Sturgeon Lake, Ontario Area -- Just booked a trip... Commence Planning! ANY HELP APPRECIATED!

[Cobber]

Well I just got off of the phone from booking my first fishing trip into Canada. Decided to do a week at a resort on Sturgeon Lake in Ontario during this coming June- hard to believe it's only 5 months away!

The neat part is that the resort allows you to trailer their rented boats to the area lakes if you so choose.

Now- the planning part commences, with a main part of my focus being on the information on area lakes, where to fish for what, etc.

Turns out that my navionics app only has the lake in 20' contours- and there are so many other lakes around there that I wouldn't even know where to begin to look.

Does anybody have any information that they may be able to help me with on the area?? I'd sure appreciate it! Anything at all is going to be a big help, I am sure-

Thanks All!

-Cobber

[Down Deep]

I haven't been up in that area for about 10 years, but the Sturgeon area used to be an annual stop. If you can get into Lake of Bays, do it. I'm not sure if the road is still open. Ask your resort owner. It's great walleye and pike lake and very fun to fish. One section has lakers, but we never fished for them. Sturgeon has a good lake trout population that are usually very eager to bite. I never thought much of the walleye fishing though. Every year I think about heading up there, but we've turned our attention to other areas.

[tyeetanic]

We were up there last June. We didn't fish Lake of Bays, but it seemed that everyone else at the resort was going there. It's seven miles of single lane trail they told me. Bring a chainsaw to create a pull off in case you meet another vehicle. Generally, people go in in the morning and come out in the afternoon; kind of an informal one-way road. Our cabin neighbors came back with lots of nice walleyes and northerns and saw several moose in there, or "mooses" as their little grand daughter said. We caught lake trout vertical jigging in Sturgeon. For walleyes, you can't beat Watcomb Lake, a few miles west of the Silver Dollar. I hardly got to fish cause the wife caught a walleye every ten minutes that I had to take care of. The limit has been 2 there for 18 years, and it shows. The "private property- no trespassing" sign alongside the road in there is bogus. It's a remnant of a fiasco years ago when a private company tried unsuccessfully to keep everyone out. The resort owners can give you the details. Happy fishing!

[mainbutter]

If at Sturgeon for lake trout: they won't necessarily be super deep, have been times that the thought was they were at the bottom of deep parts (and plenty were) but when deep jigging wasn't productive, it turns out that trolling shad raps and tail dancers boated fish for us.

For lake contours - a google search will bring up one-off paper or laminated contour maps for plenty of Canada lakes that may not have decent mapping on a chip. Chips are a great value for the # of lakes you get on them and your location can be pinpointed with GPS, but for an expensive trip to a new lake, I'd recommend doing yourself a favor and buying a map. An added bonus is then you have a non-battery-dependent map which is a nice safety backup for any new lakes. A hard copy contour map and a depth finder will help you locate structure sometimes better than other options.