Big Lake Big Pike

June 6, 2010

Morning came rather quickly in Saskatchewan, Canada. We did not get to bed until after 2 am last night. We fished till midnight then we were so keyed up after catching our biggest pike of the trip that we couldn’t stop talking about it. At 6 am lodge manager Phil woke us up with hot coffees in hand. I could barley see straight. I was already tired from Pagato, but now having less than four hours of sleep – I was hurting bad. But I heaved myself from the bed and chugged the coffee. Then we had a great breakfast and met our guides at the dock at 8. 

Today is the first day of the season for Lawrence Bay Lodge. The ice left Reindeer Lake only two weeks ago. Chris and I fished with a guide named Nelson. Nelson is an Indian that was born and raised on Reindeer Lake. His grandfather, a man that lived to an astonishing ninety-eight, guided here for sixty-seven years! You could tell Nelson was going to be excellent right from the get go. We pushed off from the dock and he informed us we had an eighteen minute drive to his first spot. He was talkative and gave us info on this huge lake and about growing up in the remote area. I enjoy getting the rundown on more than just the fishing. 

Once again the weather was incredible. Here we are this far north and it’s nicer than it’s been back home. If you look at Reindeer Lake on the map you will see that it is enormous. I would expect such a monster lake this far north to be windy at all times. This morning it was so calm it was like glass. However, although the sun shined bright, the ice cold water of the lake made for a cold ride and I couldn’t wait for our speedy run to be over. When we got to the place I stood on the bow and looked around. It was a shallow bay and I could barely see bottom. As we drifted further in it shallowed up nicely and I could see weeds. The back of the bay was ridden with lily pads and sunken trees. This had high potential. 

On my fourth cast with a huge chartreuse bunny streamer I got jolted. I was so used to the Pagoto Lake hammer handle pike that when this fish started peeling line I barely remembered what to do. When I was able to hoist back on the brute I was delighted to see a fish of at least 36”s! About then Chris shouted he had one also and a few minutes later we were both releasing pike larger than we’d seen the entire trip.

We probably landed ten pike from that first spot. Most of them were about 33” – 35”s long. Generally, a 35” pike is close to 10lbs. This was incredible fishing! Nelson took us from bay to bay and we caught at least several pike over 30” each time. 

As the sun got higher we began to see the pike. I saw a gargantuan pike slowly swimming along the bottom. He was aware of us and would have nothing to do with my fly. A minute later I spotted another big boy. This pike was pointed towards the bank as if waiting for a frog, bird or small mammal to make a mistake. I made a decent cast into the grass where he was facing and I could see him turn ever so slightly. Sure enough he slowly stalked my fly before picking up speed and devouring it. Landing a big pike with this many submerged trees in the water is a challenge. Luckily, when you fish on Reindeer Lake you fish heavy tippet with a foot of wire. My exact rig was a stout 30lb tippet attached to 40lb Rio Knottable wire. With my 9-weight Ross fly rod in hand I bullied the pike to the boat and avoided all the logs. Nelson (who forgot his net) reached over and wrestled the pike to where we both could lift him into the boat. It was a magnificent 39” monster! 

This may sound insane, but by days end Chris and I landed at least twenty-five pike over 30”s. Many of these were better than 36”s and Chris boated a 43”er! I love pike fishing anywhere I go, but after today, it will never be the same again. We ended our fishing promptly at 5 pm. It was tough to quit but the fishing hours at the lodge are from 8 am to 5 pm. Worse than that, it was the end of our trip. At 6 pm we got picked up by the float plane and enjoyed a bouncy twenty minute ride to Southend where we left the truck a week ago. Without wasting a minute we started our twenty-six hour drive. It’s now 3 am and we just left Saskatoon. I’m exhausted but I’m helping Chris spot the whitetail deer crossing the road. To the south it is dark like it is supposed to be at 3 am, but behind us to the north is the glow of the midnight sun. What an incredible trip! I already miss it but it’s time to go home. I have a bass fly fishing tournament on Thursday!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing web site

Small Pike & Big Whitefish

June 3 – 5, 2010

There were no complaints about the incredible first day of fishing we had on Pagato Lake. I have never caught so many quality walleye on the fly in a day. In fact, during our next three days on Pagato, I’ll bet I landed sixty or more! However, this trip is meant to be a hunt for big pike.

By the end of day three on Pagato we had fished every river and creek mouth, every shallow bay, windward points, down deep, different flies, you name it, but the end result was a few pike just over thirty inches with hundreds under twenty-five inches. Where are the big pike?

Our outfitter claims they are here. Could it be like Flat Creek in Jackson, WY? A place that swarms with big Snake River Cutthroats yet somehow I’d send an angler there from the fly shop and they wouldn’t see a one. Then they would come back in and say I was crazy. No. This was different. Our four man team consists of good anglers all experienced with fly fishing for pike. We should be able to find them. Shouldn’t we?

Luckily, when struggling to succeed in one area you often succeed in another accidentally. One such highlighted event involved finding a rare opportunity to catch lake whitefish on a fly. For those Rocky Mountain anglers that think a whitefish is a whitefish, try again. There are several different species. The one found in Rocky Mountain streams is the mountain whitefish and is usually easy to catch. But lake whitefish are far more difficult. The main reason is because they spend much of their lives down deep in lakes. Because it is early season here in northern Saskatchewan, we found them in the Pagato River one mile downstream from the lake. To be exact, Bill and Steve where exploring the river for big pike and came around a corner and fish were rising everywhere. They were dumbfounded because the literature for fishing on this lake doesn’t even mention whitefish. Boy are they missing out!

Not expecting a small dry fly situation during this trip, Bill and Steve barely managed to scrape up two small dry flies between them. Then they took Bills 9-weight and a floating line and tied on eight feet of 2X tippet. It wasn’t easy to thread the small dry fly but once they did they were rigged the best they could be. During the next two hours they managed to scrape up three whitefish on the tiny dry while fishing it submerged. Then, because they are great guys, they came and found Chris and I and gave us the 9-weight set up and led us in to catch a few.

Chris and I couldn’t have missed the place. There were rises everywhere. I guarantee with a 4-weight, a nice long 4X leader and some good flies we could of raked in these fish. But with the 9-weight and no fly to choose from, attached to level 2X leader, it was a challenge. Luckily, Chris and I each landed one without too much difficulty. These whitefish fight incredibly well and best of all they are big. Each fish has the length and girth of a giant Henry’s Fork rainbow. The beauty of the event for me, a new species on the fly!

Although we could have stayed at the whitefish pool all week, it was back to the hunt for “a” big pike. Fortunately, being the smart guys that we are, we gradually drifted from our big pike dreams and capitalized on the walleye. Pagato Lake is the best walleye fishery any of us have ever fished. Today, our final day on Pagato, all we did was chase the walleye. To do this means smaller flies and keeping them on bottom. I took my 6-weight Ross Rod and dredged with my Rio Type 3 Full Sinking Line and a Clouser like concoction of a fly. Man did it work! We hit points where we caught random walleyes on pike flies earlier in the week and went up some of the creeks to where we found waterfalls and rapids. By using more walleye like flies we caught more walleyes then we could count. And of course, we had a shore lunch to remember!

At 6 pm tonight the Beaver float plane arrived to pick us up. It was an incredible four days of fishing. Although we didn’t catch our big pike on Pagato, we experienced the best walleye fishing of our lives, added the lake whitefish to our species list and enjoyed watching numerous bears while we fished. It was also the nicest weather you could imagine for fishing this far north. We had one cold windy day, the rest were fantastic. It was a fantastic stop on this adventure. The good news is we did not fly back to the truck to go home tonight, but rather to Reindeer Lake. The outfit we are using for this entire trip, Lawrence Bay Lodge, has a place on Reindeer Lake and the lake is renowned for giant pike. Upon our arrival, they let us take the boats out on our own to a nearby bay and we pummeled pike up to 35”s! Tomorrow we will be guided for the first time this trip. Judging by tonight, we may just find the beast we have been dreaming for.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing web site

Lakes Beyond Lakes

June 2, 2010

Our cabin is very simple and located on a scenic little beach on the north end of Pagato Lake. We have a porch that overlooks the water and that’s where I sucked down a cup of coffee while going over my gear listening to loons between 6 and 7 am. It was calm and sunny but cold as heck. The sun had literally been up since 4 am. This place is absolute heaven.

We started fishing at about 9 am. 9 am sounds incredibly late for fishing, but up here there is presently 21 hours of daylight. If you fish late into the night you won’t fish early. Late means fishing until midnight (what we did last night) and early starts at 3 am when there’s easily enough light to see. Although everyone would love to fish from 3 am to midnight each day, such hours would kill a few old guys like us.

We were eager to see what Pagato has in store for us so we decided to go to the opposite end of the lake and fish our way back until sunset. On the map we saw a river entering on the far end and knew it should be a prime area for pike at this time of year. The four of us cranked up the two boats and enjoyed a forty-five minute drive. The river dumped into a shallow weedy bay and we started catching little pike like there was nothing to it. Gradually the current of the river pushed us out into the lake where the depth increased. Because we weren’t catching any big pike in the shallows I felt like we were bound to hook up with a big pike out deep. Unfortunately the hammer handles kept showing up.

Bill and Steve are experienced fishing the waters of northern Canada and suggested we drive up the river itself to see if the big pike were hiding up there. We could see on our map that this river actually came from a small lake and thought that if we could get the boats up there perhaps we could fish that lake. We slowly motored up the river carefully avoiding the many submerged rocks and sunken trees. It was ideal fish habitat and occasionally we stopped and nailed a few more small pike. About a ½ mile up we hit a short rapid. My past experiences in the Minnesota Boundary Waters and the Quetico of Ontario are that these places hold numerous walleye. Sure enough we all caught walleyes on our first cast below the rapid on our big pike flies. The walleyes were humanely wacked and became an incredibly delicious shore lunch.

All anglers are explorers, so we actually drug the boats up the rapids and then motored into the small lake we saw on the map. There’s now doubt that this small weedy lake sees few anglers. It too had its fair share of entering creeks and the four of us went off investigating. The first creek Chris and I went too had lily pads throughout the entire bay. We each tied on weedless Dahlberg Divers and cast them deep into the lily pads. It didn’t’ take long before a wake appeared behind my fly destroyed it. It was a nice 27” pike. We proceeded to catch numerous pike from the lilies throughout the day, but we couldn’t break 30 inches. The dream 40 plus inchers were not around.

A huge thunder storm rolled in at about 7 pm. I hate sitting in an aluminum boat during a lightning storm so we tied to a dead birch tree and walked the bog and hunkered down in some willows. The wind ripped and the rain came down hard for a few minutes. Then as fast as the storm came it left and we were casting our Dahlberg’s again. It hadn’t been ten minutes since we were in the willows when I spotted a huge black bear sniffing the very ground we were just on. Likely the smell of fish from our waders lured the giant bear from the thick forest hoping for an easy fish meal. We watched him trace our steps until he finally got wind of us and ran back to the forest. Man I’m glad we were back in the boat!

Knowing we had a long way back to the cabin we each caught one more pike from the lily pads and then began the trek. The sun actually set at about 10:15 but it stayed light enough to see and fish till nearly midnight. Once within a mile of the cabin we did just that. We hammered walleye after walleye off a point with Warpath Jig Fly’s and Clouser's until we were too tired to cast. Although the big pike eluded us the numbers of small pike and quality walleye kept us happy.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing web site