October Walleyes with Lund Team Pro Patrick Campeau
October 8 2004, my alarm clock goes off at 5:00 am, time to get up and get going. Today I'm going to discover how to fish early fall walleye on Montreal's Lac Saint Louis. I will be accompanied by my friend and fishing partner Michel Richard, another good friend who never fished, Chris Koppe, and last but not least, Lund Pro Patrick Campeau who hopefully will have a few tricks up his sleeve. I've never fished this lake and I need lots of insight.
So I wrap up my home made super sandwiches (hungarian salami, blue cheese, black olives, the works) and the minute I open the door to leave the house, Michel pulls up in his volvo. We're not using my boat for this one, instead we'll use Patrick's Lund Pro V IPS. We get everything into Michel's car and head out to Lachine where we will meet up with Patrick and Chis at the local Dunkin Donuts.
We order breakfast, chat and start planning the day. Patrick seems to know exactly what to do, he says the walleye have just moved in to their fall structure - this is going to be a good day. We finish up breakfast and head out to the Lachine pier.
On the water by 7:15 am. We're fishing about 100-200 feet from the pier. The first thing I noticed is that the water on Lac Saint Louis is very murky.
The MINUTE we stop the boat, Patrick starts reeling em in. He is jigging with a 1/2 oz unpainted lead jig and a 3 inch chartreuse soft bait. He must have caught 4 of them before the rest of us started catching anything. It's nice to see a pro at work.
After 3 hours we have 18 walleye caught, mostly small ones with a few keepers in the livewell. We decided to change spots and we started eating our sandwiches on the way to the other spot. Chris went out late the night before, so he is hungover as hell, and he used the travel time to pass out in the back of the boat. He has not landed one fish yet and he is sort of hinting that he would like to go back to shore. Of course we ignored him :-)
Once we reached our second spot, Chris came back to life. He finally caught his first fish EVER, a decent size walleye. He caught it with a Balanced Jigging Rapala (a small weighted minnow imitation with 3 hooks, and no other bait). Then he caught a second, a third, etc. - he was on fire! Funny but when I suggested we should take him home he didn't want to leave anymore...
Before the day started, we set our goal at 50 walleyes for the day, which was going to end at 3:00 pm so we could avoid the afternoon traffic (this was on a friday). At 2:30 we had 37 walleyes, and we decided it was time to head back to our morning spot near the pier so we can try to catch a few more before heading in.
We wanted to try to reach our goal, so everyone starts concentrating on their rods, but things are not going so great. Pat and Mike get caught at the bottom at the same time, I catch a tiny smallmouth, Pat catches a perch, we have 20 minutes to go and we're stuck at 37. We go back upstream and start our pass once more, but this time, it's one double header after another, the walleye are starting to bite, we're up to 45 in no time at all, we have 10 more minutes to go, and bang bang bang - 50, 51, 52 - and that's how it ended, 52 walleyes on a gorgeous early fall day on Montreal's Lac Saint Louis. They were mostly very small, but we did manage 15 walleyes over 15 inches, including two decent specimens of about 20-21 inches or so. I love walleye, so does Michel, so while we do practice catch and release, that day we were interested in getting some fish for dinner.
No live bait was used that day, only soft plactics on 1/2 oz jigs; and spro ice fishing jigs with no soft plastic bait. I always jig for walleye with live bait, my favorite is leeches, but I will use minnows if I can find them, or worms if nothing else is available. We used short stiff rods, which are my personal favorite for walleye jigging, I like the way I can feel the most subtle bite and react immediately. We used 6 pound fireline, which is also my favorite for jigging, since they have practically no stretch, my reaction to walleye's delicate bite is more immediate and less forgiving for the fish.
Today our guide and fishing pro Patrick Campeau proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that soft plastic baits can do the trick when jigging for fall walleye, they are clean, they are cheap, they require no maintenance, and they are quite efficient. Also, proper boat control with a bow mounted electric motor made a huge difference in keeping our lines vertical in Lac Saint Louis's current. Without it we would have ended up like the rest of the guys who were fishing our spots on that day, i.e. they caught one or two fish the entire day, and they started before we did.
I'm not sure I want to store my boat for the winter now, it seems so early, and I want to go back there on my boat to see if I can pull it off without a pro on board!
(I posted a french version of this story on quebecpeche.com in october 2004. )
So I wrap up my home made super sandwiches (hungarian salami, blue cheese, black olives, the works) and the minute I open the door to leave the house, Michel pulls up in his volvo. We're not using my boat for this one, instead we'll use Patrick's Lund Pro V IPS. We get everything into Michel's car and head out to Lachine where we will meet up with Patrick and Chis at the local Dunkin Donuts.
We order breakfast, chat and start planning the day. Patrick seems to know exactly what to do, he says the walleye have just moved in to their fall structure - this is going to be a good day. We finish up breakfast and head out to the Lachine pier.
Lachine Pier in the early morning
Patrick Campeau's portrait is painted onto his Lund IPS
On the water by 7:15 am. We're fishing about 100-200 feet from the pier. The first thing I noticed is that the water on Lac Saint Louis is very murky.
The MINUTE we stop the boat, Patrick starts reeling em in. He is jigging with a 1/2 oz unpainted lead jig and a 3 inch chartreuse soft bait. He must have caught 4 of them before the rest of us started catching anything. It's nice to see a pro at work.
A scene that was repeated many times: Patrick releasing a walleye
After 3 hours we have 18 walleye caught, mostly small ones with a few keepers in the livewell. We decided to change spots and we started eating our sandwiches on the way to the other spot. Chris went out late the night before, so he is hungover as hell, and he used the travel time to pass out in the back of the boat. He has not landed one fish yet and he is sort of hinting that he would like to go back to shore. Of course we ignored him :-)
Once we reached our second spot, Chris came back to life. He finally caught his first fish EVER, a decent size walleye. He caught it with a Balanced Jigging Rapala (a small weighted minnow imitation with 3 hooks, and no other bait). Then he caught a second, a third, etc. - he was on fire! Funny but when I suggested we should take him home he didn't want to leave anymore...
Chris, his hat, and his first fish ever! The pro approves!
Before the day started, we set our goal at 50 walleyes for the day, which was going to end at 3:00 pm so we could avoid the afternoon traffic (this was on a friday). At 2:30 we had 37 walleyes, and we decided it was time to head back to our morning spot near the pier so we can try to catch a few more before heading in.
We wanted to try to reach our goal, so everyone starts concentrating on their rods, but things are not going so great. Pat and Mike get caught at the bottom at the same time, I catch a tiny smallmouth, Pat catches a perch, we have 20 minutes to go and we're stuck at 37. We go back upstream and start our pass once more, but this time, it's one double header after another, the walleye are starting to bite, we're up to 45 in no time at all, we have 10 more minutes to go, and bang bang bang - 50, 51, 52 - and that's how it ended, 52 walleyes on a gorgeous early fall day on Montreal's Lac Saint Louis. They were mostly very small, but we did manage 15 walleyes over 15 inches, including two decent specimens of about 20-21 inches or so. I love walleye, so does Michel, so while we do practice catch and release, that day we were interested in getting some fish for dinner.
No live bait was used that day, only soft plactics on 1/2 oz jigs; and spro ice fishing jigs with no soft plastic bait. I always jig for walleye with live bait, my favorite is leeches, but I will use minnows if I can find them, or worms if nothing else is available. We used short stiff rods, which are my personal favorite for walleye jigging, I like the way I can feel the most subtle bite and react immediately. We used 6 pound fireline, which is also my favorite for jigging, since they have practically no stretch, my reaction to walleye's delicate bite is more immediate and less forgiving for the fish.
Today our guide and fishing pro Patrick Campeau proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that soft plastic baits can do the trick when jigging for fall walleye, they are clean, they are cheap, they require no maintenance, and they are quite efficient. Also, proper boat control with a bow mounted electric motor made a huge difference in keeping our lines vertical in Lac Saint Louis's current. Without it we would have ended up like the rest of the guys who were fishing our spots on that day, i.e. they caught one or two fish the entire day, and they started before we did.
Thumbs Up from our guide Patrick after a very successful day on the water!
I'm not sure I want to store my boat for the winter now, it seems so early, and I want to go back there on my boat to see if I can pull it off without a pro on board!
(I posted a french version of this story on quebecpeche.com in october 2004. )
Labels: Fishing Trips
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1 Comments:
Hi there. Late comment I know. I fish Lac St-Francois which is probably very similar to Lac St-Louis.
I was wondering what you did to get Patrick Campeau to go fishing with you :)
I'd love for him to show me the ropes on my lake.
By the way I too have a blog about fishing. Check it out at www.simianuprising.com/jigger
Cheers!
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