Podcast: Reel Talk! Boundary Waters fishing with Stu Osthoff

BWCA Fishing with Stu Osthoff

Stu Osthoff: Every day is a new adventure. New lake,  new water.  You’ll never fish at all. No way.  Not even close.  Got to go through the muck and mire,  swat the bugs  .

That’s part of canoe country fishing. welcome to Big Red Canoe, the podcast from Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, where we introduce you to captivating people and intriguing stories from America’s Treasured Wilderness. I’m Dave Meier. Grab a paddle and hop on in. ​

Dave Meier: Picture this. You’re in a canoe on a lake in the boundary waters. You had an early dinner. The sun has gone down over the horizon. That end of day stillness has set in. You’re casting off an Island shoreline. The water’s like glass. And then suddenly, bam, you got a fighter on the line.

That’s the magic we’re exploring on today’s podcast. We’re going to dive deep into boundary waters, fishing the kind that makes you forget about your daily grind and remember why you fell in love with the outdoors in the first place. Our guest is Stu Osthoff, fishing guide and publisher of the Boundary Waters Journal.

Stu has spent over 45 years exploring and fishing the pristine waters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park. Some anglers like to keep their fishing secrets close to the vest, but not Stu. We’re so glad he could join our Executive Director, Chris Knopf, in our Ely office earlier this summer to share some BWCA fishing tips, locations, and lures for catching the Grand Slam of canoe country fishing.

That’s lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, and northern pike. Whether you’re a seasoned Boundary Waters angler or dreaming of your first fishing adventure there, this is a rare opportunity to learn from one of the true experts. Here’s Chris in Ely.

Chris Knopf: Hello, , everyone. It’s a beautiful day in downtown Ely here, the sun is shining.

We have legendary angler Stu Ostoff, who was the publisher of the, the Boundary Waters Journal. For close to 40 years, 40 years now, and it’s such an institution. That’s an inspiration for people who love to get out into the wilderness. And so we’re going to talk fishing.

Chris Knopf: Real talk with Stu Ossoff.

Stu Osthoff: All right, well,

last year, we had a super late ice out last several years until this year, just the opposite ice went out on the area lakes about 15 days earlier than the historical norm.

So that, of course. sets in motion a whole different pattern for fishing and I’ll get into that some more here. But the Boundary Waters Journal is all things BWCA and Quetico. So when I talk about Boundary Waters fishing, it’s pretty transferable between the two. Quetico has some more stringent regulations, lower harvest, less pressure, less people, no live bait, things like that, barbless hooks.

So I prefer that because it’s just easier to catch a lot of big fish up there, but the quality of fishing is outstanding on the Minnesota side and the boundary waters as well. And in the 2 years that COVID. kept me out of Quetico. I went back to my roots more and fished the boundary waters really hard during those two years and showed that it’s still darn good.

And if I would compare it to elsewhere in Minnesota, I’d still rate it superior to a lot of the opportunities to catch fish in Minnesota. Whenever I talk fishing in the boundary waters, I like to emphasize from the get go. That these trips are paddling and foraging. First and foremost, only then do we fish many trips.

Most of my trips are 8 to 10 days. But a lot of those trips, I’ll paddle two days before I ever take a rod out of my case, before I wet a line. So you can see if you only have a five day trip to enjoy your once a year boundary waters trip that doesn’t leave you a lot of time and effort. To hurry into the back country and get out so that two days gets me beyond where most people fish.

As an angler, somebody whose trips are so geared to fishing, I crave the same wilderness values as the people that don’t fish on their canoe trip. The beauty, the solitude, the adventure, that’s all a part of my trips too. That’s why I love fishing here. Fishing is a way for me to transcend what I call the ordinary pure paddle trip. At its heart, these trips are about connecting with nature at a really deep personal level.

Fishing just allows me to do that at a deeper level. I’m a super competitive person, so as a guy getting paid big money to get fish for my people, that’s what drives me to push hard with the paddle and portage into the best places. And then when we get there, fish till you drop kind of an attitude. And like we keep num, we keep score, we keep, you know, track of how many of each species and how big and all that.

a friendly competitive atmosphere, but I’ve found that by doing that, not only can I figure out who’s doing what and help those that need my help but it drives the people just in their competitive nature to, to push themselves and pull everything they can out of that trip. So some people would be turned off by my listing of how big and the scorekeeping aspect of it, but that’s kind of the rationale behind it.

