Lake Trout Fishing

The pristine waters of Red Cedar Lake are home to a good population of Lake Trout. Lake Trout have always been an environmental indicator species in Northern Ontario because they require a clean healthy lake to live in. Red Cedar Lake goes down to 114 feet deep, which allows the Lake Trout to have cold water all year. This is critical to their survival. Because of the water-flow into the lake from the Temagami River and the Marten River; the depths possess the dissolved oxygen levels the trout need. Dissolved Oxygen levels range from 9.0mg/L near the surface to 8.4mg/L at the bottom. These are excellent levels. Many deep Northern Ontario lakes basically have a thermocline and below the thermocline oxygen levels are so low they create a dead zone. Not knowing where the thermocline is means a lot of time wasted. Red Cedar Lake does not have a thermocline.

It's actually very difficult to describe our Lake Trout fishing because very few guests ever fish for them for the simple reason that past owners of the lodge never promoted the Lake Trout fishing. In the spring just after ice-out guests fishing for other species catch Lake Trout on chance luck because the Lake Trout are spread out everywhere and are in the shallow water. As the water warms up the Lake Trout take off to the deep parts of the lake. Red Cedar Lake is big enough to produce giant Lake Trout in the 10 to 30 pound range. Big trout is not what really impresses fanatical Lake Trout hunters. Small fish means the Lake Trout are successfully reproducing, which means you can catch big ones and smaller good eating size trout at the same time. That's what a Lake Trout fanatic considers to be a good trout lake. How many you catch in a day is a roll of the dice. Lake Trout are very sensitive to atmospheric disturbances and changes in air pressure and this can cause them to stop feeding for days. Generally if the weather has been stable they should be biting. Calm sunny mornings or evenings with high pressure is usually when most Lake Trout are caught. If you are an experienced Lake Trout fisherperson then you should catch a couple of trout per day and maybe more if you find a hotspot.

Rabbit Lake: Just north of camp is a lake called Rabbit Lake where Lake Trout are the dominant species. The amount of Lake Trout you catch in Rabbit Lake will be much greater than Red Cedar Lake. Rabbit Lake is a small lake so the size potential is not as great as Red Cedar Lake. If you bring your own boat you can fish Rabbit Lake for the day and catch lots of good eating size trout.

Our webmaster, Gary, is a Lake Trout fishing fanatic and we invited him and a couple of friends to come to camp for a few days and explore the Lake Trout fishing on Red Cedar Lake. Below is his report.

Gary's Report: I and my three friends Howard, Wade and Ric came to the camp on July 28/2014. I took a look at the contour map and decided to concentrate on the deepest part of the lake, which is north of camp. We headed out of Loon Bay and then turned right and went up along the shore past the mouth of the Marten River and into the northern section of the lake. We were marking the majority of the fish down around 50 feet but did see them as deep as 80 feet. The fish we saw could also be Whitefish, Burbot or deep-feeding Northerns. We back-tolled really slow with 3-way swivel rigs and using small light flutter lures such as MooseLook Spoons, Sutton Silver Spoons and Williams Wabblers. We also tried Mepps Cyclops, Blue Fox Spinners and some brighter blue or fire-tiger Rapalas and Thundersticks. We basically trolled around in a big circle hugging the contour of the lake in the 50 to 70 foot range. The first day Wade and Howard both caught Lake Trout around 1.5 pounds and I caught 3 little babies around 9 inches each, which I let go. The second day I had a nice one around 4 pounds up to the boat and he started rolling and got off. Ric caught one around 2 pounds. We were planning to fish Rabbit Lake the third day but the weather changed to wet and windy, which is not good for trout fishing so we just spent our last day fishing for Smallmouth bass and Walleye and did very well. Considering we don't know the lake I think we did well with the trout. I have caught trout as large as 22 pounds in Lakes 1/10th the size of Red Cedar Lake so there must be some monsters down there, especially since nobody else seems to fish for trout on that lake. The three pictures on this page starting from the top are Howard, Wade and then Ric. Click here to see where we fished.