Moon River Walleye Opener MAY 1, 2011

**Kokemachine** · 05-23-2011, 09:41 AM

My brother, his buddy Jon and I went on a fishing adventure up to the Moon river (near parry sound) for the May 1st walleye /pike opener. We stayed at Moon River Cottages, a camp run by a hilarious and awesome character named Bill. The road into the camp is a real doozy so if anyone makes it out there get ready to drive real slow.

I've been to this camp before. It's nice to have a place like this to go to that isn't that far out of the city. We didn't have any luck with Walleyes but the pike, bass and catfish bite was on.

As we have found in adventures to this place before, finding the fish for us seems to be directly related to water temperature. When fishing there in the summer the river was 80+ so we had to go out onto Georgian bay to find cooler water. Sure enough that's where the fish were. This time the river was around 45 degrees, so we scouted around the shallow bays the most productive of which had 50+ degree water. The fish seemed to be hanging around the mouths of these warm bays. The pike which were in season were hanging around the bass (out of season) so it seemed like the pike and bass were fighting each other to get our lures. My brother was cleaning up on hammer handle pike with a perch colored flat rapp.

In a previous adventure to that location Bill, the operator, had casually informed me that the bullhead catfish are extremely abundant in the river and that cat bite is on right after the sun sets. So I couldn't resist throwing out some of our dead minnows on a bottom rig while I casually sipped adult beverages. The first night two of us pulled in eleven 1+ pound mudcats. The second night I pulled in 6. I kept a couple for frying cajun style. For such a crazy looking fish they sure are delicious!

As for the Walleye, Bill's son was doing well for himself trolling 7" rapalas from 7pm to midnight. We never made it out for night fishing though, and I suspect that's why we didn't catch S**T as far as Walleyes are concerned!

**cbiegel** · 05-23-2011, 11:46 AM

Sounds like a great trip! It's cool that you were able to fish during the day and then still have some action once the sun went down. I could go for some Cajun fried catfish right now.