Big pike and walleye at Le Domaine Shannon

Back from another fishing adventure to Lac Wahoo at Le Domain Shannon. The objective was to try to land some big pike over 10 lbs, and possibly some keeper sized walleyes for the table.

My friend Jimmy came along for this adventure. I'm always happy to fish with Jimmy, being that we are friends since childhood. As well, Jimmy's skill level when it comes to casting is second to none, and he regularly outfishes me by a long shot when we target predatory species like bass and pike. While I have fished Lac Wahoo many times over the past decade, Jimmy only came along with me a few years ago, during the month of June. We didn't get any big fish during that trip, and I mentioned that July was one of the best months to target bigger fish there. I figured that the combination of Jimmy's skill level, and my knowledge and experience on the lake, would give us a shot at some very good results.

Day 1:

After driving through the night, we ran into some car trouble on the last forest road, about 10 km away from our cabin on Lac Wahoo. I'll skip the details for now, and get to that at the end of this blog post...

After getting a later start than expected, we started off  casting lures, as the lake was still relatively calm. After a cast or two, Jimmy raised a giant pike that swiped at his lure next to the boat, but didn't get hooked. Sort of heartbreaking but hopeful for another one at the same time. Jimmy had the shakes, but I assured him that he would very likely have another shot at a big pike.

We kept casting, eventually landing some pretty small pike, including our first of many double headers. 

Soon after, Jimmy landed one big enough to feed both of us nicely, so we knew what lunch the following morning would consist of.

After the wind picked up and boat control became difficult, we decided to do some shallow trolling. I rigged a buzzbait on the shallower line, and Jimmy put a spinnerbait on for the deep line, while I trolled in roughly 5-8 feet. We caught a few more small pike, and eventually, Jimmy hooked into a much better pike. He didn't realized just how big it was until we landed it. 

A thick 38 inch / 12.5 lbs pike on our first pass of the lake! Way to start your trip...

After a short celebratory pause at the cabin, we got back to trolling. This time, I tied on a deeper running spinnerbait, and sure enough, I got hit within less than 1 minute. Another solid pike landed.

After some more pike, Jimmy landed a walleye, that we added to our fillets in the fridge back on shore, and we ended of the day casting topwater lures. Many more small pike, including this one I caught on the 3d bat lure.

Day 2:

After being up for 30+ hours Saturday to Sunday night, we slept in. Just as well, pike fishing had slowed down a lot, we were struggling to catch them most of the morning, no matter the trolling depth. Wind was too strong to try casting as well. At some point in the afternoon, I decided to hit another spot nearby on foot, where I've had some decent mixed bags of pike and walleye.

I tied on a Rapala Countdown, and sure enough, I hit walleye gold on my second cast.

By the time Jimmy joined my, I already had 2 walleye on shore, and we caught a couple more. Unfortunately, his was under the legal limit of 37 cm, but mine were all within the slot size limits. We kept the 3 walleyes I caught, and made quick work of them back at the fillet table.

Back on the boat, the evening bite was a bit better than the morning bite for pike as far as numbers, but nothing too sizeable was landed.

We noticed a large branch "swimming" across the lake, with the help of a busy beaver.

Day 3:

We started the day off by trolling a bit deeper with the help of my portable sonar. My goal was to stay in the 12 to 15 foot range, hoping to eliminate many of the smaller sized pike we had been catching over the first couple days, and focus on bigger fish. 

Once in a while, the plan works out better than expected. The first hit came on a Rapala Husky jerk I was trolling. From the big head shakes, I knew we hit a fish, much bigger than I'd keep for the table. After a good fight, I hoisted another nice pike out of the lake.

After releasing the pike, I noticed that it had broken one of the treble hooks on my lure. I decided to replace the broken hook before resuming trolling. While I was getting the hook changed, Jimmy started casting a spinnerbait, and sure enough, he hooked into another big fish. Another good fight, and another monster pike landed by Jimmy.

Talk about being at the right place at the right time with the right presentation. This one was slightly longer than his first big pike a couple days prior, measuring 39 inches and weighing 10.5 lbs. Released in good condition as usual.

That turned out to be the only success we had deep trolling for the day, most of the rest of the pike we caught were in shallower water, and quite small as well, except for this one. 

With a but of rain coming in, I decided to hit my shore spot, which produced my biggest walleye of the trip at 19 inches / 2.25 lbs. 

Not a monster by any means, but a very welcome addition to the fillet table, and subsequently, my freezer.

Day 4: 

This was our final day of fishing, as we planned to leave early the following day to to potential issues with my car, which I'll get to shortly.

We spent much of the day trolling various depths, 12 to 15 feet, 15 to 20 feet, and deeper as well. Each pass of the entire lake takes about 1.5 to 2 hours, we eventually switched back shallow trolling after spending half a day with not much to show for. Jimmy ran his spinnerbait on the shallow side, with a trolled a Mepps 5 spinner. Jimmy connect with many tiny pike, seemingly a lot small than most of the small ones we caught over the previous 3 days. Eventually, I hooked a nicer fish.

