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.

Black Friday? More like Good Friday!

A 20-inch Black Friday smallmouth!

Karen and I went camping along the C&O Canal for Thanksgiving, and I caught a good-sized walleye yesterday and a beast 20-inch smallmouth bass this morning!

She had made the reservations a couple weeks ago hoping the weather would be decent like it was a few years ago when we did the same thing during Covid. It looked like temperatures would be in the low 60s but high 30s overnight, so she bought a zero-degree sleeping bag a few days ago.

The only issue was we had two inches of rain go through the area Tuesday, so the level of the Potomac River was going to be up. How far? It looked like it got as high as six feet and was on a slow decline by the time we got to the campsite last night. The Shepherdstown gauge showed about five feet on weather.gov. 

I decided to leave the waders at home and fish from shore.

This time of year is iffy for smallmouth bass. With the colder water, they kind of go into a slumber and are difficult to entice. After catching that 22-inch walleye two weeks ago, I figured if I caught anything, it would again be walleye.

We got to the campsite around 5 p.m. and set things up. The sun was sinking below the trees, and I decided to hit the "easy button" and fish behind the campsite. I tied a Rapala Shadow Rap on one rod but instead of a swimbait on the other rod, I put on a Z-Man Finesse TRD Worm. My plan was to slowly drag or hop the worm on the bottom.

After some casts with the jerkbait, I switched to the rod with the TRD worm. 

And snagged leaves and debris on almost every cast. The Shadow Rap snagged some stuff, but it wasn't that bad. I gave up on the worm and switched to the ol' go-to Reaction Innovations Little Dipper.

Gobble gobble! A Thanksgiving walleye.

On the second cast, slowly reeling against the current, I had a hit! It felt like a good fish, and it was -- probably a keeper-sized (15-inch) walleye. Two walleye in two trips to the Potomac. I didn't have any way to measure it to confirm it was legal, so I threw it back.

Hoping there would be more, I cast fruitlessly for another 45 minutes or so and called it quits.

This morning, I reluctantly emerged from the zero-degree sleeping bag and fished the same spot behind our campsite with the Shadow Rap and Little Dipper swimbait. Nothing was doing, so I moved downstream near the confluence with Antietam Creek. No luck there either, so I moved downstream from the confluence to a spot where I caught the "battered bass" a few years ago. That was earlier in the season, but the river was also flowing higher than normal like today, so maybe a fish was waiting again.

I didn't get anything with either lure and decided to switch from the Little Dipper back to the TRD worm. This area has a point of rocks and vegetation that protrudes out into the river and breaks the flow. Lots of stuff gets caught up there, and I was guessing maybe there wouldn't be as much debris downstream.

On the second cast, I felt something scoop the worm up, and I yanked back on the rod. This felt like a nice fish, and I had walleye on my mind.

The fish jumped -- it was no walleye but instead was a smallmouth bass. It jumped again -- it was a BIG smallmouth! The fish was putting up a good tussle, then started pulling downstream. There was a tree and vegetation in the way, so I didn't have a clear path to get the fish to shore. Sure enough, the smallmouth got into the grass and weeds, and I thought for sure it was going to free itself. I was using my lighter Daiwa Tatula rod/reel setup with six-pound line.

Fortunately, I pulled the fish from the weeds and landed it. With my hands shaking, I took a couple pictures and then a video as I released it back into the water. 

I didn't have any way to measure the fish but took a picture next to the rod. On the photo at the top, you can see a solid black portion of the rod blank just in front of the foam. From where the black fades out to the criss-cross pattern to the rod butt is 20-1/4 inches. It's not hard to speculate that was a 20-inch fish.

The smallmouth briefly got hung up in these weeds.

I was hoping some of its buddies were in the area but if they were, they weren't interested in anything I had.

So while two fish over about four hours between two days doesn't seem like much, I think for the time of the year and that the smallmouth was likely bigger than my previous Potomac best, I'd say it was a win.

As for camping, there are 20 sites at Antietam Creek Campground. Karen and I were the only ones there. We had the whole place to ourselves. No squatters in our site, no bawling kids, no adults not acting their age. Definitely a win.

