Blame Canada

Karen with the biggest fish of the trip --
a 22-inch walleye.

Road Trip No. 3 (for me) started Aug. 6 when I flew to Missoula, Mont., and Karen met me at the airport after she started driving out a little over a week prior.  It's kind of a tradition now to schedule a fishing trip during the middle of the return stint, and this year we went back to Rainy Lake on the Minnesota-Canada border to fish with Rainy Daze Guide Service like we did two years ago.

This time, it was a little different.  Because of that virus thing, Canada had made it difficult for American anglers to cross the border (no walls, no checkpoints, just open water) to fish.  When I scheduled the trip, Canada wasn't allowing ANY boats across the border.  By the time we got to Thunderbird Lodge on the following Wednesday, we learned from a couple other guides in the restaurant that Canada had just relaxed restrictions.  Some. Maybe.  American guides needed a work permit, which meant taking a full day to drive across the border, present the proper paperwork, and if all your I's were dotted and T's were crossed, you should be OK.  But that still usually meant a full day away from the water.

A Potomac-sized smallmouth followed us!

Wednesday morning, we met up with our guide Brent Amy at the lodge.  He's a seasonal guide and had his boat docked a little ways away and could just motor over to the lodge to pick us up.  Really convenient to just roll out of bed and wander down to the dock -- like a fishing Uber guide service!

Brent kind of echoed what we heard from the other guides the previous night, but he heard from his best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with a girl who is a Canadian official at the Thunder Bay office that it was OK for American boaters to cross the Rainy Lake border.  If they weren't guiding.  Or maybe it was alright?  Brent had decided that it wasn't worth the risk because worst-case scenario, the Canadians would confiscate his boat!  Maybe if the Canadiens had done better at hockey and didn't let a U.S. team beat them in the Stanley Cup Final, the folks north of the border would be more lenient.

The forecast looked OK for Wednesday morning -- high 70s to low 80s in temps and partly cloudy.  But the wind would play a big factor.  The choppy waters proved difficult to find fish and entice the bite.  The fish were there but they didn't seem to be hungry.  We were jigging leeches off the bottom in 30-plus feet of water.

I started off hooking the first fish and got it close to the surface, but it got off.  It looked like a really nice walleye, probably more than 25 inches.  Brent I think was more excited about it and speculated throughout the day that it may have been 28 or even 30 inches.

The bite throughout the day was spotty at best.  I caught four or five early while Karen didn't get anything.  I even caught a small northern pike and a Potomac-sized smallmouth bass.

We moved around to a few spots with limited success.  Karen finally got on board with some walleye and another smallmouth bass that seemed to have followed us from home. She even caught the biggest fish of this trip -- a 22-inch walleye.

Here's where the Canada complaints come to fruition.  Even though Rainy Lake is huge, only about 25 percent of it is on the U.S. side.  The Canadian side has more islands and coves which would have made it easier to hide from the wind and choppy waters.

We decided to go to plan B and try for crappie.  While they aren't big or good fighters, they are tasty panfish.  We anchored in a small cove and used small spinners.  Brent pulled out this contraption that looked like a massive ultrasound.  He mounted it to the side of the boat and could see the fish on a computer screen.  I don't know, I couldn't see anything, but he said the fish were there.  

I caught a decent sized crappie, which would be my last fish of the day.  Karen got one, too, then we moved to another spot.  She caught two more, and Brent caught a few using minnows.

Fresh fish is fantastic.  Not what you get from
the local grocery store.

Kind of bummed at the weather putting a damper on things, but we caught a few eater-sized walleye and crappie.  And the Thunderbird Lodge was great -- good selection of beers at the restaurant bar and walleye on the menu.  The walleye "taco" was fantastic!  We also had a great view of the water from our room and the lodge had real room keys!  Not some card that you swiped and swiped and swiped and hoped it worked, a real, actual room key that we haven't seen since maybe 1998.

Not sure what to do next year.  I keep wanting to try the Columbia or Snake rivers in Washington/Oregon.  We drove through trout territory in Montana, too, and hitting an isolated river or stream would be fun, too.  That's kind of a bucket list trip, to fly fish a "River Runs Through It" trickle of water with a chance of hooking a monster trout.

View of the Thunderbird Lodge docks, grey
clouds just passed through opening up sunlight.