Lake Kipawa, Canada

What part of the lake are you going to?
I guide out of Corbou for three years for moose.
Never fished it that early but the lakers should be shallow,
along with the eyes. Twister tails tossed around the many islands should work.
Try hitting the channels and points trolling leadcore, should get ya some lakers.
Also take some sonars and work them both high and low.
Caught many lakers and walleyes , all in the same area using chartruese.
Never hooked any pike but there are some real hogs in there.

I fished Lake Kipawa w/ family & friends annually in August from 1997-2002. We stayed at the 3-season resort, which required about a 40 minute boat ride in from the docks. The amenities there were nothing extraordinary or lavish, but for the money the facilities were clean & more than adequate. We never enlisted a guide for our fishing trips, we did all of our fishing, exploring, and learning on our own basically.

We normally would target walleyes and northerns with a few stray lake trout thrown in. For the northern pike, we had probably 95% of our success fishing finger lakes off of the main lake. I believe that alot of the outfitters there have access to these finger lakes. To reach these lakes you have to portage all your gear through remote walking paths and the outfitters have small boats kept on these lakes for their clients.

We did very well for pike on these smaller lakes--the best lures there for us were hands down- the original 7" floating Rapala's, either trolled in 6-12 ft. off of rock ledges, weed edges, and any other structure or casting to similar spots. Other good standby lures for pike there are: larger spinnerbaits, spoons, large soft plastics, and other shallow running stickbaits. We would occasionally hook into a few Lake Trout while trolling for pike, but they were mainly small ones (3-5 lbs on avg.) Most of the pike on average were between 25-32 inches. Our personal best pike was 48" & about 25 lbs, but that was an exception not the norm!

For the walleye fishing, that we did strictly on the main lake (Kipawa). We fished for walleyes earlier in the morning and later in the evening. The best ticket we found for walleye was simply a 1/4 round jig rigged with a crawler. We also caught walleyes running bottom bouncers w/worm harnesses, and also caught a few decent ones trolling crankbaits. The bottom structure is very rip-rapped and trolling without hanging up is quite difficult to do, so you are probably better served anchoring or drifting for them. In August, the best bite for the walleyes was in 18-22 foot depths. Once again-look for rock ledges, outcroppings, and similar structures--alot of the rock shelves are marked with bouys, and the fish are very often holding adjacent to these areas. We always brought a portable depth finder to mark spots, since the lake is hundreds of feet deep in places and sometimes tough to find spots. We found a rocky hump that came up to 15ft sorounded by 60-70 ft of water, and we absolutely hammered walleye off that spot. If I remember the walleye must be 12 or 14" to keep--we caught boatloads of small ones with some nicer fish 18-22 sprinkled in. We did catch a few in 24-27 in range and did see some other groups bringing in some bigger fish occasionally.

Like I mentioned earlier, we never specifically targeted lake trout, but did on occasion catch a few. Late in the summer they move into deeper water and are tough to catch. You must reort to to using wire line rigs and/or other deep-trolling or drifting tactics to catch them.

Hope that gives you somewhat of a baseline to get started...

We are staying at Taggart Bay Lodge.  Anyone fish out there before?  Any success?  Thanks for the info everyone.

On the very far right of Mckenzie island is Corbeau Island. (which you can,t see here).
Caught many lakers and eyes in the narrows here.

I fished there 3 years and it was night and day each time.. hot-n-tots and rapalas did well everytime on both walleye and lakers as well as jigs.  they have a few lakes you walk to that have nothing but pike so take the steel leader they are monsters.  mosquitos and black flies were a pain but out in the lake they didn't bother us at all.  it can get bad with the waves so be careful.  Also you can go from 200 FOW to 5 in about 10 feet so beware of the depth changes. The points that have deep water in front did well in the evenings.  there is one point that the locals gather and enjoy the fruits of both walleyes moving up and a little green plant that apparently grows around there on friday and saturday nights.   We came up on the point down wind and continued to fish there until the munchies took over.  We usually got there the first week of june and the walleyes were not that deep but the lakers started moving deeper so carry something to get down as well as a rod holder for troling.   It has been 10 years since i have been there we stayed on an island that a couple ran.   Carry your fly swatter to the shower so you can kill the local blood suckers there waiting for you.