Dogtooth Lake

Hey guys. We’ve got the first week of October booked up there, and I’m just checking to see who has fished it before. Heard it can be a tougher lake, but the potential for big fish is huge. We’re fine with a tough bite, so I’m not too worried. Hoping they’ll have the fall feed bag on.

On a related note, has anyone gotten minnows from the bait shops in Fort Frances, Ear Falls, Souix Narrows or Kenora that late in the year? We’re hoping to find someone carrying bigger shiners or suckers, and maybe win the lottery and find some chubs. Thanks as always for any information.

Dunno to all your questions-but GREAT lake name.

The Trading Post in Sioux Narrows usually has bait all year. The bait shop in Nestor Falls usually carries big sucker minnows in the fall for all the musky fisherman.

What are you fishing for?

Thanks for the input Pat, we’ll be targeting big walleyes for the most part, from what I’ve heard, the lake is known for putting out serious numbers (relatively of course) of tanker walleye. However we’re heading up September 28th, and the plan is to try to somewhat emulate what James did up on Nipigon with the resident lake trout for the first couple days, if we’re lucky! Just looking for some medium-large minnows to drag around on jigs and rigs, really.

And you’re not wrong Tim!

We are heading up on Wednesday morning for a week. Mid August so really different than late September. I’ll post a report when we get back.
I’ve never been up Sept or Oct so it would be interesting to hear how you guys do.

Thanks for the heads up, I’m looking forward to the report! I’ll be sure to let you all know how we do when we’re up there. Would have seen this sooner, but I just got back from a fly-in up in Red Lake, Ontario. We didn’t hit our normal 100 fish a day average, it was a pretty mediocre trip with only around 90 a day on average!

We just got back from our week long trip up there on Wednesday. Had 7 guys for a few days of the trip, but mostly 5 of us that really fish.

Had our best trip as far as numbers go. That is in large part due to most of our guys being numbers guys, doesn’t really matter the size. 405 walleye over 6.5 days of fishing. With a few small pike and some nicer bass mixed in.

One smaller weedy bay produced most of the fish, actually found some decent size in there a few days, 15-18” fish. We just troll around with spinner rigs with just enough weight and speed to stay about 3-4 ft deep. Some days leeches were better, mostly crawlers though.

Spent a lot of time fishing reefs and some points as well. Mostly caught them bottom bouncing spinner rigs with crawlers (gold spinners- gold smile blades to be specific) keeping the bait up off the bottom really helps reduce the snags(plastic lightweight blades/floats). We also caught a couple on snap raps and jigging. White snap raps and white paddle tail plastics.
We trolled 4 evenings and picked up a couple decent fish, but overall the trolling was slow for us this year. We caught fish trolling rapalas 10-30ft down. Silver and firetiger colors were best.
I ended up with 9 fish 20” or bigger with the biggest 2 being 27” and 28”. This mid august time is hard fishing, bite is inconsistent at best and seems like fish move on and off the structure all the time.

This was the 28″

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Thanks for the report! We’re hoping that going at the end of September/start of October will provide fish that are a bit more cooperative, as well as schooled up a bit tighter chasing baitfish on those reefs. Those are a couple nice eyes! Do you guys ever try to chase the smallmouth bass up there? We’re hoping to spend a couple days targeting them as well.

Never really target them. They are incidental catches when fishing for the walleye. I think we had 4 over 17″ this past trip and countless smaller ones.

So how did you end up doing @TMF89?

Sorry, should have posted our results earlier! Well we ran into plenty of classic mid-fall Ontario weather, for the week, I think we only saw a total of three hours of actual sunlight! We struggled with jigs, catching the vast majority of our fish trolling cranks over open water. When we did that, we’d catch one every half to couple hours, and there were plenty good fish. I got a 28.5″ for my PB of the trip, but I think everyone (11 guys) got fish 26″ or bigger. We did find some really nice honey holes for crappie of all things, we could catch a few dozen of them in a couple smaller bays, and the vast majority of them were 10″+. We got into some pike and smallmouth bass (both while casting for pike and trolling for walleyes in 120’…)

The cabins, docks, and facilities were all far above acceptable, and the guy running it is solid as well. I would definitely recommend it for a big walleye hunt, and I would definitely go back some day. It’s a very specific kind of trip, and the hours can be long and the action slow, but there’s something really cool about trolling the 100′ plus depths of a big old Canadian lake and knowing that it’s put out plenty of 15-19lb fish over the years.

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Nice fish! Can be a frustrating lake at times for sure.

I’ll trade you a couple good reef spots for walleyes for some crappie spots!
We’ve really only lucked into a few crappies while pulling spinners in the shallower bays for walleyes.

Linders just aired a show on Dogtooth.