Week 13 Recap: The (Hot) Dog Days of Summer Fishing

“THE HOT DOG DAYS OF SUMMER FISHING”

If, like many of our customers, you hail from the upper Midwest, you’ve heard the expression “The Dog Days of Summer”, referring to the hot, muggy often miserable weather of late July and August. For anglers though it specifically referred to that time of summer fishing when you just can’t catch fish, especially pike. According to this perspective, pike lose their teeth in August and can’t feed at all. Of course, pike don’t lose their teeth and don’t stop feeding, but in the overly warm waters of the northern US this time of year, pike are very hard to catch. In the cool waters along the 60th parallel, our pike love heat and sun. We had it and that Northwoods legend was contradicted 147 wonderful times at Scott Lake Lodge during our early August, Week 13 session. And these big pike had plenty of teeth, somewhere around 700 each. Our pike know that fall is coming and they are putting on the feedbag.

It was, on all fronts, the perfect week to be in the far north. There were five consecutive blissful days of sunshine, warmth (shorts and T-shirts were the uniform of the week) and highly cooperative northern pike, Arctic grayling and lake trout. At Scott Lake the “dog days” became the “hot dog days” where everyone felt like the King of the Lake and feasted on all the sight fishing opportunities as the big pike moved into the warm shallow water. The result of the great weather combined with the experienced guides and enthusiastic anglers was a total of 181 trophy fish. In that total were some dandy big fish: there were 21 pike over 44 inches with seven of those at 46 inches or better, including two 48s, and six lake trout over the magic mark of 40 inches. Add a bunch of nice grayling and you have an incredibly productive week of summer fishing.

John Underwood led the pike parade with a day every angler dreams about but few realize. On a flyout to Selwyn Lake he landed dozens of pike. That’s not unusual, but to connect with pike of 40.5, 43.5, 45.5, 47.5 and 48.5 inches on one day is quite unusual. His fishing partner for the day, Brad Chapin, had the same kind of day with trophy pike of 41.5, 42, 43.5, 44.5 and 47 inches. That’s ten huge pike in one memorable day. The father/son team of Scott and Will Bixby had the same kind of day on a fly out to Wholdaia Lake where they caught 11 trophy pike including a 45 and 47-incher. Ketta and Russ Roberston had an eight-trophy day with a 45 and 46-incher. Those are all big days. But almost everyone at Scott had a big day. Pike of 44 inches were taken by Steve Pfeifer who got a pair, Dave Underwood, Will Murray, Ken Williamson Sr, Scott Bixby, Amy Brown who also caught a 45-incher. Scott Bixby got one of those and Will Bixby ended up with two 45s. Upping the ante Ketta Robertson, Jason Loughran and Bob Weyers landed 46-inchers; Will Bixby and Brad Chapin got 47s and the monsters of the week, girthy 48s, were caught by John Underwood and Steve Harty. Giant trout were taken by Lachlan Williamson who caught a 40.5- and 41.5-inch laker; Will Murray had a 41-incher; Wallis Higginbotham pulled in a 41.5-incher and topping the trout list was Taylor Rizza who on the last day at Premier Lake, adjacent to Scott, landed one of our biggest of the season at 43.5 inches. Bunches of trophy grayling were pulled out of flyout rivers by Taylor Rizza, Wallis Higginbotham, Lachlan Williamson along with Bill and Chris Hudspeth. Those grayling, along with their trophy lake trout and northern pike, gave Taylor Rizza, Chris Hudspeth, Wallis Higginbotham, Will Murray and Lachlan Williamson the Trophy Triple hat. Wallis, Will and Lachlan got enough total inches of our three trophy species to join the elite 100+Club.

With the warm weather there was plenty of water sports with some swimming, kayaking and paddle boarding. As frosting on the cake, the northern lights made an appearance. And there was plenty of real cake in the form of tempting desserts after the elegant evening dinners. Everything was sweet during this glorious week of summer fishing in the far north.