July 2005. MISSISICABI RIVER. A WALLEYE HEAVEN.
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WHOA!!!
First off I was pretty well wrong about where we were headed. Had thought it was to the Harricanaw River, but as it turned out, the Mississicabi is it’s own flow further east to one of the least traveled areas of Ontario. Weather was expected to be great and real hot for four days. We left Moose Factory at high tide and made our way to the muddy saline ocean of James Bay, where we’d cross the southern expanse towards the eastern shoreline and Quebec.
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Super Paul brought only the compass and overshot the destination just a little to the north, he enjoyed my GPS thereafter. Note the mud of the Bay.
Once we found ourselves inside the mouth of the Missisicabi River after crossing a vast shallow sand flat, we passed by the Moose Cree’s established Goose Camp on route to our bush site.
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Abandoned for now, inside each cabin are a couple of rooms, a wood stove and some form of seating.
Paul and I took off before too long to try some fishing at a nearby creek mouth. While taking time to put some sunblock on and tie up a jig, Paul during those same few minutes boats seven walleye. Shortly afterwards I got my first, and the two of us continued in shallow drive upriver, trolling jigs in two to four feet of muddy water. Taking advantage of high tide still, as we continued on we catch countless walleye, and do stop now and again to cast the places where we pick up double headers. When stopping for lunch Paul would catch about a dozen or more within this nice pool, while I need ten minutes to heat up two bowls of chili. Hauling the boat up through some shallow rapids, it was only a couple kilometers left to travel, and by this time Paul has filled his stringer and I have kept a few along the way too.
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Dead fish lie everywhere in the water and weeds. The water is so hot and shallow this year. On the Moose River back home the same thing is happening to the fish, and MNR says it’s simply the heat. Most of those dead fish are sucker with a few pike thrown in. Anyways, we arrived to our camp site and set up by around 4 pm.
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After supper it’s back to the walleye. They are right there only 100 or more feet from our site. The hot lures turn out to be 3″ pumpkinseed curlytails and my olive, orange and red bucktails on 3/8 oz heads. Here’s the biggest of mine for the evening.
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Lots of great fish this evening, but the bite shut right down once the mosquitoes came out. Ohhh well, walleye that only feed during sunny times I guess..? Paul and I finished the day having caught by our best guess fifty or more walleye each.
Braided line was getting out-fished 10 to 1. I stuck to mono using only the 10-pound test I had, after Paul schooled me while I was trying with braid. These Mississicabi walleye were insane though, leaping out of the water at times to grab your jig, and getting hooked three or four times, over and over. I caught a bunch of fish when I accidentally let my jig fall in the water when setting the rod down to take a leak. IT WAS SICK behavior for walleye.
Next day we got back to it. If there’s one guy that knows weather, fishing, hunting and water it’s Paul. The few times I’ve gone out with him he’s astonished me. I have sooooo much to learn, and I will… but Paul’s eyes… man he sees everything before I do.
Mid afternoon we went back to camp to get out of the sun. Turned out I was burning right through my thin white shirt. We took a swim and cleaned up. The water was like a hot-tub but strangely I learned that over the sand it was hot, yet over clay it felt like 10-15F colder, and the same too around any big rocks. That must be how the fish survive the heat in this shallow water? Most of our walleye were taken out of light current areas in under four feet. Anyways, after cleaning a bunch of fish too, Paul says to me, “can you smell that?” I look up river and a haze is building from the east, smoke is in the air. As it turns out, 31 forest fires are burning between Kirkland lake and the east coast of James Bay, where we are. But, fires a burning we weren’t going anywhere, and after a little siesta we headed back out for the evening bite.
The bigger fish were out to play. We hadn’t lost a lure to a fish or a snag yet to this point, and that was after about ten hours of total fishing time. Now we were giving them up more frequently, but it was because we were changing tactics, fishing our lures across and downstream instead of mainly up. It worked. The addition of worms to my bucktails was increasing the numbers too. I only fished bucks and Paul stuck to the plastics, and we stayed pretty even. That was until I caught a bullet and bigger fish nearing sunset.
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BEEEEEE UUUUUUU TO THE TTTTTTTT!!! BOOO YAH! Happy guy was I.
Paul and I finished when the mosquitoes came out at sunset. Orange bucks in the sun, and black bucks at sunset reined supreme. Paul finished the day a dismal 30+ walleye and myself, after a slower start but fast and furious evening, caught 40 or more. It got really annoying because these ravenous walleye were actually kinda tough fighters. It was like they were starving and none to shy to fight for a meal.
Saturday morning I was up at 4:45am. We packed camp and were in the boat by 6:00am.
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When we moved down river about three kilometers or so we found no tide in. For the next 5 kilometers or so we paddled, poled or briefly ran shallow drive through 6-inches to a foot of water. It was slow and tedious, but by 8:20am we hit that first creek which we had stopped at on our way up river three days earlier. With the tide completely out I figured the fish wouldn’t be sitting there in that knee high water… MAN WAS I WRONG!
I took a second to put some sunscreen on my face and neck again, tie on a black bucktail and snap a worm. Paul had already caught 6 or 7 fish. Just AMAZINGLY, after 13 minutes of fishing in water I lost count at around 17. (10 for Paul and 7 for me I thought) Just 13 minutes of fishing. We stayed for just over an hour and Paul and I would be low-balling it at 25 walleye each. CAN ANYONE EVEN BELIEVE THAT? Am I wasting my time with this post? Without a word of a lie the fishing was this amazing. This true, I died and went to heaven on this short trip. This place called Missisicabi, the real thing, a true walleye heaven.
So at the end of our trip, exhausted, dehydrated, sunburnt and smelly, chased by fire, paddled out and with a long ride across James Bay home, we revelled in the fact that Paul and I just caught like 220+ walleye in a couple days worth of fishing.
Truly brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it now.
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August 2006. MISSISICABI RIVER. RETURN TO WALLEYE HEAVEN.
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YEAH!!!
This is going to be the favorite summer report, as the journey to this place I call “walleye heaven” is filled with everything that is the essence of the James Bay. To catch a couple hundred walleye with a buddy, and that ain’t so hard to take.
For the second year now my friend Paul has invited me to go along with him to a place very few have traveled. On Wednesday August 2nd, we started our long weekend early by waking up to catch the morning high tide at Sand Head, near the mouth of the Moose River at James Bay. Calm west winds and warm sun, at 7:30am we were loaded, launched, and motoring under the quiet power of Paul’s 40HP Yammy set on the back of his 24-foot Gee-Man.
Hitting the Bay you could faintly smell the salty breeze that would help push us all the way 80 kilometers east across the shallow, muddy, saline ocean. I couldn’t sit still, often neglecting my duty to watch for floating logs and other drifting motor munchers.
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After two hours full out we hit the sand flats about a mile off the east coast of James Bay, and a little south of the channel heading into the river. Paul was pretty quick to find the deep water though, and before long we were inside the mouth. A few Canada’s lined a sandy bar on the way in, and after a couple miles traveling up river we spotted our first bald eagle. Before long we made the Moose Cree Goose Camp and to our delight not one cabin was in use, and neither were any of the teepees or tent frames. About five more kilometers up river we arrived at our campsite and had everything set up by about 11am. On the water, to fish with the river to ourselves, and no one around for likely fifty miles.
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Paul using his standby 4″ white Berkeley grub, had his first within 20 meters of our camp after we set down for a troll.
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I was only moments behind with a decent first of my own, picking up this eye on a red Waveworm.
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For the next five hours or so until supper, Paul and I hammered fish after fish. In fun, he was up on me for sure, which is usually the case early when we’re out. Paul is definitely a better morning and daytime fisherman. By 5:00pm I called a time-out to travel back to camp, clean some fish, have dinner, and rest before the evening bite came on, and before the tide came into bring us up some fresh fish. Here were a couple keepers.
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Water levels were up this year compared to last. Finding fish in the same holes took a little adjusting for Paul and I. The water temps were mid to high 70’s and we were finding 90% of our walleye in slightly swifter current areas holding in 18 to 36-inch depths. Some fish were back in the 4 to 7-foot holes, but not many. The walleye like last year were shallow, but then again, I don’t think there is a hole on that river that would exceed ten feet even with the tide in at this time of year. It’s not like they have to hide either, when water clarity is 16-inches at best.
Back on the water at 7:30pm Paul got right to work. I was finding it hard to keep up as he had this “hardcore fishing machine” energy about him this trip. His white grubs kept kicking .
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But, the evening bite is when I tend to shine, taking big fish honors for the finish.
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That evening we tried to figure it out before hitting the hay. “How many do you think Paul?” I’d asked a few times. “This day… probably around 120 walleye,” he’d answer, but go on to say he had me by twenty fish at least. He was pretty well right I figured.
5:00am the next morning I woke to the sound of my stomach and the shivers. Paul woke about 15 minutes later to the call of two sandhill cranes flying west along the river. I made my way down the bank to the boat to get some bagels and ham, and greeted the morning fog.
After a quick breakfast we were back on the water. This morning we were going to use the incoming high tide to travel safely back down river towards the Bay and try some spots we can only travel to and from while a tide is in. So much of the fishing here seems tide dependent. Fresh schools of fish can move into the river out of the Bay with the incoming tide. Other fish already here can move around easier, or feed off the rising shorelines and food being washed into the river. We in turn can catch fish more easily with a low tide though, when they’re schooled up in and oxygenated shallow swifts or condensed holes. I find it cool to know I’m fishing slightly salty walleyes too… not so saline as the ocean itself, but salty nonetheless.
After 3 1/2 hours trying new spots that produced last year, we’d actually caught nothing. So, we headed back to our holes upriver and slayed them for an hour before lunch.
At noon we broke for some homemade chili. A usual preprepared quick and easy shorelunch.
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During the afternoon we did some trolling. We just troll jigs as nothing is as effective. I tried the fly rod and after 20 minutes or so catching squat and watching Paul catch about 5 or 6, I put that away for good. Also tried my rod spooled with braided line, and for the second year in a row remained skunked with that. Walleye in these parts either don’t hit, or they detect braids far too well… it’s weird..? Back onto 8-pound mono, Paul and I just kept the numbers coming. Only a couple dozen the entire trip would have fallen under the 12″ mark and most walleyes were in the 14-20″ range with maybe two dozen or so stretching into the 20-22″ length.
By 5:00pm a big thunderhead was approaching out of the west. Paul was talking on his satellite phone with his wife and she told us back in Moosonee the power had flickered out due to very high winds and a storm. As the first few drops fell on us I asked to head back to camp for supper. We had some time then and actually managed to cook and eat a big walleye meal when the rains started pelting down. In the trees we were OK, a little buggy and damp maybe, and after an hour it all passed. The sun broke out by 7:30pm when we started out for the evening bite, and again, that evening bite produced bigger fish. It was nothing short of awesome.
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Sunset came quick, it was another nice one.
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End of the day it was probably a liberal 50/50 split for Paul and I. That’s about 50 eyes for him and 50 for me. Plastics took a bit of a backseat to bucktails. Yellow Gulp at the end of a pink and white bucktail had it’s moment during the afternoon, as did Berk pumpkinseed grubs and a dark green with red fleck Waveworm. Heck, maybe I could have just put on a jighead and caught ’em? But, the heads needed to be 3/8-ounce cause 1/4 and 1/2 heads those fish wanted nothing to do with. They were hungry for some specifics I guess..?
A pecking woodpecker in the tree above, next morning we woke to Hell. Hoping to pack up camp and make our way out onto the Bay to travel southward to the Harricanaw River where the walleye are fewer but bigger, that wasn’t going to happen. A cold front with gusty winds and drizzle was hammering down on us, coming in from the north-west. Maybe Paul would have tried, but the river was kicking up pretty good nearer the mouth when we arrived there around 10:00am. I certainly didn’t want to brave big waves coming across that shallow ocean.
Back-tracking instead to the Goose Camp near the mouth of the river, four incoming boats that had traveled east with the prevailing winds and waves came into greet us. Friends from Moosonee. Howie; whom I fished the walleye opener with, arrived with his wife, as well as a couple other Paramedics, and a pilot and their kids. Howie reported it was rough, and that some nastier northern weather looked to be coming along as well. Paul and I made the decision to stay at the camp, dry out our belongings, thoroughly clean some fish, eat up some good meals, fish the lower end of the river come evening, then leave on the following morning tide. It ended up being a great day of R&R, and by 4:00pm we were back on the river fishing as the weather began to lift.
Fishing that evening was off. Paul and I dropped a couple dozen and maybe only caught ten between the two of us. As the tide started to come in we made the executive decision to head back to the goose camp. Arriving there, the winds had died, the river turned to glass, and the sun was setting in clearer skies so, a five minute rip out onto the Bay for a photoshoot was in order.
The geese were out there in good numbers. They were hard to define in the color pic but this sepia shot makes it easier.
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James Bay looking west from the Mississicabi River, Ontario.
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After a good night sleep we stood on the banks the next morning watching and waiting for the tide. When the water rose high enough, Howie and Mandy, and Paul and I, all headed for home.
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Last year catching so many fish and making the trip a first time, it totally blew my mind. This year’s return was something every bit as memorable. Again, it’s walleye heaven.
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Hope to live it again in the future.
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Bunk.
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