These are all wild trout. Lake trout stocking from hatchery sources has been discontinued for more than two decades in Lake Superior. Lake Superior trout don’t grow as rapidly as the fish in the other Great Lakes so even a five or six pound laker is likely 10 years old or more.
Most of the trout are modest by Great Lake standards, but there are lunkers lurking in these waters.
There’s no formal list of “really special places” for Great Lakes anglers to visit, but that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t any really special places. There are—and they are special for many reasons. I’ve been lucky enough to visit and fish in many places that I deem to be really special, like the Niagara River in New York, like Washington Island in Wisconsin, like the Chicago lakefront, the Detroit River, the Erie Islands and many others. Each of these and dozens of others can provide stellar fishing, but the special places are more than just catching hotspots. You probably have your own special place or places. I hope you do.
If you are looking for a new, “really special place,” I recommend a visit to the northernmost part of Lake Superior near the mouth of Nipigon Bay. “Whoa,” you may be thinking, “that’s a long way”—and it is for most Great Lakes anglers. It’s a 12-hour drive-time from my home in Northwest Indiana. I don’t even want to think about how far it would be from places on Lake Ontario. Just from Duluth, Minnesota at the west end of Lake Superior, it’s a five-hour drive and figure seven hours behind the wheel from Sault St. Marie, MI. No one said a really special place has to be close by. Not up for a long road trip? The airport at Thunder Bay, ON is an international destination and is serviced by Air Canada, United Airlines and other carriers.
Oh, and that road trip just gets you to Red Rock, Ontario where you either launch your boat or hop on the Moss Island Lodge’s water taxi that will actually deliver you to the boat docks in front of the two lodges on Moss Island where you will headquarter on your stay. Moss Island Lodges can help arrange the one-hour transfer from Thunder Bay Airport to Red Rock. Figure another hour for the boat ride to cross Nipigon Bay. It’s a really special place.
I’ve fished salmon and lake trout on all five Great Lakes. I’ve fished relatively close to the Moss Island area at Thunder Bay. The boats in all these places were all set up similarly, with downrigger gear near the stern, multi-function sonar/chart machines near the helm and a bevy of rods and rod holders in between to present the lures high, low, near and far from the boat—all there to (hopefully) keep a steady parade of fish on the line during the time spent on the water.
My fishing partner nailed this Lake Superior pike one morning before we went trout fishing.
Don’t forget the array of spoons, plugs, flashers, flies, meat-rigs and spinners filling the storage lockers, tackle trays and hook-hangers—ammo to meet the ever-changing conditions and moods of the fish. That’s not the case on the boats Darrell Splett, owner (and chief guide) uses at his Moss Island facility.
The 20-foot Lund Pro Guide that Darrell uses as his usual guided trip boat has two downriggers, each with one rod holder. There are no rod trees, rocket launchers or other rod holders on the boat since he only fishes with two rods. His tackle box is a cup holder filled with spoons—but only in two different patterns. If there’s another Stowaway box of lures stashed somewhere on board. I didn’t see it.
There was a LiveTarget jointed minnow plug in the cup holder. “When do you pull that one out?” I asked one morning.
“Never,” he said. “It was tied on one of the rods from when I was using it early in the spring on Lake Nipigon for walleyes and I stuck it there when I swapped it out when I brought the boat here for the summer. It’s been in the cup holder ever since.”
I’ll mention his go-to spoons at this time since it’s not a long list. His favorite pattern is called Two-Face—from a “custom painted” line of spoons called Flashback Trolling spoons, available at Marine General in Duluth, MN. (www.marinegeneral.com). The front “face” of the Two-Face is fluorescent pink, the back of the spoon is fluorescent chartreuse. It looks like something coho and steelhead would love; it wouldn’t be my first pick as a lake trout blade. Darrell’s cup holder is well stocked with these in the N3 (3 ¾”) size.
The author gets ready to release a fresh trout under the bowed rod bringing up the next catch.
The other spoon pattern in Splett’s cup-holder tackle box is a Gold Star KF5H spoon by Silver Hoard—same size. This one features a metallic watermelon front side on silver plated blade. The watermelon almost held its own with the Two-Face, but as the lakers chipped off more and more of the watermelon colors exposing the silver plate on the top side, the chipped-up spoon seemed to get better and better.
If I were coming in my own boat and with my own assortment of lures, I’d make sure I had a few of each of these, but I honestly think I could grab an assortment of my Northern Kings, Stingers, Moonshines and other brands and most would work just fine. These are wilderness fish, unaccustomed to a steady, everyday assault by legions of anglers. Darrell has owned the Moss Island Lodges for three seasons and can count on one hand the number of boats he’s seen fishing this area - other than his guests.
