Chalets Gouin - Gouin Reservoir Houseboat Fishing Trip

Our Houseboat had 3 bedrooms with 2 bunks each,

plus a fold out in the dining room

Saturday august 6th we left Montreal at 5:00 am - destination Gouin Reservoir, 7 hours north west of the city - 3 hours of dirt road, 4 hours on paved roads. Gouin reservoir is near La Tuque - here is the reservoir's Google Map

We stopped in La Tuque to fill up and buy live bait, then got on the dirt road leading to our outfitter, les Chalets Gouin. We wanted to try renting a houseboat for a few days to see whether or not this is an experienvce worth the money - because it costs a lot more than renting a camp.

So we got there about noon and waited close to 2 hours for our boat to be ready, which is apparently highly unusual. The owner Yaneck apologized, gave us a few tips on where to fish and read us the book on all the rules and things you must know, such as how to operate the boat, how to beach it, where the channels are, how to setup the toilets, etc etc

Off we went with one of the staff showing us how to pilot the boat.

Richard was our captain for the weekend

Our first stop was 4 hours away, a place called "La Passe" (the pass) - we tied the boat down solidly onto some of the stronger trees near shore, then off we went.

We quickly realized 4 things:
First - My fishfinder's new batteries were dead
Second thing we noticed - Mike's fishfinder batteries were dead
Third: While I do have the bathymetric maps for this area on a GPS map, I forgot to upload the data onto my Garmin Legend.
Fourth: While I was holding a printed version of the bathymetric map at the sporting goods store where I buy most of my tackle (Baron Sports on Taschereau, Brossard), I ended up not buying it.

From left to Right: Myself, Mike "Walleye" Richard, and Benoit "Ben" Allaire

Bottom line we had no way to detect depth and structures, and we had no map to help us locate good potential spots. This weekend we were gonna have to go hardcore and use our common sense to get into some walleye.

La Passe has a few obvious spots, two long rocky points strecth out toward one another, a long rocky shore facing the wind, as well as a sunken island Mike managed to detect in one of his sonar's brief moments of life. We basically jigged this area for the night and came home with only 2 walleyes, one of them was just biug enough to keep. Not the best of starts, but we were determined to improve our hit ratio the next day.

Sunday morning we get up and cook up breakfast while planning our day. We were going to start in the bay in fron of where we anchored the boat and then head to L'Oasis du Gouin, where there is a huge stone wall with a steep drop off, apparently this is o0ne of the best spots at this time of the year. We trolled the bay in the morning and caught one walleye and a small northern pike, then we headed up to L'Oasis.

Mike and Richard in their usual positions: Mike drives the boat and pays close attention, Richard sleeps...

It was about a one hour ride up there in our small 15 foot boats with 15 HP motors, and as the day progressed the wind picked up somewhat, which made for some very serious showers for the guys who were driving the tiller boats. I got soaked on my right side, and so did Mike. Before stopping by the Oasis, we had spotted a small lake which was accessible by boat through a narrow channel, we decided to give it a shot. The first thing we did once we got there was to stop on shore and eat lunch, chicken sandwich rolls that tasted very cheap (bad purchase there!). We were visited by game wardens who made sure we had our licences and fishing rights, they then gave a few tips on fishing the area and took off - but not before I showed them an old rusty baitcaster that Ben caught earlier, asking them if they wanted it. They kinda just shrugged and took off.

We ended up catching nothing in this lake and continued on to our main objective, the infamous stone wall.

Driving the boat with a pupose, before the wind hit us on our way to the stone wall

About 30-45 minutes later we got to our destination and were greeted by a wind storm and some very menacing black clouds. We tried for about 15 minutes but anchors were not holding, there was no way to drift in those waves (not in these boats anyhow). We just headed straight back to camp and had dinner (pork fillets). Then we headed into the bay and caught a few more walleyes jigging near the points. I dropped a big one in about 4 feet of water, he jumped out like a bass and shook himself loose. I was a little upset about losing it, it was getting dark and I'm not 100% sure how big it really was, the sound of the splash says this was a big boy. My partner Ben was quite impressed by that too, though he also lost a good one earlier that evening.

The next morning we fished the bay again until about 10:30 am and then we loosened the houseboat and headed to "Ile aux Femmes" (women island). There we were apparently going to have the chance to tie the boat in such a way that we can fish from its back porch all night long. We couldn't wait to try this, so as soon as we got there and tied the boat, the rods were out and we were igging and casting off the balcony, but nothing happened except for a few whitefish bites.

We went out trolling, Ben decided to tie on a bright orange Thin Fin (Storm). In less than 3 hours he had 5 nice walleyes to his name. Not bad for a first time walleye angler!

Ben's first stringer of walleye, 5 good ones in no time!

I had a nice fight from a 5.2 pound northern, no giant but a good fighter, he almost snapped my rod when he darted under the boat unexpectedly. The fight lasted a good 3-4 minutes and we ended up beaching the boat, and I got my thumb bit real nice trying to get my pliers in his mouth to retrieve my lure.

A nice little northern caught on a white and red thin fin

In the evening we jigged the bay near our boat and we managed to catch 5 or 6 more 2-3 pound walleyes, I caught mine on chartreuse and red Berkley Bungee (no live bait) .

The next day we had to return the boat by 9:30 am and we had a 3 hour ride to get back to camp, so we were up at 6:00 am and to our surprise one of our smaller boats had filled right up with water overnight, so we had to get in the water and empty it before we could untie the houseboat and get moving. It was a cold windy morning so having both feet in the water when you just woke up, and having to deal with bitter cold wind was no fun.

The trip back to the main camp was uneventful, we used the time to clean up and pack up.

All in all we had a great time, although I would have liked another 1 or 2 days of fishing.

I would recommend the experience to anyone, it is definitely a great way to establish base camp near your favorite spot. But be sure to have enough time to enjoy yourself, because once you get there you still have to go for a few hours, and you also need to plan an early departure, unlike a normal trip to an outfitter, you must be back and ready to leave by 10:00 am. We spent 8 hours travelling to and from, plus at least 2-3 hours were spent doing tasks related to these movements. When the trip is 5 days long, it becomes insignificant, but when you only have 3 days, it makes a difference.