Fishing White Lake 2

Well I just et an threw out a little corn for the deer. I am setting my deck waiting for the deer and figured it was a good time to write a little more.

Now Bruce, Gary and I were heading north on White Lake in my boat, loaded with camping and fishing gear. My little 5 and a half horse Evenrude was doing all it could to make it up the lake. The lake was dead calm and we never realized how fortunate we were.

Ever since we had gotten into Canada at the Soo we had seen these idillic lakes, shores lined with fallen cedars and pine. Now we were finally on a Canadian lake and it was just a huge body of water. I was disappointed at what I was seeing. For one thing were we were there were no hills. It was fairly level country, not like Texas but when I looked up lake all I could see was a sliver of the far shore. It was a long way off and you can see by the map that once you were out on the lake it was impossible to know where you were. Heck, it would not have done us any good if we had known where we were because we had no clue where to go. I just headed north.

Bruce ask me where we were going and I just nodded ahead but I didn't know. He asked where we were gonna camp and I told him that Orie said that an island was best, because of the bear. If you look at the map you can see quite a few islands--A deer just came to visit me :D- Nope, there are two of them- anyway, because of the size of the lake and the area it was impossible to even distinguish an island. I told Bruce and Gary that I was gonna stay near the right hand shore and look for a place to set up camp.

I kept heading north and everything looked the same. I edged toward shore and it made me nervous because I had seen rocks sticking up out of the water in the middle of the bloody lake. Last thing I wanted to do is bust a prop on some under water obstical.

Finally Gary pointed ahead and toward shore and said, "Is that an island?" I looked and it sure looked like it, a small one but at least something to head toward. As we approached the small island we slowed down and looked at the bottom. It was sandy and even though the water is stained with Tannin we could see bottom in ten ft of water. This was because of the sandy bottom. We looked and was amazed! We saw Pike! The dang things were all over the place. Wholey Crap! This was it. There were some big suckers too! We were all standing up by now and I slowly crused around the island and I bet we saw over twenty nice pike. Man we were excited now. We could not fish yet though because our gear was at the bottom of the dang boat somewhere. Man we had to set up camp and start a casting to those babys.

I headed toward the island and asked if it was ok with them to camp there. Hell yes it is they said in unison. Man we were pumped. I easily bumped the boat to the shore and Bruce, who was in the bow, jumped out with the bow line to tie us off. There was not a lot of vegitation on the island, some small pines but that was ok. There were pike all over the place and some dang nice ones.

Bruce looked around and asked where I wanted to set up camp. Heck, I don't care, what do I know. We tied the boat up and started looking around. Crap! It is all rock! I asked Gary to give me a tent peg and a hatchet, which he did. I walked around that little island and tried to find a place to drive a tent peg in and there was no place. Well Crap! :(

We were sure not gonna camp there! We jumped back in the boat and headed to shore but it soon got so shallow that we could not get within a hundred feet of the shore. Double crap!

Well we went out deeper and headed north again. We could always come back to, what we for ever after called, Pike Island. The real name was Rock Bolt Island but to us it was Pike island.

As I crused north I could get closer to shore, From time to time I would go up to shore and Bruce would jump out with tent peg and hatchet in hand and try to drive the peg in. Time after time we did this until we finally found a place that we could.

There was a sandy beach there and low pines, maybe ten or fifteen ft high, I can not remember for sure but that is the impression I have. It has been a long time. There was a lot of underbrush we had to clear to make a camp site but with a bit of work it was soon cleared. Now we had to set up the tent. That was one heavy arsed tent and we rolled it out, Gary asked where the poles were. I looked sorta stupid I imaging because I did not remember any poles. Heck we had not bothered setting up the tent at home and now we had no poles. Well we would just have to cut some.

Like we knew how to do that. Duh! We staked out the tent, dang thing did not have a floor. I didn't know that either and started figuring out what we needed for poles. We finally cut some poles and managed to set the tent up. Man that was one piece of crap tent I had borrowed but what the heck, we were in a Canadian lake and only a couple miles from Pike Island. What could go wrong?

Like I said, there was a sandy beach, about ten or fifteen feet deep as I remember it and we pulled the boat up as far as we could, after emptying it out and as it was getting pretty late by this time, decided to whip up some food and relax. The fish would wait.

The tent was fairly big, I forget how big but it was big enough for our sleeping bags and a card table we brought for our camp stove and such. Man we were prepared. Yeah right :(

I whiped up something for dinner, I forget what but we went out on the beach and ate, setting on a log and watching the sun go down on one beautiful day. Life was good. We could hear the loons calling and those pesky Canadian Jays were actually trying to take food from us. How cute. Those dang things can be a pain but we did not know it at the time.

The next morning was clear but there were some nasty looking clouds off to the west. We ignored them and got out gear ready for a days fishing. One of us suggested taking the rain gear, probably Gary as he has a bit of sense and it was a great decision.

We loaded up and headed for Pike Island and true adventure. We closed in on the island-Hummmmmm, dang Blue Jay just scared off my deer :( anyone know how to cook Jay?:D-anyway, we closed in on the island and as per agreement, nobody was to cast until everyone was ready. It was probably my idea as I was running the motor :D

We putted in close and looked around. Not a dang Pike to be seen! Not one!! Where the hell have they gone? Gotta be around somewhere! We started a casting and liked to have worn our arms out but not a fish. We tried trolling around the island but still no luck.

The sky was getting darker and the wind was picking up and we decided to get into our rain gear. It started raining and then pouring! I suspect that is what drove the fish away was the front coming in but we kept fishing and fishing but didn't catch anything that I remember. We had better catch something because we brought very little meat, depending on fish for our meat.

We looked across the lake and could not even see across it now. Heck, it was hard to see across it on a clear day, it was so dang big. It was funny but setting down we could faintly see the other side, on a clear day that is but if we stood up we could see the sand of the beaches, where there were beacher. The shore we camped on was the only one with much in the way of beach. In the spring, when I came for the rest of my trips to White Lake, the water was so high that there was no beach at all. In fact, where we set up our tent was only about five feet from the water line in the spring.

We didn't know where the hell to fish and we were afraid to wander too far from camp in that weather. Heck, we would have done well to find it if we got out of eye sight of it. Everything looked the same on that shore and the idea of getting lost on that dang lake sucked. This was before GPS and we only had a compass. I was thrown out of Boy Scouts before I mastered that sucker too but Bruce bailed us out on that one. I just didn't trust the boy and wanted to go slow and not get lost.

The problem with the Canadian lakes up in the Algoma country is that they are all stained and thus you can not see the weed beds. I like fishing the edges of weed beds but where the heck are they? We started a looking and found none. Heck, we needed meat!

I decided to start trolling, if nothing else with would eventually snag weeds and find the weed beds. We all put on a floating Rapalla and off with went. We trolled a ways and we were a ways off shore. This whole shoreline was shallow. All of a sudden one of us gets a strike. It was more of a tug and pull. I slipped the motor out of gear and started reeling in when I got one on too. We reeled them in and they were both Walleye. Not huge but good eating size, maybe 12 to 15 inches, if memory serves me. We tossed them in the live box and started trolling again.
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The problem with Walleye is that they are school fish and if you stay on the school you catch fish, if you loose them you are wasting time. What I have done and it is illegal, is tie a line with a baloon on the first fish and toss it back over board. The fish will swim back to the school,towing the baloon and you just follow and fish the baloon. Works great. The problem is we had not baloon, in fact if we had had one with us we would not have known that trick anyway at the time.

Needless to say, we soon lost the school but not until we caught enough fish for dinner. I am guessing but I think we had maybe eight fish.

I was getting bored of looking at that same dang shoreline and so were they. We didn't come to Canada to look at no dang boring shoreline and what the heck, life is an adventure ain't it?

It was still early and we were not far from camp, I was watching for it and it was hard to see at all and I doubt that we were more than a mile or so away from it! We decided that since it was only eight or nine in the morning and it does not get dark until after 10 pm we might as well go back to camp, put the fish in the live box we had, which are now illegal I understand, get food for a shore lunch and explore a bit. Everyone agreed.

We headed for camp and got a package of hotdogs, bread and what ever else we wanted to eat, threw the fish in the live box and I asked, "Where to?" and got a pair of shrugs. Well we had a dang compass and were on the south east shore so we ought to be able to find our way back if we came back early! Right? Lets do it. and we done it.

Now to give you folks some idea where were were on the map. See that itty bitty island under the "H" on White Lake? That is Pike Island. See where the "E" is on Lake? That is near where we camped. See that little pinincula above the "W" in White Lake? That is where we ended up on our first excursion.

Well we could not see diddly as it was still raining. I will tell you right now. It rained almost every dang minute for the full nine days we were on that lake. Nine days! It would let up and just be misty at times but it never cleared up once unless it was at night and that did us no good. Anyway, we could not see the far shore and just headed out to the west, following the compass. We must have passed those islands but I don't really remember them on that excursion. We headed west until we saw the shoreline. That was sorta spooky because we knew there were huge rock outcroppings in the middle of the bloody lake and the water was low. I had to watch for them.

We got the the west shore and found that little bay, behind the Penincula. It was beautiful! Lots of Pine and Beach trees and the beaver had really been busy. There were trees leaning every which way. A beaver can chew down a tree and build a dam but they can not aim a tree worth a crap. I have seen some dang huge tree, chewed plum through by a beaver and it fall about a dang foot before it is leaning on the next tree. Gotta Pizz off that beaver!


This little bay, it is not all that small but compared to the lake it is little, was really nice. It was covered with reeds and lillypads and the pads were in about four feet of water. Lots of room under them to hide lunkers and the pike love those conditions.

We eased up to casting range of the lillys and since there was no wind back there, just drifted and started casting our trusty rapallas. The action was almost instant. The first pike I had strike got away because I ripped the dang lure away from him in my excitement but not for long, he just charged it again and latched on. This was more like it! I was fighting this log and one of the others yelled, "Fish On!" and he was fighting a fish. I had not gotten my pike in before the other yelled that he had one too. Man the fishing was fast and furious! It was just like in Field and Stream. The fish were not 30 pounders but maybe five or six and when you have three pike on at a time in a drifting boat, who needs thirty pounders?

I have no clue how many pike we caught that day. Maybe fifteen or twenty, I don't know but the fishing finally slowed down. We had caught so dang many and drifted into the lillys and spooked the fish. That little bay had no name but that soon changed.

I backed the boat out a bit and moved up the shore to another likely place, still in the same little bay but north a little. We started casting, me in the rear, Gary in the middle and Bruce in the bow. We had all cast toward shore, to our left and were reeling in. Consentrating. Unknown to us, a dang beaver had eased up on us from behind, I am not even sure he knew we were there, but when he saw us he slapped that dang water with his tail as they do to signal danger and we all set out hooks. Into nothing it turned out but the slap startled us and we all thought we had a fish on. From then on that was known as Beaver Bay.

We fished that little bay quite often that trip and it never disappointed us. We sure never always had tripples but we had a couple. We never caught a Walleye in there but sure caught a lot of pike. I am guessing but there had to be maybe fourty or fifty caught by us in the bay in the time we were on the lake. Maybe less but not much less.

Number three when I get in the mood.