Thumper
06-05-2003, 01:00 PM
Just got back from my first fly-in fishing trip. Oh boy, _that_ could become a habit!! We used Viking Outposts to fly into Optic Lake in Woodland Caribou Provincial Park in NW Ontario, about 30 miles West of Red Lake.
The cabin is newly rebuilt after having had a fire there a couple years ago. Very nice cedar cabin, 3 bedrooms, sleeps 6. Tounge & groove paneling with a 55-inch spread moose rack. Cabin located on a thin penninsula with a dock on the sheltered side. Great view but they outfiters should have cleaned up the remains of the old cabin, there are plenty of boards with nails strewn around the camp that pose a safety issue, and piles of ruble that decrease from the aesthetics.
The outfitter claims that the best fishing is off the dock. We tried off the dock and the bay that it faces frequently, and in varying conditions. Not a nibble. The bay is fed by a channel where we say a few small northerns and walleye, but they were hard to catch and we only landed a few there.
Optic Lake (North and South) never yielded the pike action I hoped for. Mostly small ones in the 20-25 inch range. We were right at the end of the spawn, with at least 1 fish milting after we caught it, so there _should_ still have been some larger females in the shallows, but we never caught any. I'm not an expert, but I'd assume that the lake doesn't hold an abundance of big northern.
There were numereous slot-sized walleye. Most fish coming in from 5-10 FOW caught while trolling Rapala minnows and shadraps. Blue or Black backs were good performers depending on sky conditions with some coming on firetiger or perch, also. Jigging with minnows, worms or plastics in the areas that were producing trolled walleye was very slow. Largest walleye was 28 1/2" taken on a black-back Floating YoZuri Crystal Minnow 4 1/2 ".
The portage of Glenn Lake produced more consistently with the Northern, though there were still not any significant size. There did appear to be more Pike breeding habitat there. Also, a 50-incher was taken and released by an angler a few days before we arrived. also produced numbers of walleye in and above the slot.
Bottom line - if you want numbers this is a decent trip.
- RT
The cabin is newly rebuilt after having had a fire there a couple years ago. Very nice cedar cabin, 3 bedrooms, sleeps 6. Tounge & groove paneling with a 55-inch spread moose rack. Cabin located on a thin penninsula with a dock on the sheltered side. Great view but they outfiters should have cleaned up the remains of the old cabin, there are plenty of boards with nails strewn around the camp that pose a safety issue, and piles of ruble that decrease from the aesthetics.
The outfitter claims that the best fishing is off the dock. We tried off the dock and the bay that it faces frequently, and in varying conditions. Not a nibble. The bay is fed by a channel where we say a few small northerns and walleye, but they were hard to catch and we only landed a few there.
Optic Lake (North and South) never yielded the pike action I hoped for. Mostly small ones in the 20-25 inch range. We were right at the end of the spawn, with at least 1 fish milting after we caught it, so there _should_ still have been some larger females in the shallows, but we never caught any. I'm not an expert, but I'd assume that the lake doesn't hold an abundance of big northern.
There were numereous slot-sized walleye. Most fish coming in from 5-10 FOW caught while trolling Rapala minnows and shadraps. Blue or Black backs were good performers depending on sky conditions with some coming on firetiger or perch, also. Jigging with minnows, worms or plastics in the areas that were producing trolled walleye was very slow. Largest walleye was 28 1/2" taken on a black-back Floating YoZuri Crystal Minnow 4 1/2 ".
The portage of Glenn Lake produced more consistently with the Northern, though there were still not any significant size. There did appear to be more Pike breeding habitat there. Also, a 50-incher was taken and released by an angler a few days before we arrived. also produced numbers of walleye in and above the slot.
Bottom line - if you want numbers this is a decent trip.
- RT