Even the pros have off days

From the time I arrived in Fort Frances six months ago, I’ve been champing at the bit for a chance to sample some of the outstanding fishing for which the area is justifiably famous.
Of course, in order to do that, one needs both the time and the means to do it right.
Last Friday, the stars were properly aligned and when local tourist camp operator Dale LaBelle offered to take me out on Rainy Lake to do a little pre-fishing for the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship next month, naturally my first reaction was, “It’s a dirty job, but I guess somebody has to do it.”
LaBelle has lived his entire life on or near Rainy Lake and probably knows that body of water as well as anyone. He is an experienced guide, and has enjoyed considerable success at local bass and walleye derbies.
When he said Rainy Lake is rated as the top smallmouth bass fishery in the world, I had no choice but to take him seriously. So off I went to his camp to see for myself if reality lived up to the hype.
LaBelle owns and operates Birch Point Camp on Northwest Bay, about 20 km north of Devlin on Highway 613, which features a dozen light-housekeeping cabins and hook-up facilities for the trailer set.
It also provides both guided and unguided hunting and fishing opportunities, as well as camping and recreational facilities for the entire family.
He greeted me warmly and offered me coffee—which I declined—and gave me a tour of the lodge, which is full of stuffed fish and all sorts of autographed posters and photos of some of his clients.
One of the nice things about fishing with a pro is you don’t have to bring anything with you but your lunch and something to keep the sun from ripping your hide off. LaBelle provided everything else, including congenial company.
By 9 a.m., we were off in his 20-ft. Stratos bass boat to see if the fish were biting. Powered by a 250 h.p. Yamaha motor, this machine is capable of speeds topping 70 miles per hour.
“Of course, I never go that fast,” said LaBelle with a grin.
Nonetheless, even at a modest cruising speed of 45 mph, the bullet-shaped beauty sliced through the rough chop on Northwest Bay like a torpedo and ate up the 15 miles to our destination in mere minutes.
We pulled into a calm bay and got to work. LaBelle suggested we start with top-water baits—one of my favourites. The beauty of this technique is you actually can see the fish strike before you feel it.
Over the next 30 minutes, we had only limited success, so LaBelle switched to his personal favourite—a tube jig—while I stayed with the surface lures. We both had strikes but rarely were able to reel up anything.
LaBelle had prepared me for this and explained why the fish weren’t hitting. It seems there were two factors working against us—in the first place, some of the fish still were sitting on spawning beds and not actively feeding.
In this situation, bass will completely ignore anything outside a certain radius and will attack anything within it, but only to chase it away. That is why the fish frequently smashed our baits but did not try to eat them.
The other factor was the May fly hatch. Every year, for a few days in late spring, the air seems to explode with these insects, which live just long enough to mate and lay their eggs before dying off.
Some years see a bigger hatch than others but while it is underway, the fish—especially bass—seem to shut down. It appears bass absolutely adore these tasty little hors d’oeuvres and will pig out on them to the point that they lose all interest in the main course.
LaBelle did manage to land a nice three-pound smallmouth and I caught a couple of smaller ones, but apart from some small northerns, nobody wanted to play with us.
We eventually moved to another spot and once again changed tactics. LaBelle introduced me to something called suspending baits and I quickly realized here was something I had overlooked for too long.
Most baits either float or sink, and in order to reach and maintain a particular depth, one has to retrieve or troll at just the right speed. Suspending baits—as the name suggests—have exactly the same density as water and will stay at whatever depth you place them.
Most come with little stick-on dots that change the weight ever so slightly to compensate for changes in the density of water due to temperature. You can add or subtract the dots to perfectly balance the lure for the conditions.
The trick to using a suspending bait is to cast it out and make two or three cranks to take it down to the depth you want. Then you pause and let it sit there.
After a few seconds, you give it a twitch, pause again, and give it a few cranks. Crank, pause and twitch. Crank, pause and twitch.
This technique not only keeps the bait in the strike zone longer, it sometimes drives fish crazy and provokes an attack.
I definitely intend to add some of these baits to my tackle box.
One thing I really liked about LaBelle’s approach to fishing is, like me, he is an advocate of the KISS principle—Keep It Simple, Stupid. He rarely uses anything heavier than six-pound line (even in tournaments) and he eschews leaders.
Unfortunately, we both could have used leaders on this day since the bass weren’t biting anyway and we each hit and lost a large pike.
In both cases, the pike simply inhaled the bait, waved its tail as if to say, “See you later, guys,” and kept on going. In my case, I was unable to even put any pressure on the fish before its razor-sharp teeth severed the line as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel.
LaBelle estimated both fish weighed 15-20 pounds.
By 3 p.m., my lunch and water were gone and I had had enough for one day. By now, the wind had picked up somewhat and the rough chop had changed to breaking swells. Still, the sleek and sturdy Stratos pounded through the surf without a problem.
It certainly pays to have a big boat to handle big water, and LaBelle’s boat has all the bells and whistles—including GPS—to handle whatever the lake could throw at it.
All in all, it was both an enjoyable and enlightening experience to spend quality time with a quality pro on a quality lake—even if the fish weren’t co-operating.
But that’s the nature of fishing. If it were predictable, it wouldn’t be as much fun.