Fishing Lake Kabetogama With A Guide - Round 2 - Voyageurs National Park - Minnesota

It wasn't our intention to take two guided fishing trips here in Voyageurs National Park. The first was a month ago - Fishing Lake Kabetogama With A Guide - Round 1. But through some mis-communication and scheduling issues, I sort of ended up with commitments to two different guides and didn't want to cancel on either of them. We had fun both times, but we have to say our Round 1 guide was the winner.

Fresh Catch - Lake Kabetogama - Voyageurs National Park - Minnesota

The plan for today was to meet Tim Watson with Kabetogama Angling Adventures at the dock at The Pines of Kabetogama at 8:00 a.m. and do some fishing.

He was right on time with his 2015 Lund 208 Tyee GL fishing boat - it's immaculate.

 

 

It was a cool morning with sunshine and an expected high in the low 70s.  Linda & I had on three layers and never came out of any of them as it stayed cool on the water.

We were going to fish in Kabetogama Lake to start, and then we were going to head to Namakan Lake where the guides are all having better luck.

So we headed out to a nearby rock pile.  Tim rigged us up with a jig head and minnow combination and we dropped our lines to the bottom in about 30 feet of water. 

 

 

After jigging at another spot without any luck we moved over to the historic area of the I.W. Stevens Pine Cove Resort.  There, we back-trolled the grassy cove with leeches and minnows.

We caught a couple of smallmouth bass and some small walleye.  Linda was reeling in a small fish when a huge northern pike grabbed it and ran off with it.  I took the GoPro and used the headstrap mount to film our catches.

Here is a montage of Linda's fish.  The second clip shows the thieving pike, and the last one shows her 18-inch walleye, by far the biggest walleye of the day (but one inch over the keeping limit).

 

 

And here are the video clips of me catching fish.  It's an interesting perspective.  Unfortunately, none of the fish on my video were big enough to keep and it's embarrassing that Tim netted most of them - probably not necessary.

 

 

I tried to cut out my deep sighs from bringing in yet another small fish.  I declared myself "King of the Little Fish" today.

I caught one keeper, a nice sized pike but, of course, that's the one fish I didn't get on video.  You'll see it later, though.

We went back and forth between jigging and trolling.  Unlike me, Linda and Tim brought in enough keepers to fill the live well.

We ended up with three bass, I think six walleye, and my lone pike.  I heard that Tim doesn't clean the fish, but he did for us.  What would have taken me an hour, he knocked out in about ten minutes.

 

 

 

We caught a lot of fish, but most barely bent our rod tips.  Linda having her fish stolen by a huge pike, her one nice-sized walleye, and my pike were the highlights.

 

 

Still, we ended up with a couple bags of nice, fresh fish fillets.

Today wasn't as much fun as the last time we went out (July 17) because we just kept catching small ones, but at least we caught a bunch of fish and ended up with probably three or four meals' worth of fillets.  Hard to complain about that.

So that's it for another day at Voyageurs National Park.