The number of trout caught each morning is hard to believe—especially in light of only running a two-rod spread. Can two rods even be called a spread? The catch to keep limit on lake trout is three per person. That’s important to know, because not catching limits is unheard of.
When I was there in late July the nearshore reefs just outside the string of islands that rise up from the depths along Lake Superior’s North Shore was the place to fish. Many of these reefs are shown on the charting screen on Splett’s Garmin sonar/plotter, but not all of them. Splett explained, “Most of the extensive reefs are charted, but I have dozens of small reefs waypointed within a mile of the shores that are maybe 100 yards long and less than 50 feet wide that spring up in places where the chart shows nothing but a relatively flat bottom.”
A 26-foot Stanley serves as a water taxi from Red Rocks and a comfortable fishing boat for larger-sized groups.
The base of these nearshore reefs are 125 feet deep or more and many of them top out at less than 50 feet. The sides are steep so it’s important to keep one eye on the sonar at all times, both to keep the downrigger weight from banging into the rocks below and to watch for when the trolling track takes the boat off the reef. It’s one of the reasons no more than two downriggers are recommended. Splett uses Canon Mag 10s with high-speed retrieve. As soon as a fish bites, the up switch is activated to get the weight up and out of the way. With only two lines down with the lures tracking only 25 feet behind the weights, it’s easy to spin the boat around quickly to get back alongside or over the reef.
Anytime I am heading on a road trip to fish a few days in a far-off area of the Great Lakes, I worry about the weather. This trip was no different, especially once I learned we were planning to fish on the open lake side of the barrier islands. Splett told me, “I’ve been operating here for three years, and I fished here several times previously before I bought the lodges. There’s only been one day when we absolutely couldn’t fish due to both wind and rainstorms. Even on days when there’s a strong southerly wind we can fish in the lee of the islands and catch plenty of fish, just not the numbers expected on the lakeside reefs. Plus, there are other options—coaster brook trout, pike and walleye.”
If you bring your own boat, set your own schedule. Fish when or where you wish. We didn’t bring a boat, opting to fish with Splett each morning on his Pro-Guide between breakfast and lunch. After lunch, we were on our own, fishing from one of the 16-foot Lunds provided for each lodge. This is when we targeted the other available species.
According to Splett, the best coaster fishing is early or late in the season, “from when we open in late May through June and then again in late August to the end of the season.” Though the timing was off, one of my fishing partners and I had never caught a coaster, so on our first afternoon at Moss Island, we spent an hour or so in a couple of prime brookie areas Splett had pointed out to us. We didn’t score on the brookies so we broke off the quest and moved to a nearby reef complex close to the historic lighthouse marking the entrance to the channel leading to Nipigon Bay. There we continued to work over the lakers hovering above the sunken rocks until suppertime. We weren’t disappointed.
The Two Faced spoon (top two) and the watermelon at the bottom are always top producers for north Superior lake trout.
On subsequent afternoons we used the 16-footers to access almost hidden portages to small, inland lakes a short distance from the lodge. The short portages lead to relatively small inland lakes where boats are stashed at the end of the trail. Tote in a small amount of fishing gear and target hungry pike and walleye.
There are no trophies in those lakes but one short, late afternoon trip resulted in enough “eating-size” walleyes to feed us all for dinner and take-home limits of northern pike in the low 20-inch size the final afternoon. Splett encourages taking limit catches from the “pike” lake to thin the population to encourage increased sizes of the remaining pike and to allow the walleye population to increase. “That strategy has been successful at similar lakes near some of my other camps farther north near Lake Nipigon,” he said.
One morning, instead of heading straight to the offshore laker reefs, we motored into a small, fiord-like bay off of Lake Superior to fish for trophy northern pike. As the finger-like bay narrowed and decreased in depth, we could see underwater weeds and grasses in the shallows. The fishing wasn’t fast, but in less than 90 minutes, we boated a 30-incher, a 37 and a well fed 41-inch pike that would have been in the 20-pound range. Big water, big fish!
The area is wilderness, but the lodges provide off-grid comfort, thanks to a solar powered electrical system. Our days started with a pot of coffee perking on the gas range in the cabin’s kitchen. I logged onto the wifi and checked my emails while others took morning showers or helped with breakfast prep. Morning snacks and drinks were packed and loaded onto the boat. “There’s no need to hit the lake at the crack of dawn. The fish are there and plenty hungry. If the bite slows, we just move to a new reef,” said Splett.
Lake trout in massive numbers are just one of the reasons why the Moss Island Lodges is “Really Special.”
Sometimes we’d just speed up the troll a bit to get to new territory in a few minutes, occasionally, we’d pull the lines and motor a half mile or so. If there was any “pattern” to our efforts it was weather dependent. Two of the mornings were met with nearly slick-calm conditions so Splett motored about 8 miles down the shoreline to reefs that only get fished on the calmest days. Then, as the morning progressed, we fished our way back towards home base. “We sometimes get a larger grade of fish on those more remote reefs,” Splett said. “Sometimes, it seems schools of different sized trout move onto various reefs. One week the fish on a particular reef may all be in the 10-pound range and a nearby reef may be mostly fish half that size.”
There’s no explanation for where the better grade of fish could be found. “You just need to try each one as you get to it and see what’s down there,” Splett said. “Even on the reefs where it seems the smaller lakers are found, there’s always the chance for a real trophy to be caught. The largest I’ve seen in my three years here was a 28-pounder.
These are all wild trout. Lake trout stocking from hatchery sources has been discontinued for more than two decades in Lake Superior. Lake Superior trout don’t grow as rapidly as the fish in the other Great Lakes so even a five or six pound laker is likely 10 years old or more. Those are old enough to spawn, however, so with commercial fishing curtailed, the future looks bright.
TRIP PLANNING
There aren’t any specific packages for trips to Moss Island Lodges, other than guided and non-guided visits are offered. “The ideal trip for many groups is five nights, with four or 4 ½ days of fishing,” Splett said. “If I pick up a group say on a Sunday morning, we’ll get out to the lodges in one of my 26’, Stanley, big-water boats. Once there, we’ll unload gear and duffle, eat a quick lunch and go fishing for a few hours in the afternoon. Groups up to four people will fit nicely in my Pro Guide. For larger groups, or if the conditions make fishing from a bigger boat a necessity, we’ll take the Stanley.”
Drop, reel, net and repeat is the daily standard in this area of Lake Superior.
“Either way, after a long trip, a quick trip to catch some fresh fish for dinner is the best way to unwind. Actually, you’ll catch more than enough fish for dinner, releasing most,” he chuckled.
Darrell continued, “Then we’ll head back to the lodge, unpack, cook a fresh fish for dinner and get rested up for morning trips Monday, through Thursday and depart for Red Rock Harbor, early Friday morning. Longer or shorter stays are also possible. I just fill in the calendar as the reservations come in and often just slot groups where they fit the best in the time frame they have available.”
Groups with their own boat can set their own schedule, of course, but often, they will confer with Darrell in the morning and coordinate where to fish. It’s a safety thing; and especially for first timers to Moss Island, it’s a good way to learn how to key in on some of the better reefs until they get some waypoints and tracks on their own, on-board plotter.
ACCOMODATIONS
One of the lodges is a three-bedroom, the other has four bedrooms. Inside, other than the number of bedrooms, they are similar with a full kitchen with running water, gas stove, refrigerator and a freezer available. A large indoor living room with sofas and easy chairs warmed by a wood stove, if needed. We had ideal weather most of our trip and spent the bulk of our leisure time on the large deck overlooking the water. That’s where we grilled burgers, fresh trout and sweet corn for late evening meals before hitting the bed to get rested up for the next day’s fishing.
Moss Island Lodges is unique for several reasons and is on Captain Mike’s list of special Great Lakes fishing destinations.
I purposely left catch-numbers out of most of this story, since they seem unbelievable. With only two downrigged lines, daily totals of 100 or more trout per day are the norm. Most are in the five to ten pound range, but larger fish are caught daily. The catch-to-keep limit for lake trout is three per person, but this isn’t a trip where success is measured by having a full freezer at the end. It’s about living in comfort in a wilderness setting where the air is clear, the waters pristine, the fishing areas are uncrowded and the fishing is terrific. The unparalleled scenery completes what it takes to put Moss Island Lodges on my list of “really special places” on the Great Lakes.
SPECIAL OFFER:
Five Night Trip: $975 USD/person for four or more anglers. Guided fishing for three days, unguided for the rest. Slightly more if three anglers. We can handle larger groups as well.
Includes: Water taxi to Moss Island, Cabin, Smaller boats for unguided fishing, Fuel.
For more details or to book a trip today contact owner/operator, Darrell Splett at 807-629-0053, email at dsplett@outlook.com and check out his website at: www.northsuperiorcharters.ca.
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