The weather finally took a cool turn and the wind that followed the cold snap had a lot of gust to it. A few trees were downed on Sunday and Monday, especially in the Seagull area. This will be an ongoing event with every wind storm since more and more half-burnt Jack Pines are beginning to lose their strength. It always worries me fishing on Saganaga to suddenly see fresh tree limbs floating by.
I have been fishing the smaller lakes in an attempt to avoid the wind. The bite has been really good with a lot of smallmouth bass and lake trout. The walleyes were biting great before the last cold front. It got a little tougher with the temperature dropping. It usually takes a couple of days after the front before the bite “turns on” again. The wind and temperature will cause the surface water to chill and mix up with the rest of the lake. I cannot say that the fish will magically “turn on”, but they could not be happy with the extremely warm water this summer.
The trout humps have been producing some nice sized whitefish on Saganaga lately, but this is not a good time of the year to be keeping them. I made the mistake of boxing one last week and there were a lot of tape worms swimming around the bottom of my fish cooler. Whitefish are a lot better to eat when the water is colder. They start to lose the muddy taste, and you do not see the worms like in the heat of the summer.
Saganaga used to have giant schools of whitefish that we would target in the fall, just before the end of the trout season. It meant ripping crippled herrings up and down for hours until it felt like your arm was about to fall off. The bite was pretty fast and jerking into a solid fish in 35 – 55 feet of water was a lot of fun. I still have a box full of those “tennis elbow” lures that I threaten to tie on every once in a while, but more often it is the Nils Master or small Buckshot spoons that are getting tied on. The treble hooks get a little more difficult to remove than the single hook on a crippled herring, but they get a lot of bites and are easier to fish.
Bear baiting season began last weekend and a lot of the prime berry-picking areas happen to also be some of the bear’s favorite hangouts. I would have thought the berries would be disappearing soon but it appears they are still producing. There have been a few vehicles parked along the Gunflint Trail in the usual spots, but some of them are getting ready for the bear season. If I were a bear, the berry patches seem like a pretty good place to be.
There have not been very many bear sightings for us this summer, but our miniature dachshund attack dog does her best to keep all animals away. Usually she concentrates on the chipmunk population but I am pretty sure she would take on a bear if she saw one. She has a lot more bark than bite. If a bear actually ran away from her, it would be from simply not knowing what the heck she is.
Cory Christianson, a 2000
graduate of the University of
Iowa, has worked as a fishing
guide on the Gunflint Trail
for nine years. If you have
any fishing reports or stories
to share, send an email to:
christiansoncory@hotmail.
com or call 218-388-0315.
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