Discovery Lake Lodge Trip Report

[Hillbiehle]

Trip Report...

We left Minneapolis on Tuesday and arrived in International Falls for the evening. We stayed at a motel so we could be fishing early on Wednesday. Went through the border with no line or any trouble. Stopped at Johnny's and Beer Store in Sioux Lookout then we were fishing by 11:30. We stayed in the large cabin.

Wednesday...Began fishing Bawden and went to some of my favorite spots. Most lakes in Canada I would traditionally begin a little deep; however the local lakes surrounding Discovery always seem to have a good shallow bite; however since I never fished this area this time of year I was open to try and rule it in/out. We found them both deep and shallow, however the walleyes seemed better stacked in the shallows outside of various weedlines.

Thursday...Packed our lunch for 12 hour day. Began at Zarn with my new downrigger that I never used. It took a bit of jockeying around with some wood spacers to get the proper fit (the ball I used was entirely too heavy). We started near the Zarn outpost in about 60' and quickly found the fish suspended in 30-35 feet of water. We caught approximately 15 in a short amount of time 90% of fish were caught on the downrigger. We used a stacker, and alternated...however who was directly tied to the clip from the ball was the one getting the action. The hot spoon that was day was a small 2.5" Little Cleo (plain silver). Other lures that worked were a clown colored rouge and a purpledecent deep taildancer. After our 15 or so, we headed to Jorick and found the fish in the shallows, but not as stacked up as suspected. We caught quite a few fish but no doubles. We then headed back to Zarn and caught another 15 lakers or so. We finally quit when the clicker said 30 lake trout as the sun was going down. I estimate we caught them in 6-7 hours total. Our goal for the next day was to get another downrigger from Paul and try to double our success.

Friday....The earlier part of the morning we were fishing northerns in the channel coming into Zarn. We caught plenty of northerns, but we were getting anxious to get to the Lakers. We fished for lakers until about 2:00 and caught 24 in about 4 to 5 hours estimate (with 2 downriggers). Harry lost his spoon on Thursday and we switched to flutter spoons made my Erie Derie that I had. I was using Clown color and Harry was using Superman. Each lure had similar success with no edge to either. We basically repeated everything that we had the days before and basically made a circle trolling with downriggers from one prominent area to another. After a while there were several areas hotter than the rest, but we'd just keep trolling along and get a straggler here and there in no man’s land. We simply had a ball.

Friday evening, we were back to Bawden with similar and consistent success hitting shallows etc....

Saturday....Repeat of Friday's action on Zarn. We probably should have ventured out and tried other spots but we didn't want to break out streak. We spent the first hour trying Paul's favorite spot with a few hear and there and then went back to our trolling runs and began really nailing them. We stopped at 28 to go in for lunch, we wanted 31 but we were ready for lunch. Nothing new here...other than we were working more efficiently...even continued trolling at times as the other was reeling in to keep the momentum going.

Saturday evening, we went to Bawden again to get our limit for take home. We quickly did this by staying shallow. We then hit points along the way back picking up a few here and there. We ended the night and cleaned our fish and finished the evening with BLT sandwiches with the addition of cajun walleye in the addition to the bacon and tartar sauce in lieu of mayo. Simply delicious sandwich.

We ended up coming home on Sunday. Looking back I think we did everything right other than our time management. We had so much fun with the Lake Trout it limited all our other options available. I wouldn't go back to Zarn without the downriggers and a 4lb weight or snap-weights. I liked the idea of using light rods to fight the fish instead of using my heavy leadcore rod or dipsy divers, ..etc.. The downriggers allow you to keep the tackle light. Any spoon seemed to work (along with the traditional blue/silver cleo), and I don't think we were there long enough to really figure it out exact, but I suspect the colored spoons worked better on the overcast days and the metallic of course worked better on the sunny days. 80% of the lakers were 20” to 26” with 20% equal bigger and some smaller.

As always, Paul and Cheryl amaze me on how they provide such a relaxed atmosphere, good fishing at a very affordable price. They are just simply good people and being that they are a small camp they really have the time to chat and look out for their guests and treat you like family.