A Summer in Thunder Bay

I've been going to school up in Thunder Bay for 3 years now (In my 4th and final year now), but never brought up all my fishing gear. i'd tried to make due with a travel rod and a pair of legs, but only ever caught dinky little rainbow trout. I'd given up fishing here for the most part. This year was different since I was going to spend 4 months during the summer before my 8 months of school. I couldn't pass up the fishing opportunity. So, I stuffed as much fishing gear as I could into the plane and headed out to Thunder Bay. My biggest challenge would be finding fishing spots, since I have no vehicle (or friends who fish with vehicles), I would need to walk.

My first target was the longnose sucker, I saw them listed in my ontario fish book and thought I'd give them a shot. So I went to the local tackle shop, bought a $30 rod, since I didn't want to risk my normal rod (I brought my reel up). I asked the fishing shop about where to find longnose suckers and naturally they had never heard of them, but apparently the stream that runs through my school has tons of suckers, including the red-finned suckers. I had a lead. The next day, I headed out to the McIntyre River to get a sucker, lots of spots were packed with anglers since it was the tail end of the Steelhead Run, so I gave them some space, talked to a few and tried going downstream where the suckers were. It was not hard to find them as the suckers were stacked on top on each other in the strong rapids. I couldn't get the bait down to them without snagging and lost a ton of hooks, worms and tackle. I kept going downstream until I found a slower moving spot. I spooked a group of 5-6 suckers when I approached the bank, and I couldn't coax them to bite. I figured I would be more stealthy on my way back. Everywhere downstream was packed with suckers and they looked like they had a red-stripe from the stained water. This turned out to be an optical illusion and the stripes were very white. Anyways, I snagged a few times, went to the slow spot and finally hooked up with and landed a sucker. It was a White Sucker, not a longnose. So I tried again and snagged one this time, also a white sucker. I later found out that the Current River and the Kaministiqua are dominated by longnose suckers so I will need to give them a shot next spring.

My roomate ended up coming back for the summer as well, so we made a number of trips to the McIntyre to catch suckers and caught a ton. This time we were armed with slinky rigs and rarely snagged. Below are some pictures of the McIntyre and the suckers, I also got a surprise steelhead which was pretty cool. I didn't include any pictures of my roommates fish because they were much bigger than mine, and there were more of them. We took home one of his average sized suckers to try eating, ended up being 22' long. I melted the plastic tongs deep frying the fish, I may not live that down.

This picture was included for the background

Beautiful colours on one of my Roomates fish

After giving up on the longnose suckers, my roomate spent a month in the arctic, and all the suckers were gone from the McIntyre. I also managed to lose a brook trout on shore and never got another one amongst the endless onslaught of baby rainbows. I needed to find a new fishing spot. I tried further downstream of the river, but I was largely unsuccessful. I needed to be able to travel further. Luckily my landlord had a bunch of beaten up bikes in the shed, I was able to get ahold of two of them. My campus has a bike shed that provides the materials needed to fix up bikes as long as you do the work yourself. So I fixed up a pair of bikes, that were in way worse shape than I expected. I now had a mode of transportation.

I found out that there is an invasive species, Ruffe, that are only found in the Thunder Bay area, in Ontario. The Kaministiqua has had a "healthy" population of them since the 1980s. This is just a short bike ride away, The bike ride was fantstic, there are a lot of really nice bike trails that run most of the way to the Kaministiqua. I was a little concerned about this spot as we approached it, because there was a very distinct pine tree smell from the pulp mill a short ways upstream. Though the provincial eating guide states that you can eat a lot of fish from the Kaministiqua each month, so the water is still fairly clean. The boat launch we fished also had a info bulletin on Lake Sturgeon and what to do if you happen to catch one. This ended up being my weekly spot, so I saw a ton of the jumping, so that was really cool.

My first trip to the Kam resulted in a few rock bass (didn't expect them), perch and two ruffe. I also saw someone catch a walleye, so I was excited for a chance to catch one, I'd always thought they were very tricky to catch from shore.

I had heard rumours that you catch a dozen ruffe for every perch here, but I only ended up catching 3 ruffe all year, and more perch than I can count (so some number bigger than 6). I kept getting a really small but distinct low pull on my line, but whenever I set the hook I would end up with nothing, and a missing worm, this was a tad frustrating. The next trip was a lot more interesting, I was with my roomate this time, and we each managed to catch 2 walleye, though we put them back because we were scared of the pulp mill. This is a shameful first for me, literaly everyone I know regularly fishes for walleye and catches tons of them with ease (or so they claim). Walleye became a fairly regular catch and we took a few home after checking the regulations, they are delicious and I definately want to get better at catching them, preferably from a different spot though.

