Wilderness, Kayaks, Brown dogs, and Brook Trout.

Brandon Yuchasz

Brandon Yuchasz

Well-known member
I had a great day last weekend and thought I would share some pictures with you guys.

I have a great friend that lives about an hour from me. He is one of those friends that always has a new plan or scheme to get to a great fishing or hunting spot. He makes a perfect duck hunter!

Last year he invited me to a trout lake that "takes some work" to get into. I kept putting him off but finally went and oh my goodness was it a great time. So this year when the invite came I jumped at the chance. Now "take some work" turns out to mean that its a wilderness lake once mile through the woods over fairly rough terrain. The people that do bother to fish it wade from shore and cast. We however took kayaks into the lake. We used wheels strapped to them and it worked fairly well. We both own Chessies from the same lines and he does not go anywhere without at least one of his dogs. I chose to leave my young dog at home he is not Kayak trained yet, the older dog had surgery and could not go. Its a site to see a brown dog trained to ride on the back deck of a kayak all day long without complaint.

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Of course she would not be a Chessie if she did not swim a little bit.

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We fished most of the day, the lake is artificial bait only single hook and no fish under 15" can be kept. One fish per day is the possession limit. We hooked and released a lot of 12" fish and missed even more due to the single hook regulation. I do suspect it saves many smaller fish from being killed by being hooked to deeply with treble hooks.


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Towards the middle of the day I was trolling with the kayak and hooked a fish I could tell had some size to it.


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I ended up bringing it to the net, I can tell you I lost several before the net this day that were larger but this one went just shy of 17" which is a heck of a bookie in these parts.

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Loons, Otters, and absolute silence of the wilderness. I am lucky to live where I do and even luckier to have good friends and the freedom to spend time with them.

Hope you guys all have a good friend to drag you on a few adventures. Make the time to go it might work out and even if it doesn't you will have spent time with a good friend and maybe a dog or two.
 
Brandon,
Nice trip, nice pictures, even nicer fish but,,,,,,,,,,,,, don't you have a day job? :>)
OK, I'm just envious. I'd carry my kayak a mile thru the woods for a bit of that!
 
Nice! Great colors on those fish. Looks like a great place to keep to yourself. I hope none of the shore guys were there, I bet you would have ruined their day.
 
Good one! Kayaks are the way to go for those hard to reach places.

There's a great spot here that is 9 beaver dam portages to get into, but with kayaks its not too bad. Mac and his buddies went int there for a long day on Saturday and one kid landed a 40" pike and two 32" lakers! That's big fish to handle from a kayak.

Keep those pictures coming Brandon,

Mike
 
Dave,
I do have a day job but since I am self employed I tend to work my job around my life. Its kinda like being retired but I have a less steady income!

I just looked at those pictures again the ones of the fish still in the water was one of the larger ones I lost trying to net. Guess I should have not screwed around taking pictures of it. Oh well I could only keep one anyway.
 
This is one of a series of lakes in this area of Michigan stocked with Assinica strain brook trout by the MDNRE, hence the hook and creel restrictions. Assinica strain brookies grow quickly and get quite marked dorso-ventral depth to them.

Contact Jim Aho at the Marquette State Fish Hatchery. Ask Jim to send you the pictures from 2013 of the father/son team with Assinacas from lakes over by Newberry. They set a bucket list goal of fishing all of these lakes over an interval of years. Jim photo shopped the background of their fish pics to inhibit the viewer's ability to identify specific lakes where they caught fish in the 20 plus inch range-beautiful fish.

I used to fish Dutch Fred Lake until the bank fisherman destroyed the fishery by bringing in perch minnows in their illegal bait buckets. While listed still, it is not planted anymore.

Many of these lakes are on CFR lands held by private timber companies. Under CFR guidelines, motorized vehichle use beyond gates is illegal. Pedestrian public access is encouraged for hunting, fishing, and recreation excluding overnight camping. We have a contract with one of these companies to map several complexes of these lakes and make recommendations regarding limiting access. Two years ago, while mapping a cluster of 14 lakes, we found an illegal access road, campsite with fire ring, and dock complex erected on the shore of one of these over by Grand Marais. When HFG sent a work crew in to eliminate this complex, they removed 117 beer cans left at the site in the fire ring. Michigan has a bottle and can return law and these cans were not stamped, it was easy to determine that the offenders were not Michigan residents.
 
I used to fish Dutch Fred Lake until the bank fisherman destroyed the fishery by bringing in perch minnows in their illegal bait buckets. While listed still, it is not planted anymore.



What, folks in boats never poach? Illegally introduced baitfish are a scourge on trout throughout their range, especially in lakes, but Maine experience suggests that folks who troll live or sewn bait from big boats and even folks who fly in on a float plane from a fancy lodge can be just as guilty as those lowly "bank fishermen" when it comes to dumping the bait bucket.
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Actually, Jeff, I was repeating a direct statement made by the MDNR's manager who has oversight for these lakes. It was his determination regarding the source of the yellow perch infestation which lead to the agency decision to cease planting this body of water. Illegal ATV access "trails" and boats chained to trees near the water's edge are becoming far more common at these lakes, particularly on private timber company lands. As I stated earlier, mechanized travel beyond gates on CFR land is illegal. While illegal it is rampant in the UP of Michigan.
 
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Well, if the manager knows it was a bank fisherman, they must have caught the guy and prosecuted him. Here's hoping he's rotting in jail.

I guess my point is that it could just as easily have been a criminal using one of the chained boats. (Heck, I have a few of those on paper company land myself. It can be a real grunt getting them in there, but they sure make the fishing more enjoyable. I hope that, and the days I fish from the bank, don't make me a poacher.)

As for the yellow perch, up here their impact on trout seems mixed. They've wiped out wild brook trout in some places, but in others they've had little impact--especially in deeper lakes where the perch and trout are not forced to share the same habitat. Stocked brook trout seem to tolerate yellow perch OK, though growth rates in ponds with perch may be slower than those without.

Are they thinking of reclaiming the pond? Otherwise those perch will keep moving up and down the watershed, unless there are effective natural or manmade barriers in place.

I agree with you that the best strategy for avoiding illegal fish introductions is to limit access to walk-in anglers. The ATV craze has made that a whole lot more difficult.

Jeff
 
I sure enjoyed this one, Brandon. That brown dog is special. Your head net gear sure reminded me of being on Kodiak Island when that net was the only thing that saved me from going insane. Beautiful pictures and a great story.
Al
 
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The conversation occurred during a meeting between the timber company forestry manager, myself, and MDNR Fishery Divison personnel over the future management of several of these lakes. MDNR Fish. Div. folks were "concerned" regarding the intent of the timber company's initiative to hire my employer to "map" these lakes. Since the effort involved developing a bathymetric map of the lake, a fish inventory, submerged and emergent aquatic plant inventory and a shoreline vegetation description for a 100 meter perimeter on each water body, MDNR Fish. Division personnel wanted to reach an "understanding" that public access closure for development (private cabin sites) would result in cessation of Assinica brook trout and rainbow trout plant efforts. Some of these lakes are so remote they are planted via helicopter, others are relatively close to established woods roads

The timber company is trying to limit illegal campsites, trash build-up, and mechanized traffic (ATV and UTV) since they bear the cost of eventual clean-up.

MDNR is currently planning a rotenone treatment for Dutch Fred. This has been delayed several times due to funding constraints.

Nearly all surface waters(lakes, rivers, streams) in this area are softwater systems with very low carbonate hardness values. They are very sensitive to airborne dry fallout of mercury as well as dry fallout pesticide deposition from the west. Common with the purpose of my initial post in the "Great White North" thread, many of the wetlands that drain directly to suface waters within these watersheds are very efficient methylating environments with respect to their action on inorganic mercury deposition, particularly the concentration pulse that occurs at snowmelt as these particles bound in the snowpack are "liberated" in surface runoff. Marked downward pH shifts from snowpack bound "acid" also increase heavy metal solubility and consequent transport rates. These surface waters are also very sensitive to nitrogen and phosphorus "enrichment" associated with human activity.

Over the last two summers two of us have "mapped" roughly two dozen water bodies using a sub-meter accurate Trimble GPS unit synced to a small battery pack powered sonar unit that we attach to a canoe. Some lakes are a bugger to get to, others have illegal access sites on the shoreline with anywhere from one or two chained boats to a peak value of eleven. Some are currently in-use, others have been long abandoned. Many of these lakes contain nesting common loon pairs, osprey or eagle nests along their perimeter's. Two have had trumpeter swans nesting onshore. We attach a laminated card from the Timber Company to the chain explaining "the rules". We have also been requested to flip each boat over, which seemed initially odd. After doing this who knows how many times, I have "discovered" everything from coolers and bait buckets, to gillnets, corroding car batteries, and even several fish spears (legal for use by Tribal subsistence "fishers", illegal for all others).

We have seen several moose, three sets of mountain lion tracks, six wolves, a handful of black bears, one bobcat, and numerous coyotes and whitetail deer. The personal wildlife sighting highpoint for me was walking-up on fresh cougar tracks on a muddy section of a two-track, left after a downpour that fell four hours earlier. One set was an adult cat and one set was a young-of-the-year cat. The field technician I was working with had just graduated with a Wildlife Biology degree. There has been no official documentation of cougar reproduction in Michigan. He was pretty excited- taking well over a dozen photos, measured track gait, track size, etc. to supply to MDNR Wildlife Division personnel. The first illegal cougar kill (fall of 2012 during deer season) documented by MDNR COs was twelve miles away from this site. It is within two dozen miles of the last documented legal cougar killed in Michigan in the early 1900s.

Over the thirty-four years I have lived in this area, these lands have had five corporate owners. I have been quite impressed with the level of stewardship displayed by their current owner...
 
Thank Al,
Thats actually my buddy but yes when I saw him wearing that when I arrived at the parking area I knew it was going to be a buggy day. He was fishing the calm side of the lake out of the wind with a flyrod. He wanted to stay out of the wind so he could cast easier they bugs were worse out of the wind. I stayed out in the chop. Harder paddling but I didn't need a net over my head.

For the record, I didn't see any ATV trails, poaching, minnow buckets, worms, or the like being used by the shore fishermen we met. Just outdoors men like ourselves enjoying the outdoors.
 
For the record, I didn't see any ATV trails, poaching, minnow buckets, worms, or the like being used by the shore fishermen we met. Just outdoors men like ourselves enjoying the outdoors.
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What about hoardes of 'sconies toting beers into the wilderness??? :).

Nice trip either way.
 
Dang, nice show! A 17" brookie is a big one almost anywhere! I do not miss those north woods bugs though, I almost forgot until I saw the face net.
 
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