Big Trout Eat Big Bait: Fishing for Trout on Lake Athabasca
Wild Fish Wild Places 02.21.12
When you’re looking to catch the biggest lake trout of your life, you need to think big water. What better place to chase a giant laker than the 7th largest lake in North America, Lake Athabasca?
Lake Athabasca is a remote body of water nestled in the Northern most part of Saskatchewan that is approximately 270 miles long and due to the abundant inflow of water and forage the predatory fish grow big. I have fished this lake a fair amount, spending hours looking for un-fished offshore reefs and big lake trout. It was during one such journey toward the end of June when we put together a pattern unlike anything I have ever witnessed. We were 20 miles from camp and the only boat that traveled east that day had one mission: big lakers!
There was no shortage of lake trout but we were not catching the giants we knew this lake is famous for. We noticed a couple of bigger fish chasing a small school of whitefish in and out of the rocky main lake reefs. As we watched them work the baitfish, we assumed they were trout and concluded the bigger lake trout were keyed in on 12 to 16 inch baitfish, much bigger than our medium-size spoons we were using, now we just had to imitate it. I started digging through my tackle and the only thing I had close to that size was a Luhr-Jensen size O dodger. I had heard the boys at Lakers Unlimited talking about the dodger fishing but had yet to put this technique to use, now was the time. In every situation I have fished dodgers in the past it was employed as an attractor with a leader and the bait/lure following, so this was going to be a test.
We connected a large single hook dressed with a plastic squid directly to the dodger, ran a 30” fluorocarbon leader to a 2 ounce weight connected to the main line and what used to be a big metal attractor had just become our lure. The fish were staging between 15 and 20 feet deep, ambushing prey in the boulders. As I released the large white and chartreuse dodger behind the boat I remember my buddy giggling and making some remark about how awful it looked and he was just going to stick with the small spoon he was using. The next few hours turned out to be one of the most memorable fishing experiences of my life, as not ten minutes after dropping in I had the most aggressive strike I had ever felt on the end of my line, boasting a beautiful 20 pound lake trout. The next hour was exactly the same with savage attacks followed by two more fish around 20 pounds, but I still did not rub it in and my buddy wasn’t willing to switch lures.
I dropped this beautiful piece of new hardware back into the crystal clear water and as I watched the lowrance call out a perfect 15 foot drop-off I estimated the time my lure would be flashing its way over the drop, it happened. The same savage attack and line stripping but this time it was much heavier and stronger. After doing battle with this beast it finally came into sight and as the two of us looked at each other we panicked, “don’t lose him, it’s a monster!” As we eased him into the cradle and attached the scale, he weighed in at a massive 38 pounds!
What a way to end the day and it was time to start rubbing it in. Since then I have used this technique on a few Canadian lakes with great results, as well as some local trout waters with smaller dodgers. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box or rub it in with your fishing buddies.
FISH AND FISHING. TWO WORDS HAVING A MYRIAD OF MEANINGS TO A MYRIAD OF PEOPLES. TO FISH FOR FOOD, FOR LIFE, FOR SURVIVAL; OR TO FISH FOR FUN, FOR SPORT, FOR MONEY.
When, almost 5,000 years ago in China, man first attached a hook and line to a bamboo rod to catch carp a little further from the river’s edge, little did he know that this creation would evolve into an industry which at the early part of this, the twenty-first century, is worth over $108 billion annually to the US economy in terms of sport fishing alone!
The variety of fish species is infinite. From cold water inhabitants such as members of the Salmonidae family, to warm water, tropical dwellers like the Cichlids. From the gigantic Tarpon of the Florida Keys to the gentler Arctic Charr spectacularly attired in their vivid courtship colors in the frigid rivers and streams of the arctic tundra. Take the celebrated Coelacanth, over three hundred million years old and still found today in the warm seas of the Indian Ocean around Madagascar, or the seemingly ubiquitous Golden Orfe, or the goldfish, which completes endless circuits in so many glass bowls in family homes in every corner of the world.
In this series, we will seek out great predatory fish. Fish that are much revered, fish that strike terror at the very mention of their name and fish that are the staple diet of many peoples subsisting along the shorelines and riverbanks of the great waters we will visit during our odyssey. Positioned at the very top of the food chain, these apex predators reign supreme in their own domain, be it mighty river, great lake or ocean.
Our quest will take us across cultures and continents to exotic locations of immense beauty and wealth as well as lands poleaxed by poverty. We will explore not just these wild and wonderful places, but the significance of our target species to the different groupings of peoples in terms of social, economic and cultural values.
Our travels in search of extraordinary predators will take us from the cold, unforgiving waters of the West of Ireland to the steaming jungle swamps of India. From the frozen, pristine wilderness of the Canadian subarctic to the sun-baked backwaters of Northern Australia. This will be a series of contrasts and comparisons where we will meet people who live to fish and people who fish to live.
