Aerial Photo's of Witch Bay

[Red Team Leader]

Happy holiday’s folks,

Here are some great aerial shots of Witch Bay and the surrounding waters taken by my good friend Spiderman and his trusty pilot “The Mad Bomber”, aka, Andy James as they arrived and left camp this October.

The housekeeping cabin was awesome.

I highly recommend a fall trip to WBC, I miss my friends in Canada more than they know.

Enjoy,
RTL

P.S. Thats Anthony and I fishing Trappers on the Whaler.

Thanks again Jaimie and Andy for these fine photo's.

[pgray57]

These are great photos! Thanks for sharing them.

Merry Christmas!

[Chris G.]

Great pics...they really give you a great perspective. How was the fishing in October?

[Red Team Leader]

Hey Chris,

Here is the wrap up,

The Muskie’s where tough compared to the two prior October trips I had made in the past.

I know we had a very late fall here in the Midwest and clearly that carried up to Northwest Ontario.

We found water temp’s between 45 to 48 degrees that should have been upper 30’s to low 40’s by the 3rd week of October.

Also there was a “Major Bloom” still in effect on many parts of the lake. The water should have been gin clear and we found areas that where so bloomed up that the shore line was turning blue from rotting algae.

Very strange that late in the season.

This was the year that you could have fished late into November with many days reaching 5 to 8 Celsius for highs (Mid 40’s) all the way up to Thanksgiving, and we just could not plan ahead for that.

We did boat six fish as a group after trolling without success and doing a bit of head scratching after days one and two.

Casting had Muskie’s following without committing to our baits. We worked clean water and continued to troll breaks and points throughout the week and it paid off with 5 of 6 fish coming from trolling late week and 3 of those 6 coming during the last day and a half of our trip.

Walleyes where a bit challenging. No fall monsters landed but plenty of action and a couple of meals enjoyed for sure.

Smallmouth’s where also active on deeper breaks.

Very few Northern caught, that surprised me considering the water temp’s.

All and all we enjoyed a great fall trip to Witch Bay, the weather was perfect, I never needed my raingear for rain, only as a windbreaker traveling at plane from spot to spot.

We saw prime fall color and had 2 nights of hard freeze that triggered every leaf on the tree’s to drop one morning. Wisps of wind caused them to drop straight to the ground creating a painted carpet on the forest floor.

Wildlife was active everywhere from the group of fox that met us every morning to the deer feeding at the shoreline in camp each night.

We had a pack of Wolf’s come through camp hunting the deer witch was very cool to see and we shagged a Moose off one inland in the Trapper complex.

The food was great, we ate like kings, and the housekeeping cabin was unreal. Very comfortable for 6 to 8 anglers.

I must thank Steve and Gail for being great hosts.

I enjoyed the company of good friends and won’t hesitate returning next October to hunt again.

I will post some more pictures latter this week,

RTL

[Chris G.]

Sounds like a great trip! I was surprised to see the extent of weeds and foliage still present in the aerial photos. Can't wait to see the pics.

John and I are planning a September trip to change things up a bit next year. Be well!

Chris

[Red Team Leader]

Just to give an idea of how bad the bloom was I have added these 4 photos.

The first shot shows both Andy and Jaimie staring at the water on day one, neither look too happy about the color of the water, LOL.

The second pic was taken in Bottle bay, Pea Soup!

The last 2 pic’s are from the back of the big inland in Riche’s Bay.

The algae was florescent blue, it striped the reeds just above the water line and painted the shoreline, kind of gross, but at least the air temps where cool and there was no stench like the August blooms can give.

The bays and back waters where thick green in many areas, making bait presentations near impossible at times.

I will do a new post soon with some pic’s of the guys, some fish, the fall color, sunsets and the wildlife.

RTL

[WBC-Regular]

Wow.

I haven't visited the site for about 6 months until this past week (busy fishing and hunting and wasn't around the computer much).

Those pictures are a real treasure. Thank you for posting them.

One of them ... the full one of the camp ... is now my screen saver.

I am going to see if I can figure out how to add them to my list of saved pictures.

Tom D