“Let The Good Times Roll”, Big Pike

Right now at Scott Lake we have some good mojo going. The momentum of our record-setting prior week rolled right into Week 9. As if we didn’t know it already, it was confirmed: hot weather means hot fishing. The first three days of the group featured the same wonderful sunshine and warm temperatures of Week 8, with the same results—lots of big fish. Of the 24 pike over 44-inches landed by this group, 21 were taken over those first three days when the temps were still in the high 70s and low 80s. Pike just love hanging around in shallow warm water, some literally sunbathing with their backs almost exposed.

The continuation of the heat wave helped all of our fishing. It pushed the big pike up of course but it also pushed the big lake trout down which makes them much easier to target. There are only so many deep holes (100-200’) in our lakes and that’s where they end up, escaping the warmer temperatures near the top. Trout are a cold-water fish, feeling best in water temperature around 50 degrees. With their sophisticated electronics our guides can find the fish and even watch them hit. Like a video game except this is real. Big trout know how to give anglers a workout. Jim Hambright found that out when he successfully battled a monstrous 44.5” laker at Wignes Lake, an adjacent and connected lake, just a 45-minute boat ride from our dock. He barely made it to the end of the fight and then needed a massage which fortunately was readily available at the lodge. His is the biggest trout of the season. Very nice 39-incher were taken by Grant Bowditch and Brad Sailbury. We had an even dozen trophy trout this week, a start to the serious trout season here which is just getting started. The heat also put our Arctic grayling in a fighting mood. The warm water triggers insect hatches that get these beautiful fish moving. We had two dozen grayling trophies from area rivers taken. Jarrett Peters led the pack with a big one, almost 20-inches, about as big as they get around here.

The big story though was again the pike fishing. They are still shallow and still in a feisty mood. Of our 149 trophy fish, 112 were the long and mean water wolves that are always looking for their next meal. The big ones have around 700 individual teeth. Most of those are in the top half of their cavernous mouths and all of those slant inward. It’s no place for your fingers. And no place for prey: it’s a one-way street. Sixteen of our anglers landed a pike of 44-inches or more. That’s a new record for the lodge. Of that group six guests caught a 45-incher (Chuck Dannewitz, Brian Wolf, Brad Sailsbury, Mike Minado, Gratz Peters and Bog Nettune who got a pair. Three lucky anglers bested 46-inchers (Mike Rogers, Grant Moering and Garek Peters who also got a pair). If your last name was Peters you had a particularly good trip. Between Garek, Gary, Gratz and Jarrett Peters 36 trophy pike slid into their guide’s nets, about a third of our trophy pike. But the trophy fish were well spread around. In a great display of fishing democracy every guest at Scott had their names announced at least twice during our nightly trophy announcements.

It was simply a great week. Trophy Triple hats were taken home by Mason Bowditch, Jarrett Peters, Grant Bowditch and Jim Hambright. Grant earned the 100+Club jacket clocking in at exactly 100 inches, but on the strength of his massive lake trout Jim Hambright got his 100+Club jacket on order and now leads the season with 105.5 total inches.

It was also another week of exciting wildlife sightings. Muskox and Moose pins (yes, we give out pins for wildlife sightings as well as for landing big fish) were flying around the tables at dinner. A giant bull moose was spotted at Wignes and a old friend musk ox was seen at Smalltree with another at Burslem lake. Muskox sightings are getting more common every season. For some of our guests these experiences rival or exceed the thrill of landing big fish. It’s all part of the Scott Lake Lodge package, along with great food and world class customer service. There is nothing quite like summer on the 60th parallel. It’s the best, especially when the good times roll like they did this week.

THE HEAT IS ON! FLYOUT LAKES ARE HOT

Coming off a tough five days of cold, cloudy and rainy weather with matching challenging fishing, there wasn’t a lot of optimism within the guide crew about Week 8. Getting big fish was a grind, but here in the far north you predict that things will be unpredictable. If you don’t like the weather, wait a day or in this case five days. Right on cue the fishing gods cranked up the thermostat and brought in a south wind loaded with the one thing we needed—heat, and lots of it. The results were immediate and dramatic. From an average of 11 trophies on the last three days of week 7, the trophy count soared to an average of 48 on the first three days of Week 8. That’s a bump! Our eighth group of the season enjoyed five full days of the kind of heat rarely experienced this far north with temps in the high 80s, even touching the low 90s

What did the fish think about this radical weather change? Judging by the results, they loved it, especially on some of the far northern flyout lakes where during the previous week guides couldn’t find that magic number of 60-degree water temperature in the shallow bays. When the bays in those lake get north of 60 degrees, the big pike sailed in from all compass points.  It turned into a slugfest, angler against pike. Some battles were won some were lost, but 165 times in just five days a pike over 40″ ended up in a guide’s net. With lake trout and Arctic Grayling trophies, we topped the 200-trophy fish mark for the first time ever, ending up with 206. It was an exciting, high-energy week. The nightly evening slide show of the day’s fish had over the top enthusiasm. The fishing was fantastic throughout our nine-million-acre fishing empire. Our Turbo Otter and Beaver floatplanes were humming all week to reach every corner of it.

And the big fish just kept coming. Our guests landed an astonishing 31 pike over 44″. There were six at 46; two at 47 and one a full four-footer. Everyone played the trophy game but none better than Peter Myhre who had another sizzling week (there are no rules here limiting guests to just one trip a season) with 41 trophy pike. Dave Wallace also had an epic trip with 18 trophy pike. His were not the run of the mill 40-inchers; he landed five at 45″ and brought in the top pike of the week, a brute of a fish that measured 48 inches, sporting a huge girth.  Pike of 47-inches were brought in by Rob Parminter and Mike Johnson. And a slew of 46ers were landed. Rhys Reese, Peter Myhre, Angie Erickson, Laci Martoglio and Eric Brown hit that number, but no 46-incher was more memorable than Cole Booth’s. How does an 11-year-old get what for most serious pike anglers would be their fish-of-a-lifetime? That’s simple: they come to Scott Lake. There is probably a 50-incher in that young man’s future. Often the biggest pike of the week at any Canadian fishing lodge (and a fish that would be headline news in the fishing towns of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota or Michigan), 45-inchers were taken by Rob Parminter, Peter Myhre and Dave Wallace who got five of them. Pike of 44-inches were as common this week as loons on the lake. Peter Myhre alone landed five; Jaden Brown (only 15 years old) brought in three; Rob Parminter and Mike Harrell each got a pair and Trevor Myers, Laci Martoglio, Marian Bensema contributed one each to the pile of fat 44ers. With the focus on pike few spent a lot of time looking for big trout, but Dave Bensema found a beautiful 39-incher at the end of his line. Angie Erickson and Laci Martoglio spent most of one fly out day catching a bunch of big grayling on dry flies and each got 18-inchers. And some Trophy Triple hats left the lodge this week, five in fact. Loyd Phillips, Todd Phillips, Rob Parminter, Caden Burnside and Floyd Burnside all proudly wore their hats. Rob, Todd and Floyd will also be receiving the customized 100+Club jacket this fall.

Simply put our eighth week was one of abundance: lots of huge fish, lots of sunshine, lots of heat and lots of laughing. Every evening the expansive deck outside of Laker Lodge was crowded with guests soaking in the cool breezes. Some were playing the “new” traditional game of summer—cornhole (and why can’t someone rename that game?). Some were quietly sipping a summer drink. But most were recalling and retelling the fish stories of the day, from flyout lake to flyout lake. It was a classic week at Scott, kind of week all our guests hope to have when they travel to the 60th parallel. To paraphrase that infamous line from “Animal Farm”, the novella by George Orwell, all weeks at Scott are equal, but some weeks are more equal than others. This was one of the latter. Let’s hope for more inequality down the line.

“IT HAPPENS” ONLY 89 TROPHY FISH

Fishing is a lot like playing the lottery: you buy your tickets, and you take your chances. For several consecutive weeks we had a ton of winning tickets. Weeks 4 through 6 were particularly gangbuster groups, averaging 179 trophy fish per week with an average of 18 pike that hit or exceeded 44 inches. That was a lot of winning. Then the Week 7 group arrived bringing, of course, high expectations. Most of our guests follow our season online, checking the Tundra Times daily and our weekly Blog posts as well. But this time when the winning tickets were posted only a few of our Week 7 guests had a trophy payout. The simple truth can be framed in raw numbers: 89 total trophies were landed with just five of those pike at or above that 44” mark. And if your last name wasn’t Myhre there was only one really big pike. Peter Myhre and his son James claimed four of those five giant pike including a 45, 46 and 47. So they had a memorable big fish trip, as did Todd Phillips who won the tussle with a Scott Lake 43.5” lake trout, a massive fish that will be a lifetime memory for Todd. There were other bright spots: Mike Manship had a wonderful four-trophy day on pike; Mike Sackash caught three trophy pike and a trophy lake trout in a single day; Rob Williams pulled an 18” grayling out of the rapids on a fly out; Arin St. Cyr and Patrick Finan found heavy 38” lake trout at the bottom of their guide’s net. Those were the fishing highlights, but it’s a short list compared to the previous weeks.

As usual, the culprit for low trophy weeks is easy to identify—the weather. Great pike fishing and sunshine go together like ham and eggs. But the weather for this group was more like an egg on the face. It was terrible. The total sunshine over five days was measured in minutes not hours and whatever we got was on the last afternoon when most of our guests were enjoying their wrap-up late shore lunch. The low point was the cold, nasty fourth day of the trip when only eight trophy fish were brought to the boat with the biggest pike a 41.5-incher. The week had started great with a 38 trophy-day on the first day when conditions were cloudy but still warm. If you look at the photos in the Tundra Times for Week 7 you can see the anglers without coats on Day 1 and for the rest of the week you see an abundance of coats, hoodies and stocking caps (toques here in Canada). Ironically if we look at the long history of trophy totals at Scott Lake Lodge, going back 27 years, standing tall as the #1 top trophy week is Week #7 (or back in our early days of a 7-day trip the week closest to the second week of July). Fishing, like life, often just isn’t fair.

But this was mainly a group of Scott veterans, many with a long Week 7 history. They remembered the blue skies, sunshine and aggressive, active pike and grayling ready to eat anything that floated over their heads. So it will be again. Bad luck just happens.

What also happens every week at Scott Lake is extraordinary customer service with options for a lot of non-fishing activities. With the cool weather the sauna was fired up and the hot tub was busy. So was the workout facility. Some of our guests even did a dip in the lake, cool but energizing. The dinners were lively with conversations and many fish tales were told, some even true. Actually, there were plenty of fish landed over the week. In cool weather the non-trophy, smaller pike fish are still quite cooperative. The numbers were great for most anglers and there were plenty of pike for shore lunches. Bent rods were not the issue; it was the size of the bends compared to past years. The recent fires on Scott Lake provided a good foraging ground for morel mushrooms, which the kitchen cooked up as steak toppers for the last supper. As has been the case all season, wildlife sightings were common with moose, bear and muskox spotted. For first-timers at Scott, it was still amazing fishing. Compared to fishing in guest’s home areas even this low trophy count still provided more big fish action than they could have imagined. Everything is relative, including fishing success. A measure of our guest’s confidence in this fishery? Most of the crew re-booked right at the lodge and will give Week 7 another chance in 2025. Let’s hope the lottery numbers tumble around and bring back a regular Week 7 with a higher trophy fish count. Odds are: it will.