Lake of the Prairies in western Manitoba offers great fishing with a scenic backdrop
Jun. 30—LAKE OF THE PRAIRIES, Manitoba — Driving across the Manitoba countryside, past miles and miles of fertile farmland and prairie potholes, it was difficult to imagine the prairie jewel that awaited at the end of our journey.
But as we approached the Shellmouth Dam, there it was — Lake of the Prairies — extending nearly 45 miles to our north, mostly in southwestern Manitoba but also a few miles into southeastern Saskatchewan.
Formed by a dam on the Assiniboine River near the confluence of the Shellmouth River, Lake of the Prairies — also known as Shellmouth Reservoir — was built as a flood control project in the '60s to protect the city of Winnipeg and other communities along the Assiniboine River.
According to
the Manitoba Infrastructure website,
construction on the dam began in 1964, and the project was completed in 1972. The resulting reservoir is situated in a deep, wide portion of the Assiniboine Valley, and steep, tree-lined hills provide protection from the wind and a scenic backdrop for anglers who explore its waters.
Drive out of the valley, and you're right back in the heart of Manitoba farm country.
Lake of the Prairies and adjacent Asessippi Provincial Park, about 4 1/2 hours northwest of Winnipeg, provide a wealth of recreational opportunities, and the lake has developed a reputation as a top-notch walleye fishery.
Based on the fishing that three of us experienced during a recent trip to Lake of the Prairies, the reputation is well-deserved.
The seeds for this adventure had been planted by Jim Stinson, a longtime friend from East Selkirk, Manitoba. A retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, Stinson spent a few years at a detachment in Carberry, Manitoba, where he got to know Rod Waterhouse and his wife, Joyce.
The Waterhouses, our hosts for this excursion, farm near Carberry and built a getaway on Lake of the Prairies about six years ago. They make the 2 1/2 -hour drive to Lake of the Prairies at every opportunity, but Rod spends more time working than fishing, his wife says.
Stinson's and my visit gave Waterhouse an excuse to get his boat in the water and relax for a few days.
The trip to Lake of the Prairies also provided an opportunity to wet a line in a part of Manitoba I'd never experienced. Two years ago, before Canada reopened its border to nonessential travel, Stinson had joined Waterhouse for a few days at Lake of the Prairies and regaled me with stories of the fishing they enjoyed.
When I was invited to join them on a repeat trip this summer, my arm didn't have to be twisted.
Walleye was on the menu for our first night, and finding the main course didn't take long. Waterhouse used his trolling motor to cover water, and we pulled 1-ounce bottom bouncers and spinners tipped with Gulp! crawlers in 10 to 12 feet of water along a shoreline dropoff. As walleyes go, these fish were among the scrappiest I've ever caught.
By the time we called it an afternoon to prepare for supper, we'd caught probably 30 walleyes — all within sight of the Waterhouse lake home — which is much too nice to call a cabin — and kept enough for our evening fish fry.
Not a bad way to start a fishing trip.
Regulations on Lake of the Prairies require anglers to release all walleyes longer than 45 centimeters — about 17 1/2 inches — and many of the fish we caught that first afternoon were too big to keep.
That's a good "problem" to have, by my way of thinking.
The fishing might have been good that first afternoon, but it took a turn into the stratosphere the next morning, when Waterhouse steered us to a couple of sunken humps that topped off at about 6 feet.
We'd barely get our lines in the water when someone would have a walleye on the hook. The walleyes came in a variety of sizes up to 24 inches, our biggest of the trip, not enough to meet the 28-inch minimum required for Travel Manitoba's popular Master Angler program, but very respectable just the same.
Like the water from which they came, the walleyes were dark and beautiful.
I also caught a tagged walleye, a feisty 23-incher, the last day of the trip, but despite repeated efforts, I wasn't able to glean any information about where or when the fish had been tagged. Unlike the
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
and the
North Dakota Game and Fish Department,
which both have quick and easy options for reporting tagged fish on their respective websites, I could find nothing similar for the walleye I caught on Lake of the Prairies. A call to the Manitoba Natural Resources and Northern Development regional office in Brandon, Manitoba, was equally unproductive.
To me, at least, that kind of defeats the purpose of going through the effort of tagging the fish in the first place ... but there you have it.
As the best excursions always do, days quickly settled into a relaxing routine. After coffee and a light breakfast, we'd be on the water at the crack of 10 a.m., fish a few hours, pull up to the dock below Waterhouse's lake home for a lunch break, and head out for more of the same later in the afternoon.
We saw two black bears, one the first evening along the shoreline not far from where we were fishing that didn't seem the least bit bothered by our presence. The last afternoon, a tannish-colored bear — perhaps the most unusual black bear I've ever seen — wandered into view several hundred yards from where we were fishing, far beyond the reach of my cellphone camera.
We didn't keep close count, but in 3 1/2 days of fishing, the three of us figured we caught 150 walleyes, give or take. Even in the busiest fishing spots, we rarely saw more than maybe a half-dozen boats spread out across the water.
The weather was ideal, with generally light winds, temperatures that weren't too hot and skies that probably would have been clear to partly cloudy if not for the ever-present smoke from Canadian forest fires burning far from our prairie surroundings.
We never traveled more than about 15 minutes to catch fish and barely scratched the surface of what Lake of the Prairies has to offer.
I'm already looking forward to next time.
