What makes a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip?
Is it lots of fish? Is it big fish? Is it a species you’ve never caught before? Is it a faraway magical body of water, or is it who you are fishing with?
My son, Izzy, and I discussed that very subject while walking back to our cabin after Day 3 of our fishing trip to Bolton Lake in Manitoba, Canada. I told him I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about our trip, but he had the perfect answer — “It’ll write itself.”
And that’s exactly what happened on Day 4, as we capped off a fantastic adventure to the far north with an epic fishing day that checked off all the above boxes.
From the fly-in and landing on a gravel runway in an eight-seater Beechcraft BE 10, to the accommodations, meals, guides, shore lunches, beautiful scenery (eagles and loons everywhere) and fishing, our trip to Bolton Lake Lodge was top notch.
We never did hook into that 48-inch pike, or experience 100-fish days (both certainly possible), but we caught close to 200 fish in four days of fishing and capped the trip with a bucket-list species that made it all worthwhile.
Going deep for the big catch
Ever since I picked Bolton Lake Lodge as our destination, catching my first-ever lake trout was the goal. But, Izzy and I were against trolling for the deep-living species, and were hoping for the day that our guide, Rico Dempsey, would let us vertical jig in 120 feet of water for lake trout.
The best chance of successfully catching a lake trout in July on Bolton, though, is by trolling, so we came to a compromise, that we wouldn’t troll with downriggers, but long-line for lakers on the last day of our stay. After breakfast, we drove nearly 30 minutes to the north end of the lake, where the depths exceed 100 feet. We had already caught our fill of walleye and pike (every day we kept four walleye for shore lunch), so now the goal was getting a laker.
Dempsey brought along his own gear for lake trout fishing, big trolling rods with line counters, spooled up with 40-pound braid. We were using bait rigs, where you pin a herring in a plastic triangular head, then run one treble hook through the belly of the herring and another closer to its tail. Both hooks are on the same side of the herring and inserted to give the herring a curved profile, which causes it to spin when trolled.
We were targeting fish at a depth of 50 feet so I had a 5-ounce inline weight on my line to help get the bait down, and Izzy had a 6-ounce weight.
Reeling in that bucket-list, chunky, 32-inch laker
While Dempsey was getting the herring rigs set up, Izzy took advantage of the down time to catch a pike, a cast that would lead us to an awesome afternoon of fishing. Now, though, lake trout was the goal, and when we finally started our troll, Rico told me to let out 200 feet of line, and Izzy to let out 175. I stopped my line counter a bit short at 199, and a minute later, I got a bite.
Now you have to remember, this was a bucket-list goal of mine to catch a laker, and all I could think about over the next few minutes were all the things that could go wrong as I reeled the fish up, not everything that could go right. Unbelievably, we had only had our baits in the water for a minute or two and I was already hooked up.
I could tell it was a good fish, not of Master Angler size, but still a quality fish. It seemed like forever to get in the 199 feet of line, and when I could finally see the fish 15-feet down in the clear water, my heart really starting pumping. When Dempsey got the net under the fish, I was ecstatic beyond belief. Izzy and I high-fived and hooted and hollered so loud you probably could of heard us back in Ohio.
The fish, with a chunky belly, measured 32 inches, and Dempsey estimated that it weighed 15 pounds. That’s 15 pounds of pure muscle, something I quickly found out as I nearly dropped the laker in the water before getting a picture. Dempsey and I made a lake trout sandwich out of it as we corralled the fish between the two of us to keep it in the boat.
Eventually, I got a good grip on the fish, and got my long-awaited photo of my bucket-list laker.
In the next hour, Izzy would reel up two lakers, one 33 ½ inches and another 34 inches, while I missed one and actually pulled up a nice walleye from 50-feet down. I didn’t care that Izzy out-fished me, I was happy for him and I got my one laker and that was more than enough.
Casting shoreline cover for toothy critters: 50 pike in three hours
We weren’t done with our epic day, though, as after lunch, we asked Dempsey if we could go back to the deep water and finish the afternoon pike fishing. We had spent most of the first three days fishing big weed flats for pike, flipping weedless Johnson’s Silver Minnows tipped with a plastic trailer, but now we were hoping to cast to some shoreline cover for toothy critters. The plan was a big success, as we hammered fish all afternoon, often catching pike on back-to-back casts.
Our best guess is we caught 50 pike in a little over three hours. In the coves, we got on an epic topwater bite, while along the steep banks, we lured pike out of the depths with spoons, jigs and cranks.
Each day at noon we would meet Ryan Gubrud and his dad, Steve, and their guide for shore lunch. Gubrud is co-owner of Freedom Baitz in Minnesota, and thanks to him, we had enough plastic trailers to finish the week of fishing as the pike destroyed all the plastics I took. Freedom Baitz specializes in panfish plastics, but is in the process of expanding its line, and Gubrud was testing out some of the company’s new walleye baits.
The walleye fishing at Bolton Lake is fantastic, with an abundance of golden-brown 20-21 inchers. Izzy and I didn’t spend much time walleye fishing after we’d get our lunch quota each day, as we were looking for that trophy pike, which Dempsey kept reminding us, was “only one cast away.”
Biggest pike of week at 40-plus inches, spit the hook
Actually, Izzy hooked into the biggest pike of the week 15 minutes into our first day of fishing, but the plus-40 incher jumped and spit the hook, and we never came close to 40 inches the rest of the week. We did, though, catch hundreds of 24-30-inch pike, and a couple 35s, while our biggest walleye was 25 inches.
Bolton lake is 70,000 acres of catch-and-release waters (except for shore lunch walleyes). Trevor and Jodi Dick have the only lodge on the lake, which is only accessible during the summer months by plane. It sits 300 miles north of Winnipeg, which is about a 1 hour and 30-minute flight from the airport.
The lodge has a maximum of 26 guests, so there’s never more than 13 boats on the lake, and the fishing season is a short 12 weeks.
All fishing hooks in the province of Manitoba have to be barbless.
To learn more about fishing Bolton Lake, go to www.boltonlake.com
Outdoor correspondent Art Holden can be reached at letsplabal@yahoo.com.
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