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Sun, Fun and Fish: The Week 9 Fishing Report

by Jason | Jul 28, 2019 | 2019 Season, Website Fishing Blog

SUN, FUN AND FISH

For our ninth group of the season, the fun in the sun just kept rolling on. Like our last group, they were singing the song of summertime. When anglers make the trek to the 60^th parallel, they generally aren’t thinking shorts, sandals and T-shirts. Or swimming or paddle boarding. Yet for five straight blissful days, this group enjoyed perfect summer weather. With the abundant sand beaches around Scott Lake, if we could have transplanted palm trees for the black spruce, we could have convinced our guests that they were in the Caribbean. Except this water is sweet, clear and clean enough to drink right out of the lake, really. Weather-wise, it was as good as it gets.

So, what did the fish think of this? Apparently, they liked it. The northern pike, lake trout and arctic grayling were eager dance partners with our anglers, grabbing with abandon the Mepps and Blue Fox spinners, the plastic Turbo Pike, McRubbers and Havocs, even a few old-school Doctor Spoons and Dardevles, along with lighter furry or feathered-fare like bunny leeches, deceivers or whistlers. It was summer: why not have a picnic? Of the several thousand fish landed over the five days (the numbers were great), there were 202 that made the cut as Scott Lake Lodge trophies. Our pike, the heat-seeking missiles of the fish world, represented exactly half of that total, not a record but a very healthy number. Many did some reel tail-dancing as our angler’s drags sang an upbeat note. Our quite acrobatic grayling, 79 trophy-sized, also showed some tail when they took to the air on the fast water that connects many of our 22 fly out lakes. Their dance music? The heavenly sounds of water rushing over rocks, of course. Our big lake trout didn’t need any music. They just pulled and pulled, trying to wear down the person on the other end of the line. Some succeeded. Some didn’t. While this year’s “trout season” has been late due to the cool weather in June and early July, it picked up some energy this week with 22 trophy lakers including 40 inchers landed by Thomas Purcell and Kevin Fisher. Bob Noble got a 41 and Greta Hall a 41.5” beauty.

The most dancing action though was with the pike and arctic grayling, our solar-powered gamefish. When pike get enough sunshine, they really turn on, going crazy with aggressive energy as several our guests discovered. It was the right place/right time for Thomas Purcell who found himself on a pristine lake 50 miles north of the lodge and found himself tied to big pike seven times in one day. He landed them all. Janet Rucker, Luke Dunn and JR Dunn picked up a six-pack of trophy pike on their fast dancing day. The father/son team of Gary and Garek Peters combined for eight trophies on their memorable day. But it was the big pike that made the headlines in the Tundra Times, our daily paper of fishing news. There were 45 inchers caught by Bob Noble, Bob Fisher, Greta Hall and Thomas Purcell, a 45.5 incher by Mandy Purcell, a 46” dandy by Greta Hall and a very heavy 48” lunker by Gary Peters. Some impressive fish. Most impressive though was the 49” perfectly proportioned (meaning wide across the back and girthy in the middle) pike landed by Suzanne Noble. Truly a fish of a lifetime. It was the same day that husband Bob landed a 41” lake trout. With several other trophies and many near trophies, the day prompted Bob to say that this was the best fishing day he had ever experienced. Considering that Bob has made Canadian fishing trips for 60 consecutive years, that’s saying a lot.

With all the blue skies and light winds, more guests than usual flew out to team up with some arctic grayling (usually combined with pike and trout fishing). Ten of our anglers hit the “super-sized” grayling mark of 18 inches: Bob and Suzanne Noble, Kevin Fisher, Eric and Greta Hall, Thomas and Mandy Purcell, Don Madl, Luke Dunn and John Bolen. There were 79 grayling that hit the 15” trophy size. Grayling just love sun on the water. With all those grayling, there were lots of Trophy Triple hats passed out this week. Roger Fuller had a “Done in One” Trophy Triple day, getting all three of our species in trophy size in one day. A season high of seven anglers got their hat and had enough total trophy inches to join the 100+Club. Joining the 12 other anglers this year in the club were Mike and Mandy Purcell, Bob and Suzanne Noble, Eric and Greta Hall and Kevin Fisher. Greta Hall’s total of 105.5 inches puts her in third place in the season’s standings. Foster Graf still leads the pack with a whopping 108.5 inches.