We had the whole campground to ourselves.

Fish don't care that it's raining because they are already wet

Personal best Potomac walleye, 22 inches!

Since I had the day off for Veterans Day (I'm a veteran so I should have the day off anyway), I was figuring out how to occupy myself during the day. The weather has been great the past few weeks -- around 70 degrees and sunny -- but as I was looking ahead the past few days at the forecast for today, it was projected to be mid-50s and rainy.

Not ideal conditions, but the fish don't care if it's raining because they're already wet.

I trekked up to Dam 4 on the Potomac River since I haven't been to that section in awhile. I was hoping for some smallmouth bass but this area sometimes surprises with walleye.

I got there around 9:15 a.m. and at first it didn't look like anybody was around. But after I waded into the water below the dam, I saw somebody else fishing on the small island just below the dam. It looked like he had come over from the West Virginia side with a kayak. Somebody else with the bright idea of fishing in the rain!

To start things off, I tied on a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper, basically my go-to lure. After one hit in about 10 casts, a shallow-running Rapala Shadow Rap went on my other rod. Speaking of "go-to" lures, Shadow Raps are my go-to jerkbait -- they have been great since the first time I used them, and enticed my first 20-inch smallmouth bass to bite one. I would fish with them more often, but in shallow waters, they are more of a danger to snag. At $10 a pop, I'm always tentative using them.

However this morning, the first cast with the Shadow Rap, I had a hit. This felt like a nice fish, but it was using the river current to its strength. Got the fish closer and saw it was a about a 13-inch smallmouth bass, although fairly chunky.

The first dam fish of the day.

A few casts later, another smallmouth bit the Shadow Rap just as I was pulling the lure out of the water. Although it was only pushing 12 inches, it also had some girth. The smallmouth are likely fattening themselves up before wearing their savage face of cold.

After landing two smallmouth bass in about 20 minutes, I didn't even have a hit for almost two hours afterward. I moved down river, tried a few areas below some protruding rocks that were creating small pools and breaks ... and nothing.

Fall is in full swing along the Potomac River.

That's why they call it "fishing" and not "catching."

At this point, I was thinking of leaving but decided to try below the dam again. I hiked up the C&O Canal Trail and waded to about the same spot where I caught the two smallmouth bass earlier. For some reason, I kept getting bird's nests on the spinning reel with the Shadow Rap and had to strip line and re-tie. Now I didn't have enough line on the spool to cast! So my only option was the other rod with the Little Dipper.

After a handful of casts, I had one hit on the swimbait. After that, I kept peppering the area with casts and was about ready to call it quits. Not quite, "Just one more cast," but it was close to that.

Then something slammed the swimbait. It felt like a nice fish, but the 13-inch smallmouth from earlier felt like it was bigger, so I was skeptical at first.

This fish kept tugging and tugging. Without my sunglasses and their assistance of polarized lenses to cut the glare off the water, it was hard to make out what kind of fish it was as it got into visual range. It wasn't football shaped like a smallmouth.

"Oh man, I hope it's not a catfish."

Then I saw the gold coloring and recognized it was a walleye, and a good-sized one at that! I cradled it out of the water and immediately saw it was big enough to keep (the minimum in Maryland is 15 inches), so I put it on a stringer and ended the day fishing right there.

In case you've stumbled across this blog for some reason -- maybe a fan of my Camaro autocross blog? -- and don't know anything about fish, walleye are one of the best tasting freshwater fish on the planet. 

Of course there wasn't nobody around to see me as I went back to my truck. When I get skunked, there are always people along the trail asking, "How'd ya do?" "Ya catch anything?" I usually keep my head down and try not to make eye contact in those cases. But here I was lugging a hefty walleye, and nobody was around to see it.

After getting home, I measured and weighed the fish -- 22 inches and 3.7 pounds! At least length wise, it was my biggest fish from the Potomac.

Although Karen and I caught a bunch of walleye on Rainy Lake a few months ago, this was my first Potomac walleye since 2020.

If you've stuck around this far, here's a bonus video releasing the first smallmouth.

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: