Stormer Lake Lodge: Storming Stormer Lake Walleyes Pt.1
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
- Hey everyone,
Welcome to Ontario, Canada !!!
On May 31st, which was my 19th birthday, I had the opportunity to spend a week at Stormer Lake Lodge in Ontario, Canada to chase walleyes along with 5 other friends. Between the 6 of us, we caught 750 walleyes over the span of 6 days!!!
This is Part 1 of our trip, which includes the journey past the Canadian Border, and Days 1 and 2 at Stormer Lake Lodge. Part 2 will be out very soon, so stay tuned for that!!
(Side note: This trip was filmed during the first week of June, so better late than ever, right?)
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There may be some bloopers and funny moments throughout this 2 part series, so Enjoy!!!
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Hello! Welcome to the channel!
My name is Quinn McCoy AKA Quinn
I've always had a love for fishing ever since I was 4 years old. Throughout my life, I have been fortunate enough to travel to some amazing fisheries all over the Upper Midwest and parts of Ontario, Canada, with my family.
The content that I will be posting here will be Fishing videos, both from open water and on the ice, so If you haven't already, click the Subscribe button to follow along on my journey here on CZcams!
Keep It Reel!
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Instagram: / rightonqfishing24
That cicada blade bait is fun to fish!!
It was an absolute blast catching walleyes on the Cicadas! They were also smashing Binks Spoons and the size 5 Berkeley Finishers up in shallow water!!!
@@Right_On_Q_Fishing I love the cicadas, but they aren’t good in current.
Like very much
Great video my dude! what software and gear are you using for making the videos.
I use both a GoPro Hero 9 black and a Hero 12 black, along with a Yolotek pole for boat POV Shots!!
For trips like this, both cameras are setup on jaws flex mounts.
Editing wise, IMovie and Adobe Premiere Pro!
Music by Epidemic Sound and CZcams Music
What kind of set ups did you guys use out there? How was the entire camp? Read great reviews of them on walleye central in the past
We used plastics and jigging spoons the entire 6 days, the fish were all up shallow, casting into 4-6 ft of water and working the shallows, along with the walleye, we caught a few nice smallmouth bass and Giant Northern Pike, overall it was a great trip!
The lodge was very nicely setup, hosting 5 cabins, and a very nice main lodge/dining hall. Food was great, service was good, and it was super convenient right of the main road!!
As Quinn said, we caught each and every one of the over 700 walleyes we caught that week on BfishN plastics, Binks Spoons (1/2 once silver and gold) and Berkley Finishers #5 (Sunset 84 and Blue Smelt). The spoons and Finishers were incredible, but fish them on at least 20-30# Flouro leaders as the pike like them too. We pulled plastics over the points and weed edges and crushed the fish. There were two other cabins who spent over $500 for the week on frozen minnows..... Needless to say, what an incredible waste of money. TBH, the camp WAS NOT s advertised. The front trolling motors on their boats are NOT functional. Most are broken, and most are such old ineffective motors that they were unusable. New ownership was less than impressive. As good as the fishing was, I will not go back to their camp. Quinn is being polite, but it was far from acceptable.
Thats really interesting that the new owners weren’t impressive. I went and met them in Green Bay and thought they were great people and willing to learn the industry. I actually knew someone at stormer the same week you guys were there, and they had amazing results. Catching well over 100 fish per day per boat!!! I’ve also been to stormer a handful of times, and it seems to me you weren’t fishing it correctly. The sit down meeting is very informative on what spots to fish and lures to use, and I know 1/2 ounce anything were out of the question. And for that time of year the fish would have been more in the 8 to 15’ foot range. What were you expecting out of the owner that they didn’t deliver?
Quinn nice video can’t wait to see part 2!
@@tyler1997-v7b Wow.... there is so much to unpack here.... First, please do not confuse "great people" with experienced or knowledgable fisher people. Yes, they bought their dream Canadian fishing camp, but that in no means suggests that they have acquired a ton of fishing knowledge out experience on the lakes that now operate a lodge on. And, to be fair, how could you expect them to, when they had only fished the lake once in there lives during a week last summer when they made the decision to try and buy the lodge. It was also quite evident in our conversations with the owner that he is NOT an experienced walleye fisherman. A weekend warrior maybe..... But he did not understand modern sonars, depth finders, trolling motors and what they bring to the table. The "bait store " they manage is useless. There is not a single casting plastic or newer walleye lure there.... It is almost like modern walleye fishing has passed this camp by.
Next, the sit down meeting was a TOTAL JOKE!!!!! The spots to fish were not accurate, and I will explain this more later. The only "info" in you call it that was that YOU MUST USE FROZEN DEAD MINNOWS to catch fish. They even handed us a bait card to track our purchases, and I told them to keep it as we won't need it.... The lead guide laughed and then told us we would not catch any fish. Seriously? Our first half day was our "worst" day with only 68 fish in 5 hours. I guess a landed fish every 4.4 minutes is bad eh? The next day was 120 fish, and day three was over 200 fish. We met MULTIPLE boats who struggled to catch fish. They bragged about 50 fish days. One guy told us that he had an AMAZING day!!! We asked how many he caught and his biggest and he said 18!!!! Yes 18 fish. We were doing that each hour on day three.... Yes, there were boats that caught a hundred per day, how could there not be on these lakes, but they also spent an extra $500 per cabin on dead bait.... We caught every fish on artificial baits, and a few of the "regulars" even asked us what in the world we were doing as they ONLY vertical jig, and we NEVER vertically jig and cast 100% of the time.
Now, you just told me that if we were using 1/2 ounce of "ANYTHING were out of the question" ... Really? you might wish to re-think that. Your statement only proves to me that you have never cast and rip jigged a Binks spoon a day in your life. Maybe Quinn will throw in some spoon footage in his next video... We cast those 1/2 ounce spoons into anywhere from 2-8 feet of water and slaughtered the fish. FYI, we also cast 1/2 ounce cicadas and Kastmaster spoons and caught fish. That info meeting was DEAD wrong, we caught over 200 fish in 2-4 feet of water ( the super shallow water by outlet bay was dynamite), and over a thousand in 4-8 feet of water, so much for 10-20 feet..... Our two best days were in locations they never pointed to or discussed, and we also never saw another one of the 14 camp boats anywhere near us when we crushed them pulling plastics in 4-6 feet of water. We had 6 people in three boats in our cabin (that in itself is another bad camp issue that I will refrain from discussing) and combined our group caught over 1600 walleyes for our trip, and that does not include the large number of smallies and pike that we caught as well.
In our post trip discussions, the six of us asked this question: Did the camp owner do anything to enhance our boating / fishing experience? The answer was 100% NO. I could go on about the false advertising about how the boats were rigged, but suffice it to say the trolling motors were either broken, dead batteries, or absent from the boats. The depth finders were OLD generation humminbirds that really were only good for depth.... I had to put a screw that I brought with me into the collar of the minnkota in my assigned boat to make it even functional, I left it behind to help out another poor soul stuck in an otherwise disappointing boat. On top of that, we needed a crew driver to wedge out the release mechanism to even deploy the trolling motor, and on day two the rope to lift and deploy the motor broke. For $1500 a week, you expect this gear to be functional, and it failed in every conceivable way. Call me spoiled, but spot lock is a must. remote, or foot control is a must. These motors had neither, and did not even work..... Now, to be fair, could the owner spend the money to upgrade this equipment? Sure, but we hardly think he will have any incentive to do so, most of the "regulars" are used to back trolling their 50hp's, don't need good sonar to vertical jig up enough fish to make them happy. My bet would be this: There will not be a serious update of any of his boating equipment, based on the notion "if you don't like it don't come back.... " And we won't.
I will leave you with a few more ideas to ponder. We had a member of our group bring his own boat, with modern humminbirds, equipped with side scan sonar. and a modern functional trolling motor. I brought a portable forward facing sonar unit with me that we deployed in a camp boat. Both of us could see fish in shallow water, on weed edges, on rock points that the other boats had no idea were there. I doing so, we put our boats quite a distance from those shallow water fish and cast to them. Technology when used right is an important tool, this is a old school camp by any measure.
Please keep in mind we are far from inexperienced Canadian Shield fishermen. Our group has a combined number of days on these northern bodies of water in excess of a thousand days. 30 years of trips to Red Lake, Lake of the Woods, Eagle lake, Rainy Lake etc.... Houseboats, Lodges, camping, you name it. Quinn has been fishing these northern waters since he was 6. I hope he enjoys them throughout his adult life like we all have. We greatly appreciate you watching, as well as your feedback. I hope this last paragraph gives you a little more insight to why this trip was a fantastic fishing experience, yet a disappointing camp experience. It is true that the new owners might make the changes needed to match their camp experience to their lakes experience. They deserve that benefit of the doubt.
@@davemccoy9153 - Wow Dave, now that is a lot to unpack.
As you said, SLL has new owners who are new to the Canadian resort business as well. They acquired the lodge at the end of last season and that includes the boats with the electronics. They came with those trolling motors and locators. The website and brochures are from the old owners too. It takes time to learn how to operate a resort AND learn the bodies of water there. It takes time and lots of money to make upgrades too. How about cutting the new owners some slack and giving them a chance.
You failed to mention that for your check-in process, Bob was back home at his best friend’s funeral. Bonnie has not yet learned the fishing aspect of the lodge and that is not her job there either. Your comment was very unfair and showed little couth. Once again, cut the new owners some slack. Give them a chance to learn. As a seasoned pro, why would you need the owners to tell you where to fish and how? I learned those lakes on my own. Early season is crazy easy there. The fish are shallow. When they move to the humps, things get more interesting as you have to find them. I love breaking down new water on my own. It is fun and challenging. I found every Pike spot we fish, and we fish Pike > 50% of our days, and finding them all over the years makes it so much more rewarding.
I have been going there since the previous owners bought the lodge. First, I will say very very few people use the trolling motors or would even if they were newer. The old owners wanted to yank them all. Yes, they are crap but one does not need them. Would I love spot lock and auto pilot? Of course. I could bring my own boat but I don’t. I do bring a Helix 10. I never use SI or DI as they are not needed there. This last trip, I left my Mega Live Imaging at home because, while it is great, it does not add fish to my boat there because the fishing is so easy there. When I go to a hump, I know in a couple of minutes if they are there or not. And, BTW, I have pounded fish on humps when we could not mark any because they were sitting tight to bottom where even FFS would not show them.
Please give me your favorite 5 Canadian resorts that have Helix 10s or equivalents along with Terrovas or Ulterras on their boats. I will then go see their price and compare to SLL. Make sure those places also include unlimited gas like SLL. Not sure how many fly-ins you have done but you would never get those electronics at a fly-in. I look forward to seeing your list. When we were evacuated from fires at SLL in 2019, we went to Temple Bay Lodge. They had boats with Terrovas and Helix 7s. But, they charged a mint as “upgrade boats”. They also added over $200 per week per boat for insurance.
Now lets do some math. Let’s say they need to upgrade the electronics on 14 boats. Knowing how things break often, let’s have enough to rig 20. What is the cost for 20 Helix 10s/12s with DI and SI? Add in mounting brackets. Now add the cost of 20 Terrovas plus 20 additional new deep cycle batteries and the plugins. Now we have to add 20 onboard chargers AND we have to now run power to every boat so they can be plugged in. Do you have the extra $100k+ sitting around after buying a $1m resort? Think all upgrades happen overnight? In fairness, they have been working on fixes to the cabins, lodge, etc and they focused on learning the day to day operations of running a resort.
When it comes to bait, I too love catching them jigging. Just this last trip, I worked plastics and snap jigged Jigging Raps and Shiver minnows a lot. But, with the fish in 25-35fow, frozen minnows ruled the roost when it came to numbers caught. In July when I go and the fish are on the humps, we use crawlers and leeches too. Many ways to skin a cat there but I will say that the frozen shiners win at the end of the day once the fish migrate from the shallows. One gets around 4dz minnows in a tub for $14. It is not a bad deal.
IMHO, the new owners are doing great. They are wonderful people. Nice and kind and they accept constructive criticism and ideas. They do not have an endless supply of cash and didn’t want to increase their costs year 1. People, other than you, have given them a fair shake. 98% of their business is repeat clients and there is a reason for that. They don’t need people like you there. You seem like a perpetual whiner to me who will complain about everything. I’m glad you caught fish there. It is easy to do there with or without the latest in technology.