Laurentian Lodge is located about 20 minutes north of the City of Elliot Lake, in the Algoma district of Northern Ontario. I met the owners, Doug and Melanie Seal, when I first stayed there about 20 years ago. The thing that really struck me on my first trip was how clean the place was, and now, 20-plus years later, it’s still as immaculate as it was back then. They did not spare any expense on this property.
Laurentian Lodge was originally built as a fly-in fishing and hunting lodge back in the 1930s, and now it’s been transