There is something special about fishing in places where there are no maps and a bunch of fish to catch. These are the places that receive little angler pressure and usually have the best fishing. This is how I would describe getting to fish the last stretch of the English River system north of Kenora, before it dumps into the Winnipeg River.
The community of Whitedog has hosted a bass tournament for the past five years on this waterbody, which includes Goshawk Lake. My brother and I have fished the past four years and each year it’s been one of the highlights of the entire season for me. I love the adventure of fishing this water and knowing that there are spots out there where bass have probably never seen a lure.
It’s not the easiest place to fish because the bass aren’t everywhere but when you find the areas where they are, the size of the fish is above average for our region. While the bass fishing is good, this place might have the best walleye fishing in the World! They are everywhere and they are all sizes. We caught walleyes from four feet of water down to thirty feet on the weekend. There are plenty of nice pike in the system as well. You catch plenty of both while you’re looking for bass.
It may have been the windiest weekend of the year but the tournament happened as scheduled and my brother Ben and I were fortunate to come out on top after two days of fishing. The limit is four bass each day for this tournament and we ended up with 34.01 for two days, a 4.25-pound average. Second place went to Adam Bachinsky and Andrew Beernaert with 33.31 pounds, while Sean McAughey and Jayden Symonds took third with 33.13 pounds.
The big fish each day is always over five pounds and it was no different this year. One day one, McAughey and Symonds had the big bass at 5.19 pounds and on day two, Ian Waterer and Motei Demers had a 5.04.
Usually by this point in the season, a lot of the bass are going to be found in deeper water but because of the mild September we had, water temperatures are still warm. We ended up catching fish both shallow and deep on the weekend without any one depth being the most productive.
Because of the strong winds, we weren’t able to fish all of the spots we wanted to, as I’m sure was the case for everybody fishing over the weekend. We got into areas that were a little bit protected and just fished, moving shallow and deep, catching whatever we could. We caught most of our fish on Ned rigs and a Smeltinator jig tipped with a 5” Jerk ShadZ.
For anybody looking to get away and enjoy some good fishing, the English River is an amazing place to fish. The community of Whitedog also host a number of walleye tournaments each year on that fishery.
There is one last bass tournament on the schedule this weekend in Kenora. The Frank McClymont Memorial tournament is taking place on Saturday on Lake of the Woods. Frank was one of the early bass tournament competitors in our region and a guy that was well-liked by everybody. He passed away in 2012 but this tournament has been going on in his memory ever since. For anybody looking to sign up, you can find entry forms at Lake of the Woods Sports Headquarters.
