Ice Fishing for Lake Trout at Its Best - Bakers Narrows Lodge

I knew the red blob sitting on the bottom of my screen was too good to be true. I had seen dozens of marks come through over the past few days and had a vibe for what type of fish I was dealing with. It was a big mark. Keep in mind that everyone else is still just outside the tent celebrating the previous catch, and if you know laker fishing, it’s not typically a double-header type of fishing experience. I can see my bait falling on the screen with the red mark, sitting just a foot or two off of bottom, sitting perfectly still. It felt like it took twenty minutes for that bait to fall as I kept pulling line from my reel, feeding it through the rod glides in the hope of speeding up the process. Then, finally, the two marks met each other. It didn’t take much coaxing, just a few light dingles and dangles to activate the rattle bait and my wrist was slammed by ten thousand volts of lake trout lighting; line was peeling, my palms were sweating and I swear I saw smoke come off of that reel... “Fff… f…fiiISSHH ON!!”

Through the sound of the screaming reel, I remember hearing the rapid shuffling of feet outside the tent, the zipper flying open and within seconds I was surrounded by a life coach, psychologist, that one gym teacher you had in middle school who had a confusing amount of positive energy, and lead guide at Bakers Narrows Lodge, Mac. It was a beautiful thing to see; a squad of good folks, well prepared with all of the right tools and encouraging words to say, all knelt around one hole through the floor, tossing as much positive energy as possible downward, hoping to get eyes on this heavy fish. The progress was slow, as the fish was big, but after many runs, stressful moments and some braided line jarring around the bottom of the hole, we had ourselves some bubbles and shortly after, a fish of a lifetime.