Over the next few days, the fishing improved and we started catching some larger bass, pike and sauger, but the walleye bite never arrived. On Wednesday night the weather changed, the temps dropped down, and the wind started coming in from the NE.
Namakan has more islands and much tighter narrows, so navigating and maneuvering the HB was a little tricky in places. On Wednesday evening we moved the HB from Sullivan Bay to HB Campsite N51 on the northern shore of Namakan Island in Lake Namakan to try our luck over there. Ebels provided a set of Lake Maps, and by using those with our cell phones we were able to move the HB around the lakes without any major problems. I have a Chartplotter with Lake Maps on my Lund, and those maps were very accurate, but those don’t help when you are trying to move the houseboat, and your fishing boat is tethered 10 feet behind you. Luckily we had downloaded Google Maps to our cell phones, and were able to use those maps and the GPS capabilities of our phones to pinpoint our HB location as we moved. Our Verizon cell phones did not work at all on Kab or Namakan (no Verizon towers in the area). but the walleye just weren’t biting, and the Bass and Pike we caught were small to mid-sized. We saw tons of large fish on my Garmin, and tried everything: trolling bottom bouncers tipped with minnows or crawlers, jigging crawlers or minnows, trolling spoons and rapalas, etc. We fished the reefs and narrows around Wolf Island, Pine Island, Ritchie Island, Freedom Island, Chase Island and the reefs off Martins Island, and trolled the entire southern shore from Daly Bay to Sullivan Bay. I guess that's why they call it "Fishing" not "Catching". We threw everything we had at them, but got very little in return. Our chart-plotter put us over some large schools of Walleye and Small Mouth, but the fish just weren't biting.
There are a ton of U-Tube videos showing how good the walleye and bass fishing can be on Kab. The first three days of fishing on Lake Kabetogama were not as good as we had hoped it might be. Kab and Namakan have deep channels, but they are studded with many Islands and shallow reefs that make navigating and maneuvering an under powered 42’ houseboat a little challenging for novices like my brother and I. The 42’ houseboat was rented from Ebels’s on the Ash River, and it was very comfortable, but it was seriously under powered with only 60HP, which made it very difficult to control in high wind conditions. We started in Lake Kabetogama on Monday, but parked our houseboat on the Ash River in Sullivan Bay because of the high winds on Kab. The fishing wasn’t exactly “world class” but the scenery and the chance to relive old memories more than made up for it, and we managed to catch a few fish along the way. The area was beautiful this time of the year with the scent of pine needles in the air and all of the wild rice ripening in the weed beds. We rented a houseboat for the seven day adventure and ended up spending three days on Lake Kabetogama and four days on Lake Namakan. The trip was fantastic and we both had a great time exchanging family stories and reliving prior trips to this area as boys when we camped and canoed the Minnesota and Ontario waters out of Camp Koochiching, on Rainy Lake. Reservations can be made online or by calling by calling at 87.My brother and I just returned from a 7 day fishing trip to Lake Kabetogama and Lake Namakan in Voyageurs National Park. Please check the current winter trail conditions for updates.Īll Frontcountry campsites are water-based, require a permit, and can only be accessed by boat. Frontcountry campsites are directly accessible by boat. In the winter there are snowmobile trails in the area. There are commercial services in the park that offer private boat tours, fishing charters, canoe rentals, etc. Namakan Lake can be accessed by paddling or boating through either Kabetogama Lake or from Crane Lake into Sand Point Lake. Reservations can be made online or by calling at 87. Voyageurs National Park offers boat tours.
Namakan Lake provides great boating, camping, paddling, and fishing opportunities. Name’ or Nah-mee means sturgeon in the Ojibwe language. The park encompasses 12,323 acres of Namakan Lake. The name Namakan figures prominently in history. It has 146 miles of shoreline, a maximum width of 7 miles, and a maximum depth of 150 ft. Namakan Lake can be accessed through the gateway communities of either Kabetogama Lake, Ash River or Crane Lake. Namakan Lake is 16 miles long and 25,130 acres in size.
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