Fishing Update - August 20/10

Sorry I'll have to group all the fishing reports together here. I've been guiding all month and just haven't had any time for an update.

I'll start with the muskies. The rock bite turned on bigtime on Lake of the Woods. We were seeing up to 4 fish on a spot at times and seeing 20 fish a day wasn't a problem. One weekend we hooked into 8 muskies so they were certainly cooperating! Water temperatures were as high as 85, but most areas were 80-81. Hellhounds, Bulldawgs, and Topwater baits were getting the most hits. Earlier in the week Lake of the Woods got hit with a monster of a cold front. The same areas I mentioned before dropped down to 61 - 65 degrees in only 3 days. We still found fish, but had to treat the situation like we were fishing in October, rather than August. The rock bite absolutely died, but we found the odd fish still hanging out on rocks, just a little deeper. Spinnerbaits in the weeds and trolling seemed like the way to go, and both put muskies in the boat. Bulldawgs and crankbaits were bringing in fish after the front passed, but unfortunately they were nipping and we had a hard time keeping them pinned. Most fish were in the high 30's to low 40's, but we lost a mid-40's casting, and had an absolute GIANT fish in the mid 50" class miss a Bulldawg in the figure-8.

On the brighter side of things, the cold weather triggered the big open water pike to move back to the shallows. During the front we were hammering pike in the mid-upper 30's, with a 41"er being the biggest.

I also had the opportunity to fish with longtime clients Dwight and Jason, who gave me an interesting challenge. They wanted to work on their Manitoba Master Angler list so we tried something new every day. First day we chased smallies. After a slow start, the weather changed and our luck picked up. Jason boated 2 MA's, with a 19.25" being the biggest. Small (2.5 - 3") brown tubes around points and timber did the trick. Day 2 was crappie time. We put 10 MA crappie in the boat that day, and a number of smaller ones, pike, and walleye. Biggest crappie of the day was a double-header of 13.25"ers. The last day took us back to the Red River for cats. To say the day was incredible would be an understatement! Both Dwight and Jason caught numerous cats with twin 39"ers being the longest, but a sumo 38.5 x 24" being the heaviest fish of the day. We put 9 MA's in the boat that day, and the evening bite in particular was the best. In total we put 21 Masters in the boat in those 3 days!

I've got a ton of pictures from this month, but I'm just heading down to Minnesota and the Dakotas for the next week so I'll have to put them up when I return. I'm pretty booked up for the first half of September, but if anybody is interested in a trip I do have some time near the end of the month open!

Andrew Klassen