Early Summer in Sunset Country

After I returned from Texas and Sturgeon Bay, it was time for a few weeks of fun fishing around home through May and early June.  The walleye season in NW Ontario opens every year on the 3rd Saturday in May and we are usually in for some of the best fishing of the year.  

Most of the walleye fishing I do is on Lake of the Woods - fishing is excellent with good numbers of fish and some big ones.  For anyone looking to plan a trip to visit us in Sunset Country, walleyes are the number one fish that most folks come here to fish for but we have top-notch fishing for a variety of species, year-round.  Check out the Sunset Country website to plan your next fishing trip!

I've mentioned it recently on my social media pages as well but you will very rarely find me on the water anymore during the summer without one of these Simms Fishing sun protection shirts.  They are light shirts, with a hood on them that really help cover your face, ears and neck from the sun...and they are comfortable!

In addition to walleye...we catch big pike here in NW Ontario year round!  This beauty came from Shoal Lake, a tributary of Lake of the Woods.  

After I few weeks at home I was back on the road to Alabama in mid-June for a Bassmaster Elite Series stop at Lake Guntersville.  Prior to getting to Guntersville I stopped at Lake Chickamauga (a lake above GVille on the Tennessee River) for a little warm-up.  My pal Jason Johnson joined me and we filmed an episode of the Lund Ultimate Fishing Experience...we had a great day and caught a bunch of nice bass on Chickamauga.  Look for the show to air this coming winter.  The tournament at Guntersville was my worst of the season...so we're not going to talk a lot about that one.  It was one that I was expecting to do well in, it just didn't happen. 

In early July I fished in the Shoal Lake Lake Bass Classic with my good buddy Karl Engstrom...I've fished this tournament since the mid-90s and it's one of my favourite places to wet a line so I always fish it if I can.  We won the tournament for the second year in a row with a mixed bag of smallmouths and largemouths, weighing identical 17.52 pound catches each day.  

On July 13, I married my best friend, Shelby Larson.  We had a beautiful wedding at our home, just west of Kenora.  It was an amazing day...I'm a lucky guy!  

Following the wedding I went to Rainy Lake for the annual Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship.  It was my 20th year in a row fishing this premier three-day tournament on one of the best smallmouth fisheries in the World.  Since 2007, John Peterson and I have fished the tournament together, we've won it a couple times and had a bunch of great days over the years but we had a tough tournament this past year...not even sure where we finished, but it was still fun and I'll always be there as long as I can!  Highly recommend this event for anybody looking for a new tournament to fish.