Rainy Lake
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I am planning a spontaneous trip to the Canadian border on Labor Day weekend. My Dad and Brother have already planned a trip up there and I just found out that I have the Labor Day weekend off. I haven’t fished with either of them in a long time so I decided to go ip and meet them. Do any of the Minnesota guys or others have any experience with this area? Is it ammenable to fly fishing and if so what gear do I need to bring?
My son and I just canoed from the Ash River Vistor Center to Crane Lake (crossing part of Kabetogama, heading north to Kettle Falls, then heading south to cross all of Namakan, and Crane Lakes). We had a blast paddling 56 miles in four days! It is a beautiful area with lots of wildlife. We saw tons of bald eagles, beaver, had a bear very near our campsite, fell asleep listening to common loons, and were very thankful we treated our clothes with permetrin to ward off the plentiful mosquitoes.
We did bring our fly rods and fished some of Berry Reynonld’s fly patterns with marginal success from his book “mastering pike on the fly”. The weather was always changing and the waters were really rough (30+ mile/hour winds) so fishing wasn’t all that great. However we didn’t have much time to fish as we were focusing on my son earning his 50 miler award (via canoe) for boy scouts and not so much fishing.
We each brought 8 wt rods, floating lines (with sinking tips), 20# Fluoro leaders (with perfection loops to our fly line) + Rio’s steel leader (attached via an Albright knot) as tippet. We used the jam knot that Reynolds outlined in his book to attach flies to the tippet. I picked up a Lippa-4-Life to help land toothy fish in the canoe.
Despite the lack of focus on fishing we had a great time and I can’t wait to get back there some day with only my son (and not the other 18 boys scouts).
As for lake maps (with campsites, lake bottom topo, etc) I really like the navagation maps you can buy at the visitor center or here: http://www.bwcamaps.com/ If you have any specific questions about the above areas feel free to ask!
I might add that speaking to the spin casters with boats, depth/fish finders, they all commented that the larger fish were deep (20-25 feet). In retrospect, I’d bring a sinking line to get down deeper. We most of our success (albeit small fish) in coves around structure (downed trees, saddles, etc).
Wow, I had no idea there was that much water and terrain to understand up there.
Welcome to Ontario
🙂Neal,
Since you are staying at Sha Sha’s, you will be quite close to a real Honey Hole on the Rainy River. Should the weather and wind get nasty so as to make fishing on Rainy Lake a bit dicey, you might want to give the Rainy River a try. It is essentially unknown except by the locals but provides a huge concentration of smallmouth and northerns in a very small area of river.
The section on the maps can be fished with any kind of boat with a trolling motor. Sha Sha’s certainly has boats that are suitable if you can tow a trailer.
The locals mostly fish it for Walleye in the deep channel near the islands just down from the dam. But from those islands down, the river is loaded with smallmouth and northerns that hangout along the shoreline in every little eddy and backwater. The smallmouth are especially stacked up around the shoals down around the first big bend in the river. My largest Minnesota Northern came from here–37″ on a big deciever.
Location of Public ramp just behind the International Falls MallAm looking forward to this trip report.
Here are a few pics from the (non)Epic Rainy Lake trip. Overall, it was great to fish with my Dad and Brother again; it has been way too long. The weather was spot on perfect (darn-it, ha) and no wind, no chop, no chill. The small mouth were deep (DEEP) and very picky. We still managed to catch some nasty Minnesota lake fish. I also had a chance to shoot a local band on Saturday evening and I even managed to turn it into a location shoot. The long island ice tea’s helped!
The band – Rock It Science (80’s)
Scenery – gorgeous
My brother – hung over after a full night of Rock It Science and LIIT! Time to go home.
Food shot – local donuts on the drive back.
Regan – The truth in your question stings. It is getting pretty difficult to find time to fish as of late. Spontaneous for me means anything not pencilled in on my calendar at least 4 months in advance. Sadness as the tear rolls down my cheek.
In the future we have decided to find a location half way between Iowa and Georgia were we can meet annually for small mouth fishing. Any thoughts? Anyone?
Mike – sadly, this was all fishing on the darkside. Old school. It was impossible to fly fish with three guys in a bass boat and furthermore, all the fish were holding at least 20-30 feet. We only managed a few smallies and it was difficult fishing, oh well.
Neal – I’d be seriously considering northern arkansas for your half way point. Others know that area better than I but I’ve looking at Crooked Creek and the Buffalo River… I’m sure there are other great places as well.
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