After all the fish were counted, one thing that defies counting stood out—the fun factor. It’s not the number of fish caught that counts: it’s the fun people had catching those fish. This group was fun-focused all the way. Every night at trophy announcements the group went wild, cheering their own catch and everyone else’s. The fun continued throughout the evening. Led by the Purcell-Hall group, there were card games, dice games, lots of wine sampled and animated conversation on the big lodge deck. On the quiet evenings when the big lake rested like a giant millpond, the laughter from the lodge, mixing with the laughter of the loons, drifted miles down the lake. It was summer at Scott Lake Lodge, a perfect week all will remember.

Summer Time and the Livin’s Easy: Week 8 Report

by Jason | Jul 22, 2019 | 2019 Season, Website Fishing Blog

SUMMERTIME: THE LIVIN’ IS EASY

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy”

In 1957 Ella Fitzgerald first recorded that memorable song. It was only 66 seconds long. Our Week 8 guests felt that sentiment right to the bone for five blissful days of summer—the perfect “not too hot but not too cold”. After an extended spring with more than our share of windy, cool and cloudy weather, summer arrived on a warm breeze that lifted the spirits of everyone on this 12-acre island in the far northern reaches of Canada. Every morning there were clear skies and the hope of a magical day. Every day that hope was rewarded with calm waters, impossibly blue skies and great fishing.

“Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high”

Well, the only cotton we have around here is the delicate and beautiful cotton grass plant that is less than a foot high, but the fish WERE jumpin’. (I’m sure Ira and George Gershwin who wrote and composed the song will posthumously give us some latitude here.) While our pike, lake trout and arctic grayling weren’t quite jumpin’ in the boats, they were certainly jumpin’ on our guest’s flies and lures. Our aquatic friends really got into the summer spirit: the raising barometer lifted the mood on the island along with the pike in the lake and the grayling in our rivers—they came shallow, just like it was early June. The number of fish caught this week was extraordinary. Dinner conversations referring to daily catches of over 100 fish per boat were common. Not just the little guys either. With abundant sunshine and warm temperatures, the big pike flooded the shallows. Some trophy pike were literally caught in just inches of water. When they are shallow, pike are easy to find and often quite receptive to our guest’s offerings.

Numbers? We had ‘em. In just five days there were 138 pike over 40” landed. Everyone at the lodge got in on the action. And ten anglers put 13 “super-sized” pike (45” or more) into their guide’s waiting nets. Pike of exactly 45” were landed by Dave Lotts, Travis Carrothers, Tim Solso and Peter Myhre who caught three 45s; pike that pulled the tape to 46” or 46.5” were taken by Joel Leisch and Troy Carrothers who got a pair; pike of 47” (a true monster pike) made the trip for Eddie Brown, Joel Leisch, Eric Bailey and Peter Myhre. For many Ontario lodges and lodges in the lower parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba putting that many big fish in their books would be a summer’s worth of trophies not a week’s. The tape of our Scott Lake guides don’t stop at 47” though. A Scott Lake Lodge staff alum, from the kitchen a dozen or so years back, held his guide’s tape at the tail of a 48” pike and a current Scott staff member, our Head Chef Nigel Rivera, landed the biggest pike of the season (so far) pulling the tape to exactly 50”. It was Nigel’s first full day off during this season: he made good use of it. There aren’t many weeks when we get a baker’s dozen of giant pike. We need to thank the sun, along with experienced guides and sharp hook-setting guests. Guests like Peter Myhre who is becoming something of a legend here; he caught 28 trophy pike in just five days with nine in a single day. Eric Baily and Marvin Bragewitz had five-pike days and Tim Solso brought in a quad for his big day.

Grayling were loving the sun as well. We had 37 trophy grayling (or just “ling” as the guides often call them) for the week with some big ones. Travis Carrothers, Joel Leisch and John Horstman all got 18 inchers, near the top of our grayling ladder. Joel Leisch and John Horstman had an incredible “ling” day, landing 21 between them. Many of the grayling were taken on dry flies and 4-weight fly rods, a perfect way for an angler to spend a summer day. These northern acrobats love the sunshine almost as much as our pike. Even though they don’t like sun, the heat helped the lake trout fishing as well by pushing them deeper into their summer holes where our guides can target them effectively. Fat 40 inchers were landed by Eddie Brown and Joel Leisch

With all those big grayling and lake trout there must have been some hats and jackets passed out. Indeed. Three lucky angles got the Trophy Triple hat and the 100+Club jacket: Travis Carrothers who was at exactly 100 inches, Eddie Brown at 104 and Joel Leisch at a healthy 105.

“One of these mornings

Your gonna rise up singing

Yes, you’ll spread your wings

And you’ll take to the sky”

We did occasionally hear some guests singing on these perfect summer mornings and we did hear a lot of floatplanes taking to the sky. This group took full advantage of our 22 fly out lakes and jumped in the lodge-based Beaver and Otter to see lakes even more remote than Scott, some a hundred miles distant. It’s not that the fishing on our home lake (Scott Lake) was slow by any means. Our numbers here were sensational. The big fish on Scott are plentiful but all have PhDs or at least Masters in seeing the difference between a real baitfish and even the latest generation of plastic lures or fluffy flies. Some lakes in our fly out system are fished only five or ten times a season. The lakes with more anglers are huge—some many times bigger than Scott. We spread the fishing pressure to a vast area, around nine million acres of land and nearly two million acres of water, a number that grows every year.

So, while most people were sweltering in heat wave crippling the eastern and midwestern US, the anglers at Scott Lake were livin’easy in the “just right” sunshine. Where do you want to be next July.

Three Part Harmony: Week 7 Update

by Jason | Jul 15, 2019 | 2019 Season, Uncategorized, Website Fishing Blog

THREE-PART HARMONY: WEEK 7 UPDATE

As we approach the mid-point of the 2019, the music is changing. For the first six weeks we had one beautiful and loud note—pike. Our other Scott Lake Lodge gamefish (the arctic grayling and the lake trout) were mainly MIA. It was a lonely note. No longer! With the grayling and lakers now playing well in our waters, we have real music, with three-part harmony. As has been noted several times in these updates, it’s been a very cool summer and, while no heat wave has entered the scene, some seasonal movements (down and up) are showing up. While the warming surface temperatures are pushing the big lake trout down, that same trend is pushing the grayling up where there are a few more bugs to keep them busy near the surface. So, thirty-five days into our season, we’re catching some nice lake trout on the bottom and lots of grayling on tip. Its’ no longer a one-note pike show.

Not that pike have not been a big part of the show. They are–big time. During this week, there were probably 3,000 of the aggressive “tundra sharks” caught with 117 reaching our trophy status of 40”. With lots of big fish on the prowl, some went way over that mark. There were 45 inchers landed by Peter Myhre (he also got a 46), Gary Parzych and Dave Wallace. Eight-year-old Colton Erickson landed a fish he will remember 50 years from now—a girthy, beautiful 45.5” pike, almost as long as Colton is tall. Bruce Bush had quite an introduction to Scott Lake Lodge. On his first trip to Scott Bruce had two-thirds of the giant pike hat trick, landing 47 inchers on consecutive days. Welcome to the Scott Lake Lodge family! Steve Nicholas had top pike honors of the week, getting a monster that stretched the tape to just under 48”. The very honest guest and guide called it 47 and three-quarters. A bunch of anglers landed a bunch of big pike in a single day: Peter Myhre with seven, Dave Bensema and Bruce Bush with six, Peter again with five and Jerry Kyle with four. When the fishing is good here, it’s very good.

So, pike were still the main act, but they had to share the stage this week. Arctic grayling made a big splash (many splashes) this week. Over 50 trophy grayling were landed on the inflows or outflows of our fly out lakes. Most were taken on 4-weight fly rods, some on ultra-light spinning rigs. No fish in the north has more dramatic coloration with vividly spotted dorsal fins or a feistier attitude. If you match the tackle to the size, it’s an exciting gamefish. We had some dandies this week: 19 inchers, a very big grayling in these parts, were landed by Mark Graf, Colton Erickson and Wyatt Erickson; 18s were taken by Garth Olds, Ted Erickson and Angie Erickson. These fish, the second part of our three-part harmony, added an interesting, more contemplative, contrast to the smash-mouth pike fishing.

And the third part? Our big lake trout, after randomly cruising the cool surface waters for over a month, have finally started to drop into deeper water where they can be more effectively targeted. Some nice trophy-sized trout were taken. Trevor Myers and Mark Graf landed 38s. On the last day on Scott, James Finney got his biggest laker ever, a fat 40 incher. On a memorable day on one of Scott’s 22 fly out lakes, Mark Graf and his son, Foster, found trout heaven. They landed around 90 lakers and one was a heart stopper. Foster knew he had something big when his line just plain stopped; he wasn’t snagged, but he had just hooked a huge lake trout. About fifteen minutes later he saw the fish in his guide’s big net. He needed a big net to land this massive lake trout with a huge girth. A quick look with the tape showed 45” before the magnificent beast went gently back into the lake. Foster and Mark had been through this before. Seven years earlier, almost to the exact day, Mark landed a 46”X28” trout that he nicknamed Tubby. Well, Foster got Tubby II and the Foster story isn’t over. Earlier in the trip he landed a 46” pike and a 17.5” grayling, giving him membership in the 100+Club with a whopping 108.5 total inches, one of the highest totals ever.

It was a great week for big fish. A total of 183 trophies were taken. Everyone in the lodge caught multiple trophy fish. We almost ran out of trophy pins. The three-part harmony was very sweet music indeed.

A Wonderfully Average Week: Week 6 Fishing Report

by Jason | Jul 11, 2019 | 2019 Season, Northern Pike, Website Fishing Blog

A WONDERFULLY AVERAGE WEEK

Average gets a bum rap. In our media-saturated era, everything must be way above average to be respected. If you don’t see words or phrases like “the next level”, “over the top”, “stupendous”, “sensational” or “tremendous”, you just want to tune out. What if average though was still good or even great? Take our Week number six. Having average weather (some sun, some rain, some clouds but not much heat), having a group of anglers with average experience (some pro level, some early in their angling careers), and having the imperfect but functional marker of an average number of trophies (at 143 to the boat which was higher than three of the previous weeks, but way below the other two—so average), it was a classic average week.

But those are just numbers. Let’s look at an average week of fishing at Scott Lake Lodge. We did realize our #1 goal here: everyone we talked to had fun and had a safe trip; that’s the top priority of management here. No one at the dock when the floatplanes landed to take our group south was eager to leave, especially those who did have some extraordinary days on the water, like Bog Hoagland who landed six trophy pike in a single day, or Tim Fierbaugh, Frances Sun and Tom Granneman who had five. Our guests who thought skill, luck or some combination of those two elements caught super-sized fish certainly didn’t think their trip was average. I’m sure Paul Granneman, Dan Spielman, Frances Sun, Tim Fierbaugh or Tom Granneman didn’t think their 45” pike were average. Without a doubt having a 46 incher on the line didn’t feel average to Jeff Christiansen. What about experiencing the fury of a monster 48.5” pike? Ask Dennis Hetler. He did it in an average week, but that’s about as far from average as you can get. Tim Fierbaugh battled successfully with a 41-inch lake trout. That’s a lifetime memory. While smaller fish, the big grayling of the week (fish of 18” or more) provided some huge angling satisfaction to the lucky group (Frances Sun, Frank O’Neil, Craig Brown, Randy and Mickey Moret) who went to our northern rivers to bend their light rods against the current and beautiful, high-jumping arctic grayling.

An average day doesn’t describe the “Done in One” Trophy Triple days of Dan Spielman, Frances Sun or Craig Brown who landed trophy-sized fish of all three of Scott Lake Lodge’s gamefish in one day. Frances had a very special day because her three big ones totaled 102 inches, putting her in the exclusive 100+Club. There were, of course, many moments that just can’t be quantified: enjoying the traditional and delicious fresh pike shore lunches; the sight of a soaring eagle; the unearthly calls of the common loon at night; that first bite of the prime rib, the duck confit or the New York strip steak—just a few of the twelve entrees served to our guests. Maybe the most above average experience was the warm feeling of being in a room full of excited, happy anglers who loved this northern experience. If this was an average week, we’ll take it. It was wonderful.

Weathering the Weather: A Wild Week 5

by Jason | Jul 9, 2019 | 2019 Season, fly fishing, Island Life, Northern Pike, Website Fishing Blog

Weathering the Weather

Anglers are well known for their patience. It’s a good thing because it was tested during our fifth group of the still young 2019 season. They had to wait out some of the worst mid-summer weather we have seen in the twenty-three years of the current ownership. In less than a month of operations we have seen it all—intense, burn your bare feet on the floor of the boat heat, the six-layers of clothing cold front, the calm lake surface that goes for miles and wind and waves right to the edge of fishability. This group got the six-layer option. It was damn cold, unprecedented for this time of year. Since, as we’ve often commented in these posts, pike love warm water and sunshine, the first four days of this five-day trip turned out to be quite challenging for pike fisherman. They were patient enough to wait four days before the sun finally made an appearance and gave our group a shot of vitamin D and a shot at some real good fishing.

Despite the nasty wind and cold, our anglers kept heading out and, except for one day of ridiculously high winds, did quite well, catching a lot of fish and some very impressive fish. Fish like the monster pike of 47.5” that Nate Naprstek induced to grab his fly just 15 minutes from the lodge; the 47” pike that Andrew Troop landed; the 46 inchers taken by Josh Nardo, Brent Laing, Dave Morales 2^nd, and Tom Wigglesworth, or the 45 brought to the boat by John Green. Considering the weather, there were some amazing results.

As often happens the big pike came in clusters: Josh Nardo and Brent Laing enjoyed seven-trophy days; John Green had a six-trophy day and Andrew Nardo had a five-trophy day. Frank and Susan Saraka had a wonderful mixed bag (pike, trout and grayling) of six trophies each, earning them the Trophy Triple hat. Andy Nardo left wearing one too. Gerry O’Brien got the whole enchilada, joining the 100+Club with trophy pike, trout and grayling that collectively measured over 100”. His total was a fat 102.

While the pike story this week was pretty good, the best story was the lake trout. That was the one benefit of the cold conditions—it kept the lake trout up shallow, right on the surface where anglers casting for pike could tie into some great fish. No weights. No heavy tackle. Just great fights with fish that typically are much deeper. With any tackle a lake trout of 38” or better is a tough customer. On pike gear they are downright nasty fighters as Susan Saraka and Andrew Nardo found out. Getting a 40” plus trout that way is a real angling achievement. Ask Chris Kasper or Gerry O’Brien who landed 41” lake trout or Frank Saraka who got a 41.5” beauty. How about a 12-year-old dealing with that much raw power. Colter Sloan knows how that felt. He got a fish of a lifetime, a 41.5” lake trout, on the coldest and wildest day of the week. Congrats to Colter, but the poor kid is now ruined for fishing anywhere else.

That was the four-day story. On that fifth day the sun did shine, and the trophies rolled in, 32 on that final day. Bruce Koslowski got five pike, topping out at 47”. Gerry O’Brien and Andrew Troop got a mess of big grayling and Will Waltrip pulled in four trophy pike and a 39.5” laker. It was a great way to end the trip. Rain or shine, wind or calm, the Scott Lake trip always ends too soon. That’s why almost everyone comes back the next year: it’s an addiction that brings only smiles.