When you have to do this 60 days in a row, like I do. So I’m doing seven, eight to 10 day trips, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, like only two days to reload and repack the food and, you know, gear up mentally for another 10 days, you know you need something to keep you going and that competitive thing. is what has made me successful at what I do.

We don’t win every trip or every day on fishing, but, you know, I win more often than not.

So let me just mention, there’s some unique appeals that I have about canoe country fishing. When I say canoe country, I mean both boundary waters. There’s hundreds of backcountry lakes. Very light pressure, no roads, boats, cabins, float planes can’t even land in there. So you’re getting into very lightly fished water.

A lot of the water that I fish, I’m the only one that fishes all summer. I mean, if, if not, if not, it’s just a handful of anglers. Now some of the border lakes obviously get a lot more angling pressure, but it’s still low compared to a lot of what Minnesota is. You’ve got, you’ve got the light pressure.

The, the, the thing about it is you have to paddle and portage to get to it. So I call it world class angling for cheap. But the rub is that you’ve got to pay with sweat equity to get there to fish. So there’s a ton of water to fish, and not enough time. So what are you going to do to budget your time to target.

What I call the grand slams for species small mouth while I lay trout pike, how are you going to maximize or optimize your window of opportunity while you’re out there? That’s what I’m trying to ram home today. The most common thing, mistake I see people make, I mark up maps for people, anybody that subscribes to Boundary Waters Journal can use our free trip planning service that I do, and I mark on there where to fish, where to camp, how to, you know, how to do your trip.

But it all depends on when you’re going, where you’re going, and you know, how much experience you have, how much time you have, it’s all of, it’s all a constant juggling of a puzzle to fit it together on how you can have the most fishing success. And for some success in fishing on these trips, we’ll be catching a few, maybe a meal.

But for me, a hundred smallmouth a day is a good day. You know, if I only catch 10, that’s not a good day. So it’s all relative to what you know, you want on your goals. I’m so spoiled by canoe country fishing. I don’t fish anywhere else. So here I’m a, a fishing guide, but I never go fishing when I’m invited by friends and family to go fishing, because I don’t want to fish where I drive up to a lake.

Put my boat in and see cabins rim in the lake and boats buzzing around. That’s not at all. That’s why I love this type of fishing. It’s just the wilderness setting not only makes for great fishing. It makes for a great overall experience. As of which fishing is just a part so I break that. Let’s get into the fishing more now.

That’s kind of the backdrop on how I approach things. So I break canoe country fishing down into 3 main parts. When, where and how again, when, where and how that trifecta. You know, to hit it big out there, you’ve got to pay attention to all three of those and it’s a constant challenge for sure, even for me who lives it.

But the advantage that I have is I’m out there every week. So I use what I did the previous late week when I saw the fish patterns developing as the water warms and the bait hatches. You know, the minnow spawn and all of that is a constant moving target. And so, for example, on small mouth this week, when I start my 1st trip Saturday, it’s mostly a lake trout trip, but because of the early spring, I’ll be checking the smallest lakes that warm up 1st for small mouth action.

They won’t be hitting on top, but I can probably catch. Big response, small mouth and current or on that main drop off this trip, whereas last few years, I haven’t been able to do that because of the late developing spring, but that’s just an example of about the wind. So, timing matters. When you plan your trip in January, you gotta, you know, commit to your vacation time and getting your group all on the same page and getting your permit.

So that’s all a commitment, but you can do that based on the historical norm, which is your best bet. For figuring out, you know, like, if you want spawning smallmouth or shallow lake trout or trophy walleye, there are certain windows of opportunity that are going to be easier to do that. And I’ll hit on that as we go through this.

But in terms of more about this, when aspect. I approach the, the, my season with all these trips as. An evolving seasonal change thing so, you know, I’m going to fish all four species on every trip and usually catch them all, but I definitely target trout early then bass and walleye, then come back to trout in the fall.

It’s just easier to get big fish in a predictable place by doing it that way. You know, the people that just troll, you know, have a loaded canoe with all their camp deer and troll a lure randomly down the lake as they’re going to the next camp. That’s not me. I get to camp. I set up camp. I get everything ready.

Then we go out and fish hard and come back. One of the seasonal aspects of that is so in Memorial Day to the mid part of June, I call it run and gun because I’m, I’m, I’m making fewer camps and making a long, aggressive day trip. So the peak of the smallmouth season, I’m running and gunning and moving less.

Because the best time of the day to fish is when the water warms up. So midday is the best time for big bass shallow and spawning time. So that, so for example, I might camp on Wednesday Bay of Crooked Lake and day trip all the way to Robinson, Cecil, and Deer. That’s eight, nine miles before I fish. Fish three or four miles and eight miles back, but I can write off the evening because the best time to fish is the afternoon.

So I don’t have to worry about missing out on anything in the evening because I want to fish that hottest part of the day. So as the season warms up now, latter half of June, I want to camp on the fish. So I would camp on, say, a economy lake to get big trophy walleye because they’re not going to bite till evening.

That’s just an example of what I’m talking about when matters. When matters on the calendar, it matters what you day, do each day and the type of day on which you fish. The point being you want to exploit the conditions that you’re dealt with what you’re locked into on your particular trip. For example, you know, last year, if I tried to catch smallmouth Memorial Day, half of the big fish were comatose and still deep because of how cold the water was.

We had high water in the last few years, 2021 especially was flooded up into the timber and that those conditions, the water doesn’t warm up for quite a while. You can plan for the historical norm, but you often have to, you know, be flexible while you’re out there and pay attention to what’s going on. Don’t get locked into what you thought would work in January if it’s hitting you in the face that. It’s warmer or colder or vice versa. So typically in a 10 day trip, I’ll move three or four times.

Fish hard all around an area for two days and move to new water. So if you have eight to ten days, that’s a good way, kind of a hybrid between base camping and traveling all the everyday layover. I like the downtime of, you know, because we’re fishing hard all day, dark to dark. It’s enjoyable to relax and camp a little bit.

So that’s kind of what I wanted to mention about when, as far as where and how I’ll go through each species on how I do that kind of simultaneously. By far, my favorite species to fish for in Quetico and Boundary Waters is the smallmouth. And of course, ironically, they’re not even native to the Boundary Waters area.

Early outfitters and resorters start putting into the border lakes, La Croix, Crooked Basswood in the 30s, 40s. DNR got in on it a little bit. That would never happen today. Non native species of any kind are frowned upon from, you know, the invasive species threat. Introducing a non native fish wouldn’t happen today.

So,

Chris Knopf: what do you like about smallmouth? Is it the bite?

Stu Osthoff: The, the fact that the, the main thing is they frequent the shallow water zone. So it’s visually more engaging to fish the structure that you can see. Whereas trout and walleye, you’re down on the bottom. Here, I’m prowling the shoreline all the, well, I’m in the back.

I have my clients in the front. And he’s throwing to whatever cover he can reach logs, weeds, inlets. Rocky boulders and stuff. I call them boulder flats, but we’re working the shoreline visible structure and from Memorial Day to mid June. That’s when the big bass are concentrated shallow and I want him throwing like, I call it if the bow is 12 o’clock.

I want him throwing. 10 to noon, so that the canoe doesn’t spook those shallow fish before we’re on them. And also leaves me a little bit of room to fish behind them. So it’s the visual nature of it. Then there’s the hard biting nature of it. They strike with reckless abandon. They’re very aggressive fish.

And once, once we get from the subsurface pattern to hitting on top, that’s the most fun of all. Pike will hit on top of walleye and late trout generally. No. Let me get back to the small mouth thing.

My go to smallmouth lure for Aquatical Boundary Waters. It’s called, Rapala makes this, it’s called a Blue Fox Vibrax Spinner. If you go into any local sporting goods store in the Twin Cities, you’re going to see this in one twos and threes. Don’t buy them. They’re too small. You need at least a four or a five. Six is too big. They’re for bike. Generally, you’ll see them with no dressing on the treble. I pay a fly tire to dress mine up.

They work real well, just plain hook the way you buy them. But they do work better with a tail. So I like the gold or brass the best. I have them tie white too. And then this yellow bladed one is a really good one to notice. My hooks are all barbless. As soon as I buy any lure, I grind the barb off with a Dremel tool.

So I don’t have to mess with them out in the water. In Quetico, you’re allowed to have barbed hooks in your tackle box. But not on the line and in boundary waters, you can still use barbed hooks, but I will say because all my hooks are debarbed immediately, I just use them in the boundary waters and they’re fine.

When a bass jumps and really shakes his head, especially with this topwater lure, we do lose more fish with barbless. Bye. It’s a huge benefit to the fish because they’re super easy to catch and release with a barb. And of course, if you get a barb in your hand, they’re a whole lot less hassle to get out.

I’m, I’m an expert at pulling hooks out with the fishing line method out of bodies. So barbless for that. My point to you is get rid of your barbs, fish them barbless in boundary waters or wherever you fish. You’re not gonna miss it that much. You asked why I love smallmouth and the reason I love them most is that pop water ability of theirs.

And a top water nature. If you can catch them on top, this is called a whopper plopper. It’s made by a company called River to see a river. The number 2 and C. S. C. A. and this is what they call the 90 size 90. The back 3rd of the largest rotates . So, as I pull on it, it, it turns and makes a plume of bubbles.

And I was a diehard popper fan for 40 years and 30 years until I discovered this. And this lure’s only been out like 10 years or so. But it’s heavy. It casts like a bullet. I can throw this 40 yards. Seriously. I mean, they have a bigger one that you can throw even further. But generally I use this one.

And unlike a popper, it’s very easy to teach people how to use because you don’t have to finesse it and pop it. So my, my, the way I fish this lure is I pull it about a foot, kind of lift the rod and simultaneously reel in that line and then pause. Lift and reel, pause, lift and reel, pause, and that’s what gets this churning kind of an action. But the beauty of this thing is it attracts fish that would never see it. They hear it and feel the vibration and they come and slam it. So it takes some skill in timing the hook set on this. You don’t pull it too soon. But if you’re If you’re not hooking up, just wait another beat or second or so before you set the hook and you’ll eventually get it.

The problem with the Vibrax is the pike love them too and I don’t like fishing steel leaders on anything for bass. So I lose a lot of the Vibrax spinners to pike. It’s just the cost of doing business.

But the Vibrax spinner and the Whopper Plopper 90, those are my go to small mufflers. A lot of people will use a tube jig early in the season for smallmouth, just bumping it along the bottom along that main break line, 10, 15 feet of water.

These pre spawn bass will be hanging there. I hate jigging. It’s a snag fest for me. I just don’t have the knack for it. So I avoid jigging whenever possible. But man, a lot of my clients are really good at it. They have a feel for when it’s a fish and a rock and a stick and they just. Hammer the fish with these.

So that’s a good soft plastics on a jigger or swim bait. We call it now are a very good year round small mouth lure, if you don’t mind the snag fest.

The Boundary Waters is more than a stunning collection of pristine water, trees, and ancient rocks. It’s the people, the memories, the life changing experiences that make this wilderness such an important part of our lives. Connect with this special place by subscribing to Friends of the Boundary Waters newsletter or following us on social media.

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Stu Osthoff: One of my trips last year. We set my personal record. I had, there were four canoes, eight people. We caught 1200 small mouth.

up on the Sturgeon and Gene Lake area. 85 of them were over the, what I consider a trophy of 20 inches, 85, that’s the most by far I’ve ever done. All of them were caught on those three baits , most of them the Vibrax spinner.

Chris Knopf: What month was that?

Stu Osthoff: That’s prime time. That would be my second trip, which is the 1st of June right after Memorial Day till the 10th of June.

That’s, you know, if I could do 1 trip a year for small mouth, I’d go the 1st week of June boundary waters or Quetico. The thing about smallmouth is as you get later into June, those big fish go out deeper during the day and all you’ll get trolling or casting the shoreline is little dinky 10 inch, 12 inch fish.

But in the evening, those big fish will come back in so you can have some big bass action in July and August with the whopper plopper. But go out after supper. These people that, people that eat dinner at like seven or eight and then hang out and camp are missing the best fishing of the, of the trip.

Fish till dark, fish till dark except in May. Fish till dark. Fish till dark. Can’t emphasize that enough. It’s routine for me to get back from fishing at dark, prepare dinner for eight people, cook it, feed them, wash all the dishes, button down camp for the night. I’m not in bed till midnight. But that’s the price you gotta pay to be out there to fish when the big fish aren’t around.

I’ll get into that more on walleye here. What else do I want to say? So my favorite small mouth lakes in the boundary waters are the big border lakes so that it’s LaCroix, Crooked, Basswood, Knife, Saganaga. . You’ve gotta have room to fish a lot of shoreline. That’s just the nature of the beast there. Don’t sit.

You’d be on the move. I’m fishing many miles of shoreline per day. You know, I’m the paddler in the back. But I mean, I, all my canoes are doing this. You combine the four of us, that’s A lot of mileage. We need a lot of room. In Quetico, I like Sturgeon, Jean, Antoine Crooked, what else? Huba, Susanette, and Wicksteed.

Those are kind of, I like that western half of Quetico for smallmouth

That southern tier of the boundary waters, like if you go in from Kawishiwi Lake into Malburg or into anything below Insula , Sawbill., I mean, it’s not as known for small mouth as the Gunflint and the Ely area or in Quetico , so you kind of gotta research that a little bit.

Stu Osthoff: If you have any questions on Smallmouth, hit me up on that because I can talk to that all day.

Best way to research it is there’s a book called Fishing the Boundary Wires that lists out all that or do our trip service because I know most of it. You know, we enjoy all aspects of the wilderness experience just like everybody else. But we’re just fishing day, day in day out. .

Every day is a new adventure. New lake, new water. It’s unlimited. You’ll never fish at all. No way. Not even close. 45 years and I’ve fished maybe half of it.

 

Stu Osthoff: . Paddling big water. I love it. I love fishing it. Of course, the wind can be an issue. You gotta roll with that. But big fish, big water, lots of opportunity. I love big water, as long as it’s safe for canoeing. And then of course, pay the piper on the portages. Got to go through the muck and mire, shoulder burn, swat the bugs in the mud and all that.

That’s part of canoe country fishing.

Let’s move on to walleye. That is dinner. That’s the only fish I catch, kill and eat.

Everything else I release

Walleye kind of have a bad rap as not strong fighters, and they’re super finicky at times to catch, but when you get into them, it’s really great, and there’s nothing better than a walleye. than an 18 inch walleye in the fry pan. So typically on a week, I tell my client, we’re going to have one, maybe two at the most, all you can eat fish fries.

And they’re always walleye. And they’re never walleye over 22 inches. We let the breeding stock go, always. That’s really important. Everybody that’s a Friends of the Bounded Waters knows. All about minimum impact camping and leave no trace on your trips. Super important. We are not going to have this area if we don’t do that.

I’m 100 percent in favor of that. And if somebody does something contrary to that, I’m all over them right now. But I think we need to extend that same philosophy to the fishing. I would rather go out and enjoy catching fish and letting them go than catching a lot fewer fish and killing everything I can eat.

I pack fresh, frozen, homemade meals in my cooler pack system, which you can read about in Boundary Waters Journal. I’ll even take a Yeti cooler on a pack frame. For 10 days with a block ice in there so that I can eat fresh food, fresh thawed homemade food. I, I have not eaten a freeze dried dinner in 40 years, and I am out there 60 days a year.

That’s one reason why I get sick of that stuff. But that approach. I don’t need to feel like I gotta feed people fresh fish every night because they have really good food that they look forward to. I feed my people really, really well. It’s a highlight of my trips. Anyway,

Chris Knopf: a couple things for that age class.

So when you’re fishing wildlife, you want to keep the breeding stock. So folks out there, What should they be looking at, like around 18 inches when you get a 22? Well, that’s

Stu Osthoff: the ideal. A lot of meat, but not too big. A 14 inch walleye is plenty good eating. You’re just going to have to have more of them to get to your, your meal size.

But I never kill anything over 22 unless I’m absolutely starving. You know, you don’t, you shouldn’t need to. 22 is the kind of my cutoff. Those 26 inch breeding stock walleyes, those fish are eight, 10 years old. You know, that’s, that’s the future. You don’t want to eat those. They don’t taste as good. Anyway, you want this under 20 inch fish are far better.

So let’s talk about catching them walleye.

In Quetico, there’s no live bait. In Boundary Waters, you’re fine with your jig and minnow or night crawler or reel leeches. That’s how my kids learned to fish. That’s by far the easiest thing for kids or less experienced anglers. It’s a hassle to take live bait on canoe trips. But the next best thing in Quetico for jig fishing is.

What we call power baits or soft plastics. And this is the one the last two years that has been my hot one. This is a Berkeley power bait. I call it a paddle tail. It’s four inch. I like blue. Yellow is good too. This is a quarter ounce jig. You’re not going to fish this all day and pike will chew them up, but you can catch, you know, five walleye, one of these, and then your jig is still good. You just rip this off and put another one of these on. These soft plastics in the paddle tail, they are the thing if you’re a jig fisherman for walleye.

But I, as I already mentioned, I hate jig fishing. I hate the snagging of it. You can troll that, you can cast that. It’s, it works really well. Last year, this lure became my favorite walleye bait. Forever. This jointed shad wrap was my favorite crank bait for walleye.

A number seven jointed shad wrap, but this came along and it’s called the shad dancer, still a rock of the lure. Rapala has had the Shadrap this and the Tail Dancer

for a long time, but this is a 30 foot running, you know, trolling bait. It’s not for casting, but this thing you can cast or troll.

So it’s a, it’s a hybrid between the shad wrap and the tail dancer, the shad dancer. This is the number seven. So this runs a little bit deeper than the seven shed wrap. I, I know the terminology is crazy for if you’re not into this, but it makes a difference. When, when we went to Conway Lake last year, my favorite walleye lake up in Quantico, we caught in three nights of fishing in that spot, three canoes. We caught 25 walleye over 27 inches, many of ’em 29 and 30. And of course I was in my glory because. This out fish all the jig people. So I’m really excited to fish this this year. You won’t find this wherever they sell Roppela. It’s a little harder to track down and it’s a fairly new lure.

Shad Dancer number seven. Get them. Even if you have to order them online, get several this fire tiger color is one of the few that I was able to get last year and it worked great. So start with that. If you’re worried about color, but I wouldn’t worry about color.

Chris Knopf: Yeah. How deep is that going? That’s

Stu Osthoff: going about 12 to 14. And the beauty of that is of those big walleye that we caught, guess how many we caught before 8 p. m? Zero. That thing did not catch a fish until 9 p. m. From 9 to 10, the bewitching hour, boom, boom, boom, big, big, big fish. So, that showed me that the shad rap Which was only going 10 feet, wasn’t quite deep enough.

Now once it got dark and the bugs were killing us and we went back to camp, those big fish were probably where a shad rat can get them. And I have gotten them other years in that spot. But if you’re just trolling blind up a shoreline, You know, you got to try different depths. So start deeper, you know, and they, if they’re shallower, you’ll learn that quicker than deeper.

Notice what I’m talking about here, as far as the nuances between lures and when you’re fishing and where it’s a giant jigsaw puzzle that you’ll never figure out because. If you go back on the same day, it’ll still be different. It just never the same.

I’m going to quickly jump through pike.

I don’t fish pike. Intentionally we catch enough of them. They’re a giant pain in the butt to me. They stink up the canoe. They rip up my hands. They rip up my lures. They steal my lures. But I do admit, when you get a big one on, they’re nothing like it, they’re fun. But it’s those two foot pike that are a total hassle in my life.

But they are out there and you got to put up with it. I don’t target pike. They’re my nemesis.

I want to get into some lake trout real quick before we run out of time. to me, the late trout is the essence of canoe country fishing, the epitome of wilderness fishing.

Mostly because in the rest of Minnesota, there are none. They require super cold, deep. Well, oxygenated lakes with Cisco bait population and Cisco’s need cold oxygenated deep cold water year round. So any lake that’s like 40 feet deep is not going to be deep enough to support a late trout population. There is no greater thrill in canoe country fishing than a three foot lake trout in a canoe on light tackle in shallow water.