We decided to end the trip by casting the calm waters before an incoming storm. A few more tiny pike, and eventually, I caught another walleye casting the Mepps 5 spinner that I was trolling for pike.

That ended our trip, which turned out to be extremely successful. We landed well over 100 pike in 4 days, including 2 in the double digit weight class. Walleye fishing was better than normal with a total of 10 walleye landed, many of which we caught while we were targeting pike. The weather was great, most of the rain only came after dark and ended early morning, so we enjoyed a good 8 to 9 hours of fishing per day.

As a bonus, we found some decent sized patches of wild blueberries, and both of us picked a bunch before leaving.

Over the years, Lac Wahoo has become my favorite lake to fish at Le Domaine Shannon, though they have many other very productive lakes, for both pike and walleye. Hoping to head back there again, hopefully sooner, rather than later...

As for the car trouble I mentioned earlier on, here is the tale of that "adventure", for those of you that may be interested.

Travelling on forest roads many times over the past couple decades, I have come to expect tire trouble. Usually, picking up nails is the culprit, and as such, I travel with a patch kit, bike pump, car lack, and spare "doughnut" style replacement tire that came with my CRV.

Before this trip, my wife had a small fender bender, that added some tear to an already damaged plastic skid plate under the front end of the car as well.

As we got closer to our destination, the damaged skid plate kept getting worse, until it was partially dragging on the dirt roads. Sort of annoying, but nothing serious. Sure enough, shortly after turning onto the final (and roughest) road we take to get to our remote cabin,  my front tire goes flat. I had all the repair gear handy for a slow leak, but when I inspected the tire, it actually had a horizontal tear in it, about 1 inch long. Now way to fix it with a plug from my patch kit, we were forced to unload the trunk to get to the spare tire, and ended up changing it before making out way to the cabin. 

Skid plate damage:

Spare tire:

At this point, many thoughts were running through my mind. The spare tire is not designed for off road use, nor long highway trips. I was hoping that perhaps someone from the camps crew may pass by, but that was not likely, as we were the only ones out in the remote area, some 30 kilometers away from the main camp. With no cel phone signal or satellite phones, we had no way of reaching anyone to help, or maybe order a new tires for us and possibly have it delivered to the main camp.

Eventually, with incoming rain a couple evenings later, I brought the tire into the cabin, hoping that I could find some way to fix it. Luckily, that repair kit I bought a couple years earlier came with 6 plugs, one of which I used last summer during a trip to Mijocama. After getting the first plug in, I added a second, then a third, and eventually a fourth, which finally sealed the tear enough for the tire to hold full pressure overnight.

The makeshift workshop:

The improvised patchwork:

Not too beautiful, but now that the patch had not leaked overnight, it was time to see if it would hold the cars weight. Once the spare was off, and the car hoisted, we figured it would be easier to work on the skid plate as well.

First, we lifted the inner sections. With a rivet missing, I improvised by using a branch of the same diameter, and breaking it off at the opening, then covering it with duct tape, to avoid it moving or poking the tire. Then, I tied the bottom end to the main chassis, using braided fishing line, and covered with duct tape to protect it from damage.

See both duct taped areas:

Then, we made sort of "handles" out of duct tape, the threaded them through and around a couple slot at the front of the skid plate, twisting and sealed them down with more duct tape.

Behold, the miracle of duct tape and it's thousands of uses...

By now, the jack sank into the sand a bit, and we weren't able to raise the car high enough to get the original tire back on. I lowered the rotor onto a log to avoid damaging it, and used a couple flatter logs under the jack to get the tire changed.

The following morning, the tire kept it's pressure. I originally had planned to take it on a test drive, but Jimmy advised against it. Either way, whatever happed was going to be; either it worked like a charm, or we'd be changing the tire again...

Thursday morning, we left extra early just in case. Not knowing if I'd be changing another tire on the road, or if I'd be heading to a garage in Grand Remous or Mont Laurier to find a replacement tire, or maybe not even making it back to the main camp. We took the drive extra slow, instead of my usual 45 minutes or so, we took close to 1.5 hours to make the 30 km trek to the main camp. Lucky of us, as we saw our only moose of the trip on the way there.

One we got that far, I figured the worst was behind us. The tire was holding up, and eventually, hit pavement an additional 73 kilometers later, though on much better dirt roads. I checked the tire pressure again at that point, and it held up perfectly. 

Needless to say, I didn't bother looking for a new tire up there, and it held up find all the way home to Montreal, 300 kilometers later.

It's little wonder that most people driving on this sort of terrain opt for raised pickup trucks with off road tires. But for myself, who makes a trip or two per year, I'm comfortable enough using my city vehicle. That being said coming prepared, and with the right mindset, can make all the difference in these sorts of tricky situations.