July 2019 Alwaki area Trout fishing

[Greg]

One thought Hodgey.  You say you didn't do well - and I believe it says that in your trip report also - you say you hooked up 7 (ok you lost one) - we only tried 3 different days this years trip and didn't hook up that many.  That is lake trout!  Some days nothing!!! They are finicky. (Any day after a thunderstorm I have never caught a lakers - they just seem to shut down).  That is lake trout trolling!

Maybe you have expectations of many more, I don't know - and by no means do I think I am an expert, some days I feel like a frustrated novice - I would love a couple hours in the boat with Smitty or Ozzy for some tutorials also - but overall, not sure how many hours you put in, but I think hooking up 7 is pretty decent.

[Jay Thomas]

Thanks for that Fishawk data Chris. What that data shows ever so clearly is where the thermocline was (between 25 and 30 feet).

Jay

[Ozzy30]

That fishhawk data was pretty cool to see.  The ripplin Redfin never caught anything for you?  I was out last Sunday up at Big rideau about 1.5 hours from my house and he caught me a 69cm lake trout.  That lure seems to be on fire this year.

[limacharley]

I have fished Hunter's many times over the last 7 years. Hodgey….your 7 hookups is pretty good.
They are there....just not hungry, I guess.

@Jay Thomas- what exactly is a thermocline? btw I just took my Fish Hawk off my boat. duh!

[limacharley]

17° difference in 5 feet.....why?

[Jay Thomas]

@Jay Thomas- what exactly is a thermocline? btw I just took my Fish Hawk off my boat. duh!

Hi limacharley,

From the internet

A thermocline is a section of lake water where the water temperature drops drastically across a small change in water depth. This occurs because warm, surface layers of water are much less dense than the cooler, deeper waters. Warm and cool waters separate due to their difference in density, so that the warm layer (called the epilimnion) is essentially perched on top of the cool water layer (the hypolimnion), with little mixing between the two. The thermocline is the relatively thin layer of water lying in between the warm epilimnion and cool hypolimnion, and in this region the water temperature drops rapidly with every foot of increasing depth. You may have actually seen the thermocline on your depthfinder, because the density change in the water here is strong enough to deflect sonar from today’s sensitive electronics. 

Most of the time, during the middle of those hot summer days, the baitfish will stage in the layer directly above the thermocline layer due to the dissolved oxygen levels and cooler water.

Jay

[limacharley]

Thanks Jay.

[Hodgey1]

but I think hooking up 7 is pretty decent.

@Greg , I'm pretty sure you maybe correct, that connecting with 7 is not bad. We fished "I think" 5 mornings for Lakers and part of one evening, so total hours trolling were probably 15hrs. That is about one fish every 2 hours or so. I need to lower my expectations some.

[Hodgey1]

That fishhawk data was pretty cool to see.  The ripplin Redfin never caught anything for you?  I was out last Sunday up at Big rideau about 1.5 hours from my house and he caught me a 69cm lake trout.  That lure seems to be on fire this year.

By the way, @Ozzy30 , that was way nice of you to hook me up and you left before I could thank you properly.

We did catch a couple of fish on the Ripplin as well as a Blueish colored Rapala.  Like Lima and Greg mentioned, maybe I need to be more appreciative of what was being caught.

Ozzy, on a three hour troll at Kipawa for Lakers, what would you expect to catch and is the time of day critical?

[Ozzy30]

Every lake and day is different.  When I'm at home I fish early mornings or evenings just so I have time to get some work done.  But when I'm up at Kipawa I only fish late morning and afternoon.  This year was tougher but in our 2 trips we caught 4 lakers over the 65 cm mark.  In all our other years it was nothing to average 30-45 lakers in a week with days over 10.  This years first trip was only 12 keepers with 1 day getting skunked which has never happened before.  Our 2nd trip I would say with 2 days fishing lakers with Mattie and T-bone we caught 7-8 lakers.  I would think if it was a good year 6 lakers a day up at corbeau would be a good average day.  Even the walleye were tougher than other years so we will just have to wait until next year and see how the fishing is.

[Captain Hali]

 Hodgey,
One laker for every 2 hours of trolling, I would consider above average. The many years spent trolling for lakers in Algonquin Park's Lake Opeongo we would average 1 laker for every 4 hours trolling. We fished exclusively for lakers averaging 8 to 10 hours per day. I suspect that the large schools you were marking could have been White fish, hence no action. 

[smitty55]

So last night I see there's a new post on this thread so I check it out before going to Hodgeys trip report, which I haven't checked yet. Loved the fish hawk readings, basically confirmed what I already knew just from seeing the thermocline on sonar. So I type up a fairly long response, including comments on the open water marks. Well I go to get a fresh beer and when I come back my darn Firefox has crashed and reset to a new tab, Arrggg was I ever ticked. Restore session didn't save it.  A couple of other forums I'm on have an auto save feature so I don't lose my response.

Many of those comments have now been covered but I still have some. To start with admin should sticky that chart.

Hodgey I remember the same thing happening to me way back, seen some good marks in open water, so changed plans and caught nothing. After that it was only if they were associated with good bait clouds and big hooks, otherwise I'm sticking to my structure related runs, even when exploring. You know what they say about changing courses in mid stream lol. Also about assuming hehehe. I agree with Captain Hali too, wouldn't surprise me if those marks were Whitefish. I've caught a few over the years on a gang troll but not many.

It's hard to comment accurately on your success rate without knowing the actual hours spent trolling, even when and where and how. Lake trout was always our main target by a long shot so that's how I learned, dragging a gang troll and a minnow.  I go back to the early 80's without sonar even and for me at Kipawa if you didn't catch or a least get good hits your 2 fish a day it was slow. I'm with Ozzy. "Back then" it was normal to have anywhere from a few up to 15 boats on a long weekend trolling Corbeau for trout, and plenty of fish being caught trolling right up the middle. The amount of baitfish schools was more than anywhere else too. Makes sense, it is the hub of the whole system.

Cheers

[Hodgey1]

Thanks @smitty55 for your continued Laker help.

I am curious about Gulp Minnows. Since real and dead minnows are not allowed in Kipawa, has anyone found the Gulp minnow to be successful when fishing for Lakers or are they illegal also?

[Greg]

I tried the gulp minnows with no success - and I have tried other plastics (5 inch long minnow or flute like products) and I found they just moved down the hook and bent and curled all up and looked horribly unreal (lots of water pressure & drag trolling them that low).  After an hour of trolling and you reel them up to check them and it felt like we just wasted an hour of time and gas.

Unfortunately (I say that because I miss the fun of catching and freezing and using minnows right from the lake) I feel like we have to stick to spoons now.  That's what I have used the past 3 years and we don't get as many as we used to, but it works.

If somebody has a recommendation or has a suggestion (other than spoons), I am all ears also.

[Jay Thomas]

I tried the gulp minnows with no success - and I have tried other plastics (5 inch long minnow or flute like products) and I found they just moved down the hook and bent and curled all up and looked horribly unreal (lots of water pressure & drag trolling them that low).  After an hour of trolling and you reel them up to check them and it felt like we just wasted an hour of time and gas. Unfortunately (I say that because I miss the fun of catching and freezing and using minnows right from the lake) I feel like we have to stick to spoons now.  That's what I have used the past 3 years and we don't get as many as we used to, but it works. If somebody has a recommendation or has a suggestion (other than spoons), I am all ears also.

Many charter boat captains on the great lakes use Spin N Glo's for lake trout. There's many YouTube videos available. So I'm going to give Spin N Glo's a try this year.

Jay