It is, they are so powerful the way they power down. It is the best. You know, I haven’t caught all that many three foot lake trout myself, but they’re among my highlights of fishing here in my lifetime. For 40 years. Until five years, or until two or three years ago, this lure called a doctor spoon,

I would troll this out behind the canoe, you know, let out a bunch of line and paddle steadily. So all day I’m paddling, trolling this thing. I might catch five trout a day on a good day, you know, covering a lot of water. And they were usually good trout, but not many. Two or three years ago, Tom and Terry Kloss from Minneapolis started writing about their lake trout fishing in the journal and they’re lake trout aficionados, experts.

And for many years, they caught trout doing the spoon trolling, but then lipless crankbait it’s called. And the ones that they liked. We’re we’re no longer being made. So they decided to make their own in their garage and we have been selling these like hotcakes in the journal. It’s the only place that you can get them.

So they, they buy these blanks and they paint them a certain color and they put. certain hooks with flash on them or dress tails and little spinners. And every one is kind of uniquely different, but most of them are roughly an ounce. And this eliminates the need for trolling. So from now until the day I die, I will fish this and only this for lake trout in the canoe.

You can troll them, but I don’t consider a trolling bait. You vertically jig it. You cast it out, let it go to the bottom, and as you watch how much line goes out, even if you don’t have electronics, you can get a rough feel for how deep it is there. So Saturday, when I’m on Argo Lake, I’m going to start fishing this in 30 feet of water or so.

I’ll let it go to the bottom, and I’ll lift it up and let it go back to the bottom. Lake trout are primarily a bottom feeder. So you’re vertically jigging this. And what I do is if there’s a light breeze or any wind at all, I’ll position that canoe so it’s parallel to the wave and let that wave push me horizontally across the target zone where I’ve caught trout before.

And so now I’m fishing vertically and horizontally, you know, because of the movement of the canoe. So, you know, you can rip it up four feet and let it drop back down. You can just jiggle it a little bit, tantalizingly so on the bottom try different presentations, but basically you want to relate to the bottom like you’re walleye fishing.

The Colossus have caught big walleye doing that with this. I have not yet, but in one day, my group, one afternoon in Agnes Lake in Quetico last July, we caught 50 lake trout on this thing in a matter of hours. That’s unheard of for numbers on lake trout on a day. In canoe country

Chris Knopf: now, how are they circulating?

They’re like, they’re, they’re moving, right? Lake trout are

Stu Osthoff: prowling. They’re hunting bait fish. They’re hunting those schools of Cisco, which of course are nomadic and moving all around. The thing I want to emphasize about lake trout is they’re 30 feet in May. They’re 40 to 50 feet in June and part of July after that, they can be even deeper.

I quit fishing them then. Because it’s very stressful to bring a lake trout up from 60 feet into warm surface water and expect him to, you know, revive and make it. So I don’t fish trout after mid July ish, but Yeah so much fun. So easy. Total game changer for canoe country late trout. I know it sounds like I’m trying to sell you on something.

I’m the only one selling. But these have completely changed my late trout approach.

Burping lake trout as they are brought to the surface,

I kind of had learned something on that. Like, you can, you can massage their, if a lake trout comes up and is, bladder inflates, he can’t dive back down very readily. And if you’re 60 feet or more, that’s going to be an issue. So I’ve tried manually burping them, massaging their belly. You’ll hear an audible burp, but other fisheries biologists have since told me that they can go back down.

Walleye caught super deep do the same thing. I’m never catching walleye over 10, 20 feet. But if you caught a walleye at 40, 50 feet, he would be more likely to not make it than the lake trout. So I guess lake trout are a little hardier on that air sac thing, but, you know, there’s an old wives tale. You can take a hypodermic needle in there and stick them.

That’s illegal and not a good way to go. Forget that approach. Try burping them. And if that doesn’t work, if you catch one or two that can’t go back down, I would say it’s just kill them and eat them and stop fishing them because it’s too late in the season for them.

So catch and release have this force. It’s hooked to your pack right in front of your feet. So you’re always ready to use it. You’ll, you’ll get hooked the last and help the fish a lot. Let them go. The net super important.

Stu Osthoff: So I’m going to net that small mouth and I’m not even going to take them out of the net. I can, I’ve seen thousands of small mouth. I know if it’s over 18 or 19 inches. So I, I pull out a little tape measure, if I think it might be a 20 inch fish, and have this in my life jacket pocket. Most of ’em I’m not gonna measure ’cause they’re, they’re gonna look under 20 to me.

I’m gonna reach in there and that barbless hook, you know, I’ve got two tre one treble with the Vibrax, two with the Whopper plopper. So I’m gonna, this keeps me from getting hooked if flops, if I feel I can get my thumb in there, they don’t have teeth. Small mo. I’ll grab his lower lip and hold him and then just pluck that lure out.

I never touch that fish and I dump him back in the lake. I never touch that smallmouth unless I, he’s 20 inches and I need to measure him. But then if I do measure him, I get him back in the net after the photo or whatever and hold him upright until he feels, shows that he wants to get away and then turn him over.

So if we have, do we have any questions that have come in? I’ll just keep rambling.

Somebody asked if the plastics are biodegradable. You can get some that are and some that aren’t. And the biodegradable don’t tend to have the best as good of an action, but They have a lot of upside to them. So that’s a good great thing.

I’ll fish boy. I’ll fish a whole trip and rarely lose one of them. So I don’t think I have heard that that kind of plastic litter and then fish getting it in their stomach and unable to digest it. But I have not run into losing them or swallowing them. Very, very rare. So it hasn’t been a major concern to me, but if I ever saw that it was.

You can get products that are more so and you could look for them. I don’t, I’m not up on it, but I’d certainly encourage it. Gulp products are a little more biodegradable. But they tend to come off and get lost more and swallowed more, so I’m not sure that’s a net gain. So we’ll see. line. Medium, fast. Medium fast and then a heavier St. Croix late trout rod.

On some trips, I might have a, the rack on one and a whopper popper on the other rigged and ready to go behind my seat I can just grab from subsurface to surface. Oh, the line is a braided. I like spider wire, invisib eight pound. InvisiBraid. Cast further, no coiling, no memory, super sensitive, and it floats, so, you know, with topwater you want a line that floats.

It’s not the best for walleye. For walleye, I prefer mono or fluorocarbon.

A trip near Quetico. What time of day should we be focusing on the various species?

Well, for, for bass, it’s definitely going to be the afternoon that the warmer, the better fish, smaller lakes, smaller warmed up lakes. I’ve always liked late morning for bigger late trout has been my best, but the class boys, they catch them all all day long. I would say evening is the least desirable for fishing in May as a rule, you know, rules are made to be broken.

I’m talking generalities on all of this. You know, there will be people that say he doesn’t know nothing because I did the exact opposite and I’ve done the exact opposite. I’m talking trends here. I’m talking playing the odds. I’m talking. . If you were a fish out there in the boundary waters all of November, December, January, February, March, where would you be when the water, when the ice goes?

You’d be seeking out that warm water. Bass for sure do that.

Every fall I write a 30 page article summarizing all the trips that I’ve done all summer. 30 pages. What other magazine do you see a 30 page article? So I start with Lake Trout. We move To smallmouth.

Trophy smallmouth, we get trophy largemouth, so actually it’s five species. Big, big trophy walleye there. Pike, the depth of information you’re getting from a guide who lives this. You will not find better fishing canoe country Intel than Boundary Waters Journal. I make it my job to have it be the best. And we’ve been doing that for 40 years. So you can. Get a lot of great back issue information on fishing, but Bounty Water Journal is for more than the fisherman, but the fisherman will find what he needs in there. You can always email me at Stu at Bounty Waters Journal. I, I, I routinely answer. questions. If I know the answer, no point taking it to the grave. I’ll help you. I mean, that’s that’s my job and I love doing it. I love the boundary waters.

It’s a unique fishing experience, world class for cheap. Good luck to all of you and be safe out there.

Chris Knopf: Well, Stu, thank you so much. You’re a world class angler, world class guy. Thanks for your time this afternoon. You’re very welcome.

Thank you everyone for being friends of the Boundary Waters yourself.

 

Dave Meier: And thank you everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend and leave us a rating wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be covering a wide range of recreational topics this season, and we’ll meet some great personalities from the B W C A along the way.

So be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.

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Dave Meier: Big Red Canoe is a presentation of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Original Music by Surge and the swell. I’m Dave Meier and we’ll see you next time on Big Red Canoe.

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