Trip Report - Kipawa Lodge, Aug. 14-20, 2021

[Lizard King]

I’ve said for weeks (months) if this trip happened, I’d be out on the lake 9-10 hrs a day.
Well, it ended up being more about 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 hrs a day.
One, lost approx 1/2 hour more of daylight at both ends of the day than I’m used to.
Two, she was a tad warm at times.  Think we were usually the 1st boat back into the dock in the AM (9:30 or so)and the last to head out in evening (6-6:30).  But I’d go out each afternoon and troll for a couple hours.

Jigging:
We didn’t go to jig much this year.  I think four AM’s we did for a couple hours.  Went to our favorite June/July spot 3 of those days.  Tuesday it was raining and we did good for numbers, not much size.  Other couple days was sort of hit or miss.  I’d start each AM in 23’-25’ but we’d always end up moving to 18-20 FOW and doing better.

Early AM troll:
Three days I trolled over open water from 5:55 to 6:45, then run back to camp, grab my son and go jig.  All three mornings I caught 3 fish.  Each day two of the fish were between 15 - 17 1/4”.

Afternoon troll:
Saturday after arrival we were itching to get out and hit shoreline from 1:00-3:00.  We caught nine and that became the theme of most afternoons, except usually just me after that as he didn’t have much interest in fishing in the heat lol.  I’d just putter along shoreline as slow as motor would go, running lures 10-15’ deep.  I was surprised at the success at 10’ in midday heat.  Did hang a big zero on Wednesday.  No wind and nary a cloud.  I could only stand it for 1.5 hrs and back to camp I went.  Only bad trip out that week.

Evening troll:
Always started out going around islands or shorelines.  Same as afternoon, running lures 10-15’ deep as slow as possible.  Around 7:45 PM we’d head to deep water.  Usually we get great numbers but sketchy size over open water.  This year, quantity was down a tad but the size was consistently better.

One plan I did stick to….I dropped a large quantity of the tackle box into the lake this year.  Was using Varsity level lures in the afternoon and brought the J.V. squad out in early AM and the evenings to see what they could do.  Even got my son changing lures late in the week.  Now have confidence in some items that I didn’t in the past.

Size:
My son caught a 25 1/4” and a 21 1/4” walleye.  I had bout a dozen between 17 1/4 and 19”, nothing big for me though.  Numerous fish between 15-17”.  Actually, almost every fish we caught trolling we measured.  Even the smaller ones were close to legal.  The tiny eyes we caught were all jigging.
Pike - I had the outliers with a 30” one and an 18”.  The other 4 or 5 we caught all were 24-25”.
Bass - we only caught 4.  There’s not a size limit so we just used the walleye limit and took 3 of them back to camp to eat.

All in all, extremely happy with the fishing considering we didn’t spend a ton of time on the water.

Accommodations:
Barb and Wayne had things clean and ready to rock n roll as always.  We couldn’t ask for a better experience!

I met knuckles at the govt dock on Saturday.  Sorry didn’t have much time to chat!  Went from being hours ahead of schedule to being rushed due to issues procuring licenses.  Ugh

Limacharley….from your posts, I know where your cabin is.  Were you fishing on the shoal multiple evenings midweek?  If so, we were in the camp boat out around Seagull that’d slowly head towards Edwards after 8:00.  I’d have come over and said hello by end of week, wasn’t sure if you or someone staying at your camp.  If you, at least I know what your boat looks like for next year!

[plowjock]

 See the reports are starting to roll in. Great read! You had some fantastic success. You were kept busy catching the whole week. Weatherman sure blessed you with warm weather, but thank goodness NO flies.

[tbayboy]

Great report, awesome way to spend a week with your son.

[Greg]

Great to see another successful report - lots of fish also - congrats!

[Ozzy30]

Good report and glad you had a great trip.

[T-Bone]

Nice report LK...sounds like a great trip. Contrary to you, I'm hoping for cooler and cloudy/rainy when we're there next week; I really don't like the warm and sunny with little wind as it makes fishing tougher and staying comfortable almost impossible...but those cold cold Bleues still taste wonderful.

[Lizard King]

T-Bone…I concur.  Love to fish in the rain except for last day of a trip.
There was enough of a breeze all week (except Wednesday afternoon) to keep lake comfortable for a few hours and the bite on.

Awoke Wed bout 4:25 AM to the searing pain of a calf cramp.  Believe I may have passed the threshold of proper beer/water ratio lol!  Later that hot afternoon when I went out just took several bottles of H2O.