At fishing lodges around the world, you often hear: “Should have been here last week”. Well, the guests at Scott Lake Lodge who arrived at Scott on July 4th were celebrating all week and they were saying: “Good thing we were here this week.” It was a week of fishing fireworks.

Finally, we started getting some consistently sunny days with some real heat that kicked the big pike right in the fins. It was a week of lots of fish and lots of big fish—141 trophy sized fish to be exact. Everyone was getting in on the action, but Mike and Chris Newbury had more action than they could handle. They landed 13 trophy pike in a single day and their guide stopped measuring fish when they hit the baker’s dozen. They had never experienced anything like it. At the end of the day they were exhausted. That’s a measure of a great fishing day. Even up here we’re not used to seeing so many big fish. In these five days of July there were monster pike on the screen every night: 45s landed by Tom and John Faulkenberry, Malcolm Myers, Kevin Denney and Bob Nettune; 46s landed by Mike Newbury, Jim Hambright and, yes again, Bob Nettune; a beautiful 47 landed by Ed Reisdorf and a massive 48.5” northern pike landed by Brad Sailsbury. Brad’s big pike gave him a good shot at earning the 100+Club jacket and he came through with big lake trout and grayling getting the honor with a total of 104.5 total trophy inches. Trevor Myers will have numbers totally 106 inches embroidered on his jacket. And Gary Peters will have a jacket with exactly 100 as his total.

It wasn’t just a big pike story this week. Now that the summer heat has pushed the lakers down into the deep holes on Scott Lake and our fly out lakes they can be successfully targeted, thanks to the electronics that can pinpoint the fish (but not make them eat). C. B. Young’s guide saw some nice “arcs” down deep and C.B. hooked up with some gorgeous lake trout, a 40, a 41 and a 43 incher. Trevor Myers hit the jackpot when he landed four monsters, a 38, a 39, a 40 and a 43” fat trout. Those are all fish of a lifetime. This season those fish of a lifetime just keep coming, especially the pike. We are now at 18 pike of 47” or better this season, still tracking to beat last year’s record number of these fish recently described by a Facebook fan as “hogs with gills”. Let’s hope our guides can keep calling in the hogs.

It was more than the big fish that make this week at Scott a real Fourth of July celebration of fishing. It was the pleasant weather, the many moose and bear sightings, the loons calling at night, the stories of wonderful shore lunches and especially the animated conversations around the dinner table. It’s not the big fish that make Scott Lake Lodge special: it’s the special people who come here. If a week of fishing and fun like this is something you can handle, why not get in touch with guide and sales manager Jon Wimpney (j5@scottlakelodge.com)…don’t get caught saying “I wish I had booked last year”