1. Choose the region you'd like to fish.
Basically, you need to start somewhere. I usually choose this based on preferred driving distance, some local knowledge, or most often, simply curiosity. Some good regions that are within a day's trip reach of Montreal include the Outaouais and Laurentians.
2. Find a more specific area.
This could be one of the harder steps, and local knowledge can go a long way to help stop you from "guessing and checking". In general, use satellite imagery such as Google or Bing Maps to find an area with lots of lakes away from main roads and highways. Avoid anywhere with national and provincial parks, ZEC's, etc. Try to find an area with plenty of crown land.
Generally, the further you get from the city, the better. That being said, I've caught some very respectable fish about an hour away from Montreal. The more you explore, the more ideas you'll get for areas to seek out!
This link takes you to QC's crown land map. It's a bit clunky but gets the job done once you get familiar with it.
3. Pick out the "head lakes".
Use a topographical or altitude tool such as the one linked below to choose all the lakes at the highest altitude within your desired search area. The actual altitude value isn't as important as choosing the highest lakes around. These generally have colder water, fewer predators, and are more likely to hold native trout.
At this point, I'd recommending using Google MyMaps to start marking down all the lakes in question.
4. Try to identify deeper, smaller lakes.
Next, you'll want to identify all the lakes that appear deep enough to sustain a trout population. Use satellite imagery to look for lakes with solid dark colour in their centers, and steep drop-offs. It is sometimes helpful to check on both Google and Bing Maps to see which offers a better image resolution in your chosen area. Remove any lakes that appear too shallow, especially if you can see a large amount of weeds.
I also like to remove all the larger lakes, say anything more than a few kilometers across. These lakes can also have very good fishing, but generally take longer to figure out and are not in the scope of most of these trips.
5. Check the shore access, if applicable.
If you won't be portaging in any sort of watercraft, try to select the lakes that appear to have open shoreline, or boulders/cliffs to cast off of. A lake completely surrounded by dense tree makes the shore fishing much harder. Also check if there are any camps on the lake, which you would want to avoid. Delete the waypoints that don't correspond to good lakes.
6. Check for and formulate your access plan.
Find the nearest roads and plan your route for accessing the lake; Google Maps directions won't always be your best friend here! Choose the best-looking road that gets you closest to your lake, and keep an eye out for any smaller trails or creeks that could help you hike in the last bit.
You want to choose a lake that isn't so far into the bush that your life will be hell, but also isn't so accessible that it will be fished out. Assuming we're talking within a 3-hour radius of a big city, I wouldn't choose anywhere that has a road or ATV trail leading directly to the lake shore. a 300-1000m bushwhack seems to be the sweet spot for me.
These lakes don't always work out! In fact, I find I have about a 50% success ratio on finding fish for every lake I explore using this method. Between unexpected private land, difficulty of access, wrong species, lakes being fished out, and just plain old tough fishing conditions... you can't expect to hit gold every time. Try to choose a couple lakes with different accesses to have as backup plan so your day isn't shot if your first choice doesn't work out. It's happened that I try for three different lakes in one day.
8. Final Check
Finally, make your plan of attack for the actual fishing, selecting the fishiest parts of the lakes. Don't forget to enjoy your adventures out in the woods, and hopefully you'll be rewarded with some beautiful, wild, native, backwoods fish!
No comments:
Post a Comment