Date: 7/21/2009
Time: 11:30am-2:00pm
Body of water: Poplar Lake
Location: Gunflint Trail
Weather Conditions: overcast with light rain on and off
When Ken was out with the kids the night before, he stumbled upon a school of fish that numbered in the dozens. He said fish were appearing everywhere on the fishfinder. Ken, George, George’s wife, and I decided to go out to see if we could find that school.
Ken said he saw the school a few hundred feet off the South shore of Young’s Island. We puttered over there and went back and forth in the area, but the most fish we found were 6 of them down at about 40 ft. We finally gave up after more than half an hour and decided to fish the Lindner stretch again.
We started at the East end of the shore where there are two shallow coves. I got two hits on my white pearl super fluke in the second cove. George was using his beetle spinner with no luck. He asked about the flukes and I gave him a bubble gum fluke to try. Because of my hits, we took a second pass on the second cove. George got a hit about 10 ft from the boat a few feet down. He thought he missed it, but it hit again and this time he hooked it. It was a 20″ Northern.
As we continued down the shore, George’s wife saw a group of fish on the fishfinder 15-20 ft down. Ken was floating some kind of Rapala on the surface while I continued my fluke casting. George had switched to another lure to get down deeper. All of a sudden, I hear a splash and hear everyone gasp. A Northern had jumped out of the water a few inches to try to hit Ken’s floating Rapala, but it missed.
So now we were sure the fish we were seeing on the fishfinder were Northern. Ken continued with his Rapala, George switched to a small gold daredevil, and I went to a large yellow daredevil with red spots. After a cast, I would count to 10 before my retrieve to get the lure deeper. We got no hits after the exciting splash.
I tried all the spoons in my arsenal: yellow daredevil with red spots, classic orange daredevil, silver spoon with green on half, and silver spoon with blue on half. Nothing got a hit.
We kept seeing groups of 6-8 fish in various spots along the shore. We plan to go back to try with different spoons on a brighter day. Hopefully that will spark their interest whether they are Northern or Lake Trout.
