we turn it in to a days fishing as well. The plan was set.
After a pleasant night of a few cocktails around the fire we got up early (relatively speaking) to load up our yaks and head out. Our initial plan was to hit a small lake that we had been fishing for years and has a really decent bass population. As we drove around the lake it seemed every access point was now blocked or had a large "No trespassing" signs posted. Not wanting to end up on the wrong side of a shotgun we parked and pondered.
My brother Dave turned to me and said "Well we can either go back to the cottage or we can go try this other lake I know of, its still pretty small and it supposed to have good fishing" I was into trying the new lake, even if we didn't catch anything we had the fishing experience to count on.
We pulled into the small launch which was perfect for the yaks and had parking right there to boot. In a few minutes we were launched and scoping out the lake. My initial plan was to look for any existing weedbeds, preferably still nice and green. Over the years fishing with wacky rigs on those spots has been money for both large and smallmouth bass. As we moved along the shoreline we noticed that most of the weeds were already turning brown and that the lake was primarily a bowl, meaning not a lot of tapering drop offs more like steep inclines down to 25 feet.
Dave was ahead of me and tighter to shore when I heard a yell - fish on. I paddled over to him as he was fighting what seemed to be a nice smallmouth bass. A few awkward stabs with the net and it was in. What a beauty a 3 + pounder caught on a Yum Dinger in ragin cajun. What was interesting was that Dave had just sent a cast to a piece of timber on the shoreline and thats exactly where the bass was sitting. We also noticed that in this corner bay there was a large flat extending well off shore. Not long after he released his fish I sent a long cast just outside of a patch of lillies on the same flat. Just as I engaged the bait I had a nice hit only to find it wasnt a bass but a juvenile muskie - sweet.
We tried moving down a few different sections of shorelines looking for similar structure or flats but weren't really having much success. Dave pulled in shallower and I followed the deep edge of a flat seeing if we could catch anything. Again I heard Dave shout fish on and soon he had a nice largemouth to add to his count. "I was just casting a wacky up to the edge of the lily pads and she hit" Interesting. I had only started to paddle over to another section of lillies when I heard "got another" Dude is getting annoying now! Well that was it - the bay we had wandered into had an entire shoreline ringed with lily's and some scattered patches further from shore. I tied on a green pumpkin/red flake senko and proceeded to check it out. Well what a decision - over the next few hours each of us caught some decent smallies and largies - somewhere between 8 and 12 fish - it was awesome.
Eventually the bite slowed and it was time to make our way back to the cottage. We still had to pack up and make the trek home. What a day though and one that has demanded that Dave and I do more of these trips (Courtney, Mishelle take note).
Cheers
Andrew