Week 2 of the 2018 season here at Manotak Lodge is coming to an end. Season feels like it is flying by fast. The weather this week was as unpredictable as you could expect for Northwest Ontario fishing. The week started out the way week 1 ended, hot, hot, hot. Tuesday night a big storm came in and shook things up. Wednesday the temperature dropped all day long and continued to drop into Thursday. Thursday was a typical spring day, cold rainy and windy. Friday was much of the same only more wind and less rain.
Walleye fishing was very good this week. We had 2 fish over 30 inches caught this week. Chris Bond caught a 32 incher and his son, Andrew caught a 30 incher. We saw 24-28 inchers in big numbers this week again. Fish are staying fairly shallow on the shorelines and are still feeding heavy on minnows moving very slow. Some nice walleyes were also caught using a rip-jigging technique.
Northern were biting good as always in the usual spring spots (East Bay, Jackfish, Ord Bay, etc.) The big ones are starting to bite more on artificial now vs the smelly, nasty bloater and frozen ciscos.
Bass are biting very good at this time. We saw some pictures of a few in the 18- 20 inch range! Shad Raps and jigs are the key for them still, but we are expecting the top water bite to start in the next week or so.
CRAPPIES! We had a few boats make the long boat ride to Peephole Lake on the southeast corner of Cedar Lake this week and really got into the big slabs! They were catching them slow-rolling a curly tail or tossing a small jig with a minnow under a bobber. The crappies were in the pencil reeds in 2ft of water.
Please send us pictures of your trip this year so we can make you famous on our Facebook page! Well, you probably won’t get famous, but you will get quite a few likes from a lot of fishermen. Safe travels to guests coming soon and happy fishing!
-Manotak Lodge
