June 2017 Update

Our season is well underway and it’s been interesting!  We expected an early ice out, but in fact it was a bit late however just in time for our first guests!  We expected the water levels to start off quite high but they were just below average and now with all the rain we’ve had, the water level is quite high.  We have never seen so many days of rain and tough weather in such a short period of time.  We get a reprieve every now and then, it actually got pretty warm and my daughter was swimming but for the most part it’s been fairly cool with lots of rain!  The fishing has been pretty good in spite of the weather, when a cold front comes in, things slow down and the Pike are currently waiting for warmer temps to become active again.  Any time the weather has been good, the fishing has been great!  My daughter and her friend, both 10 year old girls came to the lodge for a few days to visit.  They fished when the weather was nice and absolutely hammered the Walleye!  One day we fished for about 4 hours and the girls caught a total of 90 Walleye!  The next day they fished a bit more and caught a bunch more including a really nice 29 inch Walleye!  Jordan’s friend had never caught a fish before in her life and now she has probably caught more fish than everybody else in her school.

We’re seeing some really nice big Pike this year including some 45 and 46 inch beasts!  A real nice Lake Trout measuring 39 inches and weighing over 30 pounds was caught and released earlier this month as well.  The outpost camps have been doing well too, the first few regular groups at Aswap Lake had some great luck with pretty good weather and a few dozen trophy Pike!  Joint Lake has produced a nice variety of big Walleye, Pike and Lake Trout.  Kitchi Lake has produced some decent Pike and lots of Walleye, most groups that have gone in are new to the lake so it’s taken some time to figure out the best fishing spots and baits.  We have a group in Kitchi Lake for 9 days right now, so they’ll get a real good look at the lake.

New for this year, the Manitoba Master Angler Program has changed their rules for submitting trophy fish.  The program now requires a picture of the fish on a measuring board (provided in all our boats) to be submitted online along with an action shot and the rest of the particulars.  I’ve been doing all the submissions for our lodge guests but I believe only 2 out of about 50 trophy fish have been registered from the outposts so far this year.  Hopefully this information will help guests be more prepared when catching and photographing their trophy fish.  The submitting part is fairly straight forward as long as you have your pictures on the device you’re using to register your catch, just go to https://anglers.travelmanitoba.com/default.asp?page=201306&#/ma-step1

Our spring bear hunt was once again a complete success!  We had 5 hunters and all 5 of them took home a nice trophy Black Bear!  We had roughly 40 different bears hitting the bear baits and we already have a couple named and on the hit list for next season!  Whoever gets a shot at Patches will take home a giant!

We are looking forward to many more weeks of guests, great fishing and hopefully lots more sun!