WINGING IT
For these intrepid anglers, flying into a remote backcountry lake with kayaks made for a truly wild fishing adventure
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The author with a walleye caught on a full-sinking fly line and a 4″ tinsel flyHOME BAY
Rocky and ringed with boreal forest, Bulldozer is a classic Canadian Shield lake for northern pike and walleye. It’s also oddly shaped, with three basins, each about a kilometre long, all connected by crooked, relatively narrow channels. The cabin was on the middle basin, which we called “Home Bay,” providing easy access to the basins north and south of us.
The evening we arrived, I tried out my fly rod from the dock and caught 12 fish in 15 casts, including mid-sized walleye and a few pike in the 24- to 28-inch range. Don quickly dubbed the latter “two-footers,” and over the next week, their twisting, hurtling antics provided a lot of entertainment. Between the best dock fishing I’d ever had, Wesley Rocks and a shallow, weedy point Don called the “Fish Counter,” we liked Home Bay a lot. Then we discovered what happens when a brisk south wind blows down the North Channel.
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Don Willoughby nets a fish in “Walleye Bay”WALLEYE BAY
By our second afternoon, things were going well. We’d already checked out all the water to our north, and the action had been steady. Our three-boat flotilla was heading for Home Bay when Don, on a whim, tossed his lure toward a small, sandy bay where the channel dog-legs into the north basin.
We’d fished that same spot in the morning without a sniff, but this time, a walleye hit instantly. It was the same for Wes, and then me. Thanks to the wind funneling down the channel all day, the water was stirred up and agitated—and so were the fish.
We drifted into the back of the bay, catching walleye on almost every cast, then paddled back out to do it all over, again and again. Wes had never experienced a feeding frenzy like that, and he couldn’t believe he’d caught a dozen fish in less than an hour. As the action slowed down, he hooked one more fish and, after a moment, called out, “This one feels a bit strange.”
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Wes Nelson’s 33-inch pike“That’s because it’s a pike, and a pretty good one,” I said, reaching for my BogaGrip. I landed the pike and gingerly passed it to Wes for a photo. At 33 inches long, it was the biggest fish he’d hooked. Though that record wouldn’t last long. And in retrospect, I really should have let Wes land the fish himself, and get some experience with bigger pike.