It was hot, but tolerable. Mornings were cool but by Noon the Sun came out and it really warmed up.
This was our first trip to Talston Bay and we shared the camp with Vic Karlson, Gene Somenek, and Mark Shiels. All great guys and I hope I have a chance to fish with them again someday.
Fortunately for us they were returning veterans so they gave us a few pointers and sent us off in the right direction.
The wind blew almost every day from the East. A couple of days it really whipped up but it didn’t really affect our fishing much.
We seemed to have rain squalls blow by us every day. It never really rained that hard on us. We only suited up on a couple of occasions.
The majority of the fish we caught came from the channels massive weed beds between the camp and tower island. It’s not hard to miss.
I would guess the water temperature to be around 70 degrees. Plenty warm to take a dip.
The water was not deep around the weeds maybe 5 to 6 feet at the most and the weeds were really in great shape. Lots of oxygen coming off those weeds and lots of bait fish hanging around them.
The perfect storm for big Pike! If you got to shallow you caught little fish.
One evening the guides decided they had had enough of the hot weather so they tried their hand at water skiing. It was good humor watching them try to get big Dean up on 2 skis.
After about 10 attempts and nothing to show for all of the work they finally gave up. We finally went back out fishing.
The land of the midnight sun was truly that. We fished every evening until at least 11 PM. One evening we fished until 12:30, and ran out of gas trolling back to the lodge.
Fortunately we were able to shake enough fuel out of the tank and into the line to get the motor to fire up and run the remaining block back to camp.
At midnight you could have still read a newspaper outside it was that light. I am not sure when it got light in the mornings as I was so tired from fishing for 14 – 15 hours I usually slept until 7.
Fishing was good in the evenings, the heat went down but the mosquitoes really came out. Without bug spray you couldn’t fish after 10 PM.
The flies were really bad during the day when the sun was out, which was almost every day. After lunch they really got pesky, I’m talking about the ankle biters.
You needed long pants and socks as bug spray didn’t seem to help that much with the flies. The Bulldogs (horse flies) were something to behold.
At times we literally had hundred in the boat at a time. For some reason the guy at the back of the boat running the motor, which was usually me, had the joy of dealing with most of the flies.
I guess they liked the heat coming off the motor. The Bulldogs didn’t bite unless you got wet. Once wet however get ready! Usually around 9 PM they all disappeared.
Let’s talk about the fishing! It was truly one of the best places I have ever been for big pike. I have no idea just how many fish we caught in a day. A hundred plus I would guess.
I can tell you however we caught several linkers.
My son who was 12, caught 6 – 44”, 4 – 45” and 2 – 47” monsters! The biggest I managed was 44” which I caught 4.
Needless to say there was some serious ribbing going on at the end of this trip. I think he reminds me almost weekly how he managed to school me on big fish.
The fish were concentrated in the Cabbage Beds. Weedless lures worked the best like the Silver Minnow. However you could throw other non-weedless baits in some of the open areas.
Big spinner baits worked well as did some of the big plugs. We did well on Hell Hounds & Phantoms and some of the spoons. However at the end of the day we always seemed to go back to the spinner baits.
All of the guests at camp fished the same weed bed. I already mentioned that the fish were concentrated so they really got pressured by about the 4th day.
Most of the fish we were catching by that time had been previously hooked by one of us. It’s unfortunate that all of the fish were stacked up in such a small area.
We ran up the river for a change of pace and managed a couple of trophy fish. I think 43” was our best in the river. We also fished hard around the
rock islands and managed to pull a few nice fish. I think we had 2 – 44” fish and several over 41”. We also gave Thubin Bay a spin but found nothing but small ones.
It was inevitable that at the end of the day we all ended up back at the same spot. After supper when the guides got done fishing with their clients they went fishing for fun and guess where they ended up?
The big weed bed. Two more boats with 4 more fishermen. At times it was a traffic jam and finding an open spot got to be somewhat challenging.
We trolled big Jake Baits up the channel and caught some really dandy walleyes. They just slammed the big plugs. The Walleyes we caught were 20’ – 26”. Nice fish!
Next time I’m bringing some jigs and twisters for a change of pace! My guess is that a person could really pound the Walleyes if you targeted them which we didn’t
The camp was nice, even though we didn’t spend much time in it. Our cabin had a major mosquito problem. The first night I must have killed 50+. We ended up sleeping with head nets on.
The next day we spent an hour plugging up all of the cracks and openings with clear packaging tape. I’m bringing duct tape next year. That helped and we ended up with only a couple dozen in the cabin.
So on with the head nets. The problem was that it was hot so putting something over your head at night made it really uncomfortable. The next night we just lit a raid coil and sucked up the smoke.
At least we had no more bugs!
All in all it was a great trip and we are really looking forward to giving it another try next year. Right now I have a whole year to live down the whooping I got on the water by my 12 year old son!
Until next year good fishing to you all.
Craig & Jake Lenz
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