On this lake in the heart of Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park, that’s never a problem.
It’s become a tradition, in recent years, for five of us to take a break from our annual Manitoba Red River catfish adventure for a day trip into Crowduck Lake.
The two-hour drive east from our base in Lockport, Man., takes us from the prairies into the rugged Canadian shield country that characterizes the Whiteshell, a region where lakes are studded with islands, and trees manage to grow out of sheer rock.
Accessible only by portage, Crowduck Lake is one of the area’s shining jewels.
Crowduck Lake Camp is the only camp on the remote lake, and owner Bill Kolansky offers daily boat shuttle service from the pickup point and across Big Whiteshell Lake, where a pickup truck with a covered box meets visitors on the far side for the two-mile trip into Crowduck and some of the best walleye fishing imaginable.
There’s no need for a guide. Crowduck is the only catch-and-release walleye lake in Manitoba, and landing upwards of 100 fish per boat in a day isn’t unusual.
The quality of Crowduck’s walleye fishing also makes it a perfect place to experiment, and that’s what a friend and I decided to do last Sunday.
Smooth ride
Besides fast fishing in a wilderness setting, Crowduck Lake is home to one of the best-run fishing camps you’ll find anywhere. The camp’s seven cabins usually are full, even in these challenging economic times, but Kolansky offers daily boat rentals for anglers who want to experience what Crowduck has to offer.
As with our previous trips into Crowduck, we were greeted in camp by staff who carried our gear down to the docks. The motors on our two boats already were running, and after receiving maps marked with the latest fishing hotspots and a refresher on operating the motors, we were on our way.
Many anglers who fish Crowduck’s walleyes use salted shiner minnows, but over the years, we’ve found artificial baits work just as well.
That’s where the day’s experiment came into play.
My fishing partner and I decided to see whether Berkley’s new “Gulp! Alive!” — a scented bait that’s all the rage this year — worked any better than the company’s traditional “Gulp!”
Berkley packages its new product in a tub of liquid it dubs “Magic Gravy.” That allows users to recharge their baits by putting it back in the solution.
By comparison, traditional Gulp! is packaged in a plastic pouch and only can be used one time. And since it lacks the “Magic Gravy,” old Gulp! doesn’t disperse as much fish-catching scent as the new stuff.
That’s the marketing hook, at least.
The test begins
Even on a lake as full of walleyes as Crowduck, catching fish at will isn’t always as simple as dropping a line in the water, and it took us a few hours to find a consistent pattern.
Perhaps rattled by the morning thunderstorm, the walleyes were a bit tentative, at first. Or maybe we just weren’t fishing in the right places. We’d catch three or four fish in a spot before moving on to new water.
The bite was light, barely a tic, and the new Gulp! didn’t produce any better than the old.
Typical of Crowduck, most of the walleyes measured 17 to 20 inches, and on light tackle, they made a good showing of themselves. Crowduck is crystal-clear, and we easily could see the fish on our lines 10 feet down.
The storm clouds had moved out by early afternoon, when we stumbled on the kind of walleye action that gives Crowduck its reputation.
We were fishing a bay of a large island next to a point where the water quickly drops from 20 feet into 40 feet or more of water.
The walleyes we caught were in 12 feet to 16 feet, and we fooled most of them by pitching jigs and slowly reeling back to the boat. An empty water bottle rigged with line and a 3-ounce weight served as a makeshift marker buoy to keep us in the fish zone.
The results …
We found a similar spot later that afternoon in 22 feet of water and were catching walleyes nearly every cast when we reluctantly had to reel up for the 15-minute boat ride back to camp and the trek across the portage to our pickup point on Big Whiteshell Lake.
To say the day had flown by would be an understatement.
As for our little test, my partner who used traditional Gulp! boated one more walleye than I did using Gulp! Alive! for much of the day.
Our final tally was 71 walleyes — we used a clicker counter to keep track — and we also missed or lost another 25-30 fish.
So what does our little test prove? In the end, probably nothing. Some people say you can catch Crowduck’s walleyes on just about anything.
All I know is this: I’ll have both kinds of “Gulp!” in my arsenal when we return to Crowduck next year.
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