Lake trout are deep, but hungry, in Canada
ON LOWER MANITOU LAKE, Ontario — The signs were obvious. We just didn't want to believe them.
First, the water temperature was nearly 60 degrees. Too warm.
Second, pine pollen already dusted the water. That doesn't usually happen until June.
And then Rick Morgan looked at his depth finder.
"We're marking fish at 44 feet," he said.
Lake trout usually are much closer to the surface in mid-May, when Morgan and his son, Matt, both of Duluth, Minn., come here to fish Lower Manitou Lake.
They were on Lower Manitou again recently, but it was no longer early spring on this big lake about 70 miles north of International Falls. It was early summer.
The Morgans make this trip every spring. They drive five hours north of Duluth. They boat 30 miles to Lower Manitou. And they fish lake trout on light tackle while the fish are in shallow water.
We tried fishing that way for a couple of hours and caught just one lake trout. But the Morgans had come prepared for all possibilities.
They rigged up two downriggers and put out the big rods with their 15-pound-test PowerPro line and 10-pound-test fluorocarbon leaders.
In 20 minutes, we had caught four trout and missed two more. Things were hopping.
"Life is just better when there's chaos and a lot of fish," said Matt, 24.
Over the rest of that first day, we figured out where the lake trout were. They were 40 to 50 feet down in about 70 feet of water. We also figured out what they wanted. A hammered copper spoon.
"I've been using it for years," Matt said. "It's been unstoppable here and on Lake Superior both."
That trend continued. In three days — May 21-23 — we caught 67 lake trout. The largest was about 7 pounds, and many were in the 3- to 4-pound range.
The fishing is better when the fish are up shallow, Rick said.
"You'll have 40- to 50-fish days," he said.