Later that day, I'd been keeping my line more taut than I usually do, and trying to set the hook on the first bite, which was working wonders, I wasn't missing as much as normal. Then I got the slow pull again, but I didn't set the hook, I waited until I felt the weight again and set the hook more enthusiasticlly than I should have. This fish actually put up a bit of fight! It wasn't a struggle but it was nice to know my drag still worked, I was worried about it after almost a month of not using it. It turned out to be a battle-scared shorthead redhorse. The gash it had on its side looked like it went right to the bone but was completely scared over. What a trooper, must have tried making friends with the abundant pike in the area (apparently they are abundant, I hadn't seen one yet and was sceptical that they even existed)

The mountain in the background is Mount Mckay, its way higher up than it looks. There is a ncie trail that goes up to the top of it, that is more of a cardio exercise than a relaxing trip. But the view on top is pretty amazing, and also terrifying, you can look straight down 1000 ft if you would like, I did and felt my stomache relocate so I will never do that again. There is also a bald eagle that is on the other side of the river every time we fish here, it occasionally comes by close enough to get a good look at it.

The next target was brook trout, I was really looking forwards to planning a trip for brook trout for a few years now. I figured that I I live so close to the brook trout promised land (Nipigon) then I need to get one while I am up here. There was a place just outside of town that apparently had quite a few brookies. Now unfortuntely Nipigon is a few hours drive away and bike riding that would not be wise without a few days to spare and much better bikes. I had to settle for a short trip to the outskirts of town.

Now the bike ride itself was much more difficult than I anticipated, because it was almost exclusively uphill. but the scenery was pretty amazing. A good chunk of the trail ran alnongside McVikers creek, which is a beautiful trout stream, that unfortunately does not have many brook trout in it, in town at least. But the trip was well worth it. Some pictures of our destination. A place dominated by anglers during the early summer when the current is too strong for swimmers, then one the water slows down its overtaken by swimmers.

We fished the deep pool at the base of the rapids for a long time without any success. Thankfully the slinky rigs made the rockey bottom and fast current manageable without any fish to save our baits from the depths. I switched to fishing the main channel (the picture of all the whitewater) and hooked up with 2 lake chub (Lifer!). I also managed to catch a dog leash (thankfully without a dog attached). This is up there among my weirdest catches. Though my weirdest catch is a frozen duck decoy I caught in the Whirlpool (Niagara River)

We then made our way upstream fishing each of the pools between the waterfalls on the way, without any luck. After a while I switched my slinky rig and hook positions, so my hook would slide freely up my line and keep it from snagging on the bottom. Then I put a bobber stop about 3 ft up from it to keep my bait close to the bottom but so it didn't just slide up to the surface. This surprisingly worked as I cast into the main channel towards the top of the rapids and got a big hit. I missed it. A few minutes later I got another hit, and this time it stayed on. It was a brook trout! The hard work of the trip had paid off. We stayed for a bit so my roomate could catch one, but there was no luck and we called it quits an hour or so later. We celebrated at the local ice cream shack with some superb milkshakes and burgers yummy!

Lake Chub

Dog Leash

Brook Trout spot

Brook trout

Food

The last noteworthy trip was to Kakabeka, the second largest waterfall in Ontario, and having spent a fair bit of time around the biggest, I've come to really like this one as well. It may not be as large, but it is still very impressive. We fished a little ways upstream. I couldn't get the whole falls in the picture, but you can get an idea from the depth of the gorge.

Upstream was quite nice, the current was slower than expected and we fished some minnows hoping for a pike. My roomate snagged and lost his second minnow so he tried out worms and got hit almost immediatly. He lost the fish a few feet from shore but it looked medium sized and white, I had no idea what it was so I wanted to try for it, I was also kind of luky in that I snagged my minnow. My roomate wanted to try minnows and I switched to worms. My roomate caught a baby walleye. I wasn't having any action. I reeled in to check my bait after quite some time and reeled in quickly to stay above the very large rocks close to shore. My slinky rig skimmed along the surface of the water when a large black shape surfaced and absolutely crushed my sinker. I obviously didn't manage to catch it but it did peel off some line before it realized it was eating a shoelace. I switched over to the biggest lure I had on me (#4 Mepps Spinner) and cast out to the same spot and reeled in  fast. On the 4th cast I skimmed it along the surface in the same spot and the fish hit it again, this time It grabbed the lure. It pulled pretty hard and managed to wrap me around a rock... I was snagged. I moved up along the shoreline trying to get off of the rock and when I finally did I had a few moments of suspense as I reeled in all the slack. There was still weight on the end. The fish realized it was still hooked and made another run for it, but it was unsuccessfull. I then was faced with the realization that I needed to land a pike without a net, gloves, or any experience handling them. The last time I'd caught a pike I was 8 and I don't think I touched it. I grabbed it by the lure hoisted it for a quick pic, then I took the hook out and I let it go. In hindsight I would have had a much easier time landing it if I'd just grabbed it under the mouth but I had it with all three trebles and thought that would work too. I'd finally gotten a pike! Later on I caught what I think was the mystery "white fish" it turned out to be a mangled smallmouth bass that looked pretty white from the shore. Looks like the pike found it first.

Both picks are the same smallmouth

Bonus stories:

So my thesis work is on the other side of Nipigon, so I get to drive past it in a rental car without being able to fish it, it's truly sad. But regardless I got to see a Lynx! There were actually two of them. They are much smaller than I expected, and Bobcats are even smaller than Lynx.

Also the walleye are occasionally smaller than the perch...

One last scenery shot of the Current River, tried here for Brook trout, I was too early, got skunked