Fishing Summer to fall transition - September 2019

September 2019 turned out to be on the warm side, but sure enough, fall finally arrived late in the month. With the water cooling down a good 10 to 15 degrees F, fishing has been sort of inconsistent. Some outings were a lot better than average for both numbers and size, others were dismal, especially for bass.

Starting off with bottom feeders, we managed to land a good number of carp in the mid to upper twenties, mainly night fishing short outings after dark.

Carp weren't the only big bottom feeders that came to play. Eli landed his biggest channel cat of the season.

And his first encounter with a redhorse sucker.

I landed my first lake sturgeon of the season, fishing with my friend Mark.

Moving on to predators, I stuck to my season's topwater theme, and spent a good bit of time trying to land another topwater musky, mainly from my float tube. Though I wasn't able catch any, I did end up with a nice pike with a massive head that exploded on the big topwater musky lure I was casting (Topraider) from my float tube.

I did have better success with muskies while fishing for musky from my friend Mike's boat. In a short 4 hour outing, we managed to hook three muskies. I landed two of them, some really nice color patterns and markings on these St Lawrence river muskies.

The third (and biggest of the day) jumped clear out of the water three times before throwing the hook, I wasn't able to prevent the jumps from the hyper aggressive beast.

Bass were the least co-operative of my target species, I few missed hits from largemouth bass, but I did manage to land another largemouth bass on the Pop R from my float tube.

As well as a few smaller to mid size smallmouth bass fishing with my friend Mark.

With Rosh Hashana coming up and the high holidays all in October this year, I will be doing significantly less fishing than I've got accustomed to over this past summer. Still hope to get in a few good outings, and maybe some monster fish if I'm lucky enough.

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova!

Multi species fishing to end the summer

With unseasonably warm temperatures during our last official week of summer, I made some time to fish for species that I have been neglecting in the recent months.

The first outing was a trip up to Coin Lavigne, to fish for rainbow trout and speckled brook trout. We arrived at Lac en Coeur around 9 AM, by which time the small lake already had 7-8 boats fishing on it. Talk about crowded conditions, but with kids in school, weekends are the only option.

Despite the high volume of boat traffic causing "elbow to elbow" conditions on the tiny lake, fishing was very productive. Rainbow trout were aggressively hitting our lines up near the surface, whether we fished deep or shallow. Trolling a Silver lake flasher spoon followed by 1/2 a worm on baitholder hook rigged about 3 feet behind the spoon, accounted for most of the trout we caught, but we managed to get some trolling a #2 mepps spinner in gold color.

Took less than 2 hours to get out 10 trout bag limit, which we kept for the table.

The following day, I finally got out onto Lac St Louis only the second time this season. This time it was with my friend (and veteran fishing guide) Mark. With moderate winds in the morning steadily increasing throughout the day, we started off anchoring deep to fish for lake sturgeon.

Didn't take long, and I boated my first sturgeon of the season after a nice fight that had it jump a few times.

The next sturgeon was significantly bigger, and put up the best fight I've had all season. It had the downrigger rod I was using bent to the point where I thought it was going to explode on me, but the rod held up just fine.

I released the big sturgeon, but strangely enough, it turned around and headed right back to the boat, to where I was able to actually pet it's snout. It turned again and did the same thing for a second time, before finally swimming down to the depths it came from.

After not catching any more sturgeon of the spot, we moved a bit deeper, and were quickly rewarded with another nice sturgeon.

By now, the winds were gusting strong, the waves increasingly getting bigger, and boat control was getting increasingly difficult. We opted to changed our target species to smallmouth bass, in an area sheltered from the high wind.

Not having had much time to target smallmouth bass this season, I was excited to have Mark show me a yet another new technique. Twitching flukes over weed patches, were were able to get into a couple hours of solid bass fishing, with a few of the smallmouth bass over the 4 lbs range.

Mark never ceases to amaze me with his unparalleled knowledge of the St Lawrence River, and his vast arsenal of tactics, specific to each spot and it's current flow, weather condition, etc. Along with his big Ranger boat fully equipped with the latest electronics and new 250 HP 4 stroke engine, his experience is sure to put anyone from beginners to seasoned pro's onto some of the best multi species fishing Montreal has to offer.

Mark can be contacted by clicking here.