Well,  the fishing season is officially open in Ontario Canada and what a day it was at Manotak Lodge.

The day started out trying to figure out which direction would be best to go, Ord River or Jackfish Bay, based on ice location on the lake.  Yes, that is correct, we had ice on the lake for opening day and it is still here on Sunday morning.  The quality of ice is not very good and it is now small enough where a shoreline is open on one side of the lake whether it be East or West.  The interesting issue this morning is now fog.  If you look on the webcams you can see that we are completely fogged in.   Spring can be interesting to say the least.

However, you might be wondering how the fishing was yesterday.  I can only say that it was one of the best opening mornings we can remember in some time.   In fact, a comment made by one of our regular guests was "In the many years I have been fishing Perrault Lake at Manotak Lodge for opening week, we have never had better Walleye and Pike fishing, ever". 

We do have to admit that we thought the fishing was phenomenal but did not want to sound like boastful lodge owners so we just listened to what our guests had to say.  Another guest was very excited but frustrated at the same time.  Him and his buddy went out for about 3 hours in the early morning to get Walleyes for shorelunch and came back to the dock with just one fish.  They both have been to Manotak a number of years and I was slightly confused with their low catch.  They must have seen to look on my face when I looked in their livewell only to see one fish.  They told me that they had no problem eating something else for lunch because all of the close to 20 Walleyes they caught that morning were over 18 inches so they threw them all back.  I almost fell off the dock when they told me this. Their largest was 29 inch. 

Just to hit some of the highlights quickly: there were 6 Walleyes over 30 inches yesterday. Our first time guest Leroy, thought he was going to have the big fish of the day with a 31 inch Walleye only to get beat out by his wife, Judy's, 32 inch Walleye.  Leroy stated that it is probably best that it happened that way.  I told him I am staying out of that conversation.  Chuck, another regular guest for many years caught 2 Walleyes over 30 inches in about 2 hours time.  He actually seemed somewhat low key when he arrived at the dock and I told him that most people don't catch a 30 inch Walleye their whole lives.  He is just a modest kind of guy.

Pike were also on an eating binge or should I say buffet.  Over 50 Pike were caught yesterday with the largest being 38 inches.  This should continue for some time as the water is so cold that they will be hanging out chasing all of the Walleyes coming out of the spawning areas.

Well, you get the picture.  We will try and document fish reports on a regular basis as best we can. 

We also want to thank all of our guests for releasing Walleyes over 18 inches.  As you can tell, it is working out fantastic for the fisherie.