Cast away: Nibbles and bites and swipes on Rainy Lake

Switching to casting, my biggest smallmouth, about 15 inches.

It's that time of year again where I recap a fishing excursion from our annual "road trip." You know, Karen takes off about a week before me in the Crosstrek then I fly out and meet her someplace out west.

This year we decided to head into Canada. I have been to Canada before but have never actually set foot in the country. Of course, those prior trips were fishing in Canada-U.S. border waters, so I didn't even need a passport.

I really wanted to fish in a Canadian lake that didn't straddle the U.S. border but struggled to find a guide. Using the usual searches on fishingbooker.com and even Google, there didn't seem to be anyone who guided in Canada other than on The Great Lakes. Which in most cases meant "charter" fishing with six-plus people. I've done that before, and it really doesn't appeal to me.

We could have just stayed at a "resort" at a Canadian lake and rented a boat, but then we would have had to haul our fishing gear. And of course we would have to guess where the fish were.

Karen suggested going back to Rainy Lake with Rainydaze Guide Service like we did last year, 2021 and 2019. It's like hitting the easy button, so I booked a trip for Aug. 4.

Like last year, we ended up with Jeff Plath as our guide. He has his own guiding business but lives in the same neighborhood as Chris Granrud, who owns Rainydaze, and will fill in from time to time.

Once again we stayed at The Thunderbird Lodge, so like an Uber fishing service, Jeff met us at their dock Sunday morning.

You will notice a pattern if you've read my previous Rainy Lake fishing blogs. We start off finding walleye and other fish mingling in about 30 feet of water and drop minnows and/or leeches on jigheads to hover off the bottom. According to the modern combination depth finders and live scopes that show fish, we are ALWAYS on top of fish. But sometimes they don't cooperate.

As usual, we again found fish sitting on the lake floor, but they weren't in much mood to snack on tasty minnows or leaches. Karen and I landed a few fish -- walleye, a tiny sauger and even some dink smallmouth bass -- but we only had a couple eater-sized walleye to show for it after a few hours.

The Garmin thingie showed fish, but it was another thing to get them to bite.

When talking with Jeff over the phone a few days prior, I mentioned wanting to target smallmouth bass. Around 11 a.m., we moved from 30 feet of open water to hugging the rocky shoreline to try and catch them ol' brown fish.

Talking with Jeff throughout the morning about other clients, I think he might have been reluctant to change gears and fish for smallmouth. A lot of his clients just want to catch walleye, and some really aren't that good of fishermen -- they can't actually cast lures. They are more comfortable dropping lines over the side of the boat.

While Karen and I can't drop a lure in a postage-stamp-sized spot with consistent precision, we aren't slouches!

Jeff rigged a rubber swimbait on my line and a spinner that looked like a Rooster Tail on Karen's line, and we peppered she shore in a small cove. Almost instantly, we had action. 

Nibbles and bites and swipes.

We had some excitement with smallmouth bass and a few northern pike. They weren't huge, but it was better than sitting floating in the water watching walleye on the scope ignore our baits.

Karen caught her first northern pike!

Karen caught her first northern pike. 

From my time stationed in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, these are one of my favorite fish to catch. They have teeth! And they are actually good eating but get a bad reputation because of their "Y" bones in the meaty part of filets.

Karen snagged the little spinner in a tree, and then Jeff rigged her fishing rod up for swimbaits, too.

Always a good sign of fish activity is to end up with battered, useless swimbaits.

I tussled with a few smallmouth and hooked a couple small pike but didn't land them.

Thanks to that change of plans, Karen and I boated 20-25 fish between us.

Here are some bonus pics:

Like the little walleye I caught last year, I caught a matching sauger.

After fishing, we crossed the border the next day and entered Canada at Fort Frances and got on the Trans Canada Highway. We drove from there to camp in Thunder Bay on the western side of Lake Superior. Then we drove some more and had overnight camping stays in Sault Ste. Marie, Mobert, Massey and Severn before finally crossing the border in Buffalo, N.Y. 

We camped at some provincial parks that were on lakes, but they had limited access to shore fishing. I threw a line here and there anyway but didn't catch anything.

After we got back into the U.S., we camped at a KOA near Houghton, N.Y., that had a small fishing pond. I fished that night and enticed a few fish to take a run at a white Zara Puppy before finally hooking this crappie:

Bonus crappie caught in the KOA/Houghton pond.

Thinking of what we can do next year. Snake River in Idaho/Washington? Maybe Maine? Look harder for guide service on a Canadian lake? Really throw a change-up and fly fish for trout somewhere? Rainy Lake is beautiful, walleye are tasty, but I'm not sure if I'm up to the monotony of fishing for them.

For more pictures from the road trip, click here for my Flickr album.

All walleye, all the time: A return to Rainy Lake

Karen with her biggest walleye. Notice the greenish coloring on the bottom of the gill plate.

Karen and I returned to Rainy Lake on the Minnesota-Canada border as part of the fishing trip portion of our annual "road trip" vacation.  We came here in 2019 and then again two years ago and caught a variety each time including walleye, northern pike, smallmouth bass and crappie.

This time it was all walleye, all the time.

As in the previous two trips, I again reached out to RainyDaze Guide Service. Due to the massiveness of open water, renting a boat or fishing from shore would be a futile attempt to find fish. Hiring a guide to put us on the good spots is a no-brainer.

This year, Jeff Plath would be our guide. He actually has his own guiding business -- J.P.E.P Guide Service -- but since he lives in the same 'hood as the owner of RainyDaze, he fills in from time to time.

Like in 2021, we made reservations to stay at the Thunderbird Lodge on the Minnesota side in International Falls. It has an old-school lodge feel with real room keys instead of key cards, four cable channels, dining for all three meals, and a bar. Guides can also slip into the the lodge's docks to meet clients. Meeting guides at the dock makes for sleeping in an extra half hour instead of driving somewhere to another part of the lake!

Jeff was waiting for us around 7:30 a.m., and after hopping in the boat, we skimmed across the water. Forecast called for 20mph+ winds, and I was worried it was going to be like 2021 where the surface was almost unbearably choppy.  

In 2021, it was almost impossible for guides to get work visas to work the Canadian side of Rainy Lake. This time, there was more of the same Canadian bureaucracy. Jeff said he sent in a request for a work visa in December, paid all the fees along the way, yet still Canada was slow-boating putting an actual work visa in his hands. Maybe they are bitter at the U.S. run of winning NHL Stanley Cups?

The lake has extremely deep sections reaching over 90 feet. However, the walleye (and some northern pike) favor humps and plateaus in 30-foot depths. This was the strategy for the last two trips -- find one of those spots and jig minnows or leaches off the bottom -- and it was the same this time. We "anchored" letting the trolling motor keep the boat hovering as we dropped bait over the side of the boat.

I was first on the board with a monster walleye.

First fish of the day, a micro walleye!

"Get the net!" Strangely, this would be the theme of the day -- super dink walleye that we should have let swim around to entice big northern pike.

I caught a bigger fish -- measuring 21-3/4" -- right after that, so that gave us hope bigger fish would follow.

First non-keeper size walleye, just under 22 inches.

But the micro-walleye brigade mounted a parade, mostly finding their way to the end of my line. Meanwhile, Karen was putting food on the table catching a few ideal eater-size 12- to 16-inch walleye.

The winds eventually died down, as did the bite. We trekked to a few locations, spotting tons of fish hovering in 30-feet of water, but mainly enticing the dinks and a few eaters.

Even though we missed an elusive trophy or even a bonus northern pike, it was still a fantastic experience. Karen and I must have boated 50-plus walleye between us. We caught a handful over the 18-inch maximum -- I had the two biggest fish (one just shy of 24 inches) and Karen got a couple in the 19- to 20-inch range. The day flew by, and 2:30 p.m. snuck up fast!

The sub-24-inch fish I caught might have been the hardest fighting walleye I had ever caught. Pulling on the rod, made a few dives underneath the boat. I thought it was a pike at first feeling how it was resisting.

It turned out, the kitchen staff at Thunderbird Lodge offers to cook the fish guests catch, so Karen and I hunkered up to the bar later and dined on a few of our walleye fingers, while the rest of our (or maybe all her) fish went into the lodge's freezer.

Thunderbird Lodge kitchen staff cooked our walleye.

Since Rainy Lake is now reserved for odd-numbered years, I'm brainstorming where to fish next year. I've always wanted fly-fish a western trout stream or try for beast smallmouth bass. Not going to lie, when we pulled up to the dock on Thursday, the RainyDaze guide from our 2019 trip, Chris Zahn, was just leaving. He said he and his clients hooked into topwater smallmouth all day with fish in the three- and four-pound range. 

Let me say that again, topwater smallmouth all day.

Bonus pictures:

One of Karen's too beaucoup walleye.

Jeff's boat docked at Thunderbird Lodge. Meeting the guide at the lodge's boat dock means sleeping in a little extra!

Meet Stephen the seagull. This opportunistic and aggressive flying rat shadowed us between at least three spots hoping to steal discarded baitfish. At one point, he swiped one of Karen's minnows while it was still on the hook!

For more photos from our road trip, click on the Badlands' bighorns: