Fishing at Elliot Lake

Back home from a fishing trip to Elliot Lake to long grass and a real change in the flowers! I guess some of the rain that we got up there fell down here as well, thankfully!
We left last Tuesday, May 9th and drove right to the municipal camping ground in the town of Elliot Lake. To our surprise the park was posted saying that it did not open until the long weekend in May. However the water and power hookups were working..... So we went to the information centre to see if we could stay there anyway. Sure enough, the girl said "Oh, just ignore the sign"! It hadn't been changed yet! So after registering, we happily set up - the only campers there!
Next day it was off to Mississagi Provincial Park, about 20 minutes north of Elliot Lake. Trout season was open so we expected to be able to use the park using day passes, even though there was no camping until the long weekend. Luckily we arrived there just as a ministry gal was locking up the gate! After speaking with her, she let us in but warned us that we had to be out by 3 or 3:30, the time that everyone would be leaving and locking the gate up again.
So after paddling the main lake and taking the portage, we arrived at Helenbar Lake, a fish santuary for brook trout. It was a miserable day, drizzling and at times, downright raining. The fishing was slow and we wondered if we were ever going to mark any fish. Finally Bob paddled us to a section of the lake where we started to mark fish. It wasn't long until we had two beauties in the canoe!
Here are some pictures taken of the fish back at the truck.
The bigger brook trout was a real beauty, at least 1.5 pounds and 18 inches long. He gave a great fight!


And here is a picture of dad, doing all the hard work!
The next day we fished at a lake where we had limited out on splake last year. Once again it was an overcast day with showers and periods of downright rain! And as was the case the day before, fishing was very slow! We like to say that the fish had lockjaw. We blamed the lack of strikes on the low pressure system that just would not go away. But we wouldn't give up quickly and before quitting time, had a nice splake and good-sized lake trout in the canoe. The lake trout had to be 5 pounds and gave a very good fight!
All in all, it was a good trip but the weather could have been much better! We ended up catching 5 fish in all. Oh yes, and the bugs were bad enough! Unless one was in the breeze, the blackflies were pesky, although I'm not sure that they were biting all that much. Next time we will have to make sure to arrive after the long weekend so that we can have ready access to the best fishing ( in Mississagi).
On the way home, we stayed at Grundy Provincial Park south of Sudbury. They obviously received a lot of rain as the one camping area had huge water puddles that made walking about difficult. We found that the Popular camping area was higher ground and had huge pull-thru sites.
Once again as was the case last year, the whistling swans are nesting on one of the lakes in the park. They seem to come back every year and have adopted Grundy park as their home.