Even more than clothes almost everyone brings far more tackle than they need. Remember that the Lodge has for your complimentary use high quality St. Croix rods and reels - spinning, bait casting, fly and deep water trolling. We have a well-stocked tackle store with all the effective lures and flies for sale. We do not provide lures or flies or any terminal tackle. Keep in mind as you sort through your personal gear that Scott Lake pike and trout are plentiful, hard fighting and fearless. They are not particularly selective feeders. Most anglers end up using maybe a dozen lures or flies during their trip. As with clothes, keep it simple.
Pike
Northern pike are found throughout Canada and the northern parts of the United States. With light spots over a dark background and a brilliant green to olive-green dorsal area, the northern pike is a striking fish (pun intended). A voracious predator, pike are well known to attack almost anything alive, including small muskrats, ducklings, loon chicks, mice and nearly any smaller fish in the lake. On Scott and its flyouts typical pike prey would be leeches, burbot, ciscos, whitefish, lake trout and yes, smaller pike. Our pike spawn as soon as the shallow marshy areas are ice free. This is typically a time when the main lake is still ice covered so we have never observed the spawning process, about 3 or 4 days in duration, at Scott. The fertilized eggs attach to vegetation and hatch into fry in a week to two weeks. The fry will live off their egg sacks until they start swimming and feeding on zooplankton and insect larvae. Females mature at about six years of age (around 20" in length) and produce about 9,000 eggs per pound.
Obviously survival rate is low, but at least on Scott it is high enough to keep our lake stocked with tremendous numbers of pike. Since there have been no disruptions of the natural systems on Scott, we have a fishery with its maximum carrying capacity of game fish. Nothing much has changed here since the glaciers left several thousand years ago. There has been no management and minimal harvest of our pike: it is a rare, naturally functioning ecosystem. Due to the cold waters and relatively low productivity (a measure of the "living things" in the water,) growth rates are very slow. But Scott pike are long lived and still get to monster proportions. In warmer, southern waters the maximum life span might hit 10 to 12 years. At Scott and in similar waters that age span will approach 30 years for pike. In 2001 a group of fishery biologists from the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver conducted field studies as part of Lodge funded research and determined the age of some Scott pike. We did not harvest trophy pike but did keep some small to mid-sized pike to get aging data. Their research did show a very slow growth rate. Five year old pike ranged from 18-22 inches in length, but an 11 year old pike at Scott is only 28-30". One 13 year old was only 29". The big fish (40-50") are very old. That's the reason why catch and release for trophy fish is so critical in preserving a quality fishery.
Lake Trout
The lake trout really isn't a trout at all. Technically it's a char, like the arctic char, Dolly Vardon or brook trout. But what's in a name. The laker is a remarkable game fish - probably the hardest fighting of all freshwater fish. The laker's deeply forked tail provides it with the tool for tremendous speed. It makes a brown trout or black bass seem like a slug. With its great speed lake trout can catch just about whatever they want. Their primary forage is the lake cisco and whitefish. Many trophy lakers have been caught on Scott (and especially on Dunvagen) with the tails of whitefish still sticking out of their mouths. Don't confuse lake trout with the more delicate rainbow or cutthroat trout. These are meat eaters. Small lakers (under 20") do feed primarily on zooplankton, invertebrates and insects as well as small bait fish, but the big ones go after substantial prey. At Scott we have yet to try a saltwater lure too big for big trout. And at about 40" in length, lakers become cannibals and feed on smaller lake trout.
When casting or trolling for lakers a fast moving lure is usually the best bet. You cannot reel fast enough to get your lure away from a lake trout that wants your lure. Lake trout in the far north develop beautiful markings when they approach the September spawning period. The fin edges of males turn a bright white and both males and females change color dramatically. The basic silver-sided trout of summer add bright red/orange fish and usually get a darker brown/gold appearance with bright spots. They are a show fish in fall.
The trout at Scott and other high latitude lakes do not spawn every year. Only about a third of the females spawn every year with a typical female spawning only every two to four years. That's why in the shallow spawning reefs large numbers of smaller males will be swarming the rocks looking for fewer number of females. On Scott most of the spawning (this has been observed) occurs in the second week of September on rocky reefs with a depth of only one to three feet. It's a wild time to fish for lakers. Actually, anytime is a great time to catch these magnificent northern fish.
Grayling
For many Scott guests a trip to the north is not complete without a flyout to catch some artic grayling - a true icon of the far north. Grayling are delicate, beautiful fish well suited to ultra-light spinning tackle or light (3 to 4 weight) fly rods. The flyouts from Scott are all rivers or short connections between lakes. In these shallow areas there are few if any lake trout or pike, so grayling can survive. There are no grayling in any of the lakes fished through Scott Lake Lodge.
Grayling are spring spawning fish that feed almost entirely on insects. Most of the time grayling are feeding underneath the waters on the larval stage of a bug's life. Black flies, mosquitoes, caddis flies and stone flies, either on the surface or below, provide most of the protein for grayling but the larger ones will eat small baitfish.
Grayling are great dry-fly fish, especially in warm weather. You do not have to see an insect hatch to fish grayling with dries. Try dry flies first, even with spinning tackle (a small bobber gives enough weight to throw the flies). There is something very special about watching these miniature sailfish raise to a drifting fly. In cold fronts weighted flies may be needed but a grayling caught on light tackle is a wonderful fish caught either above or below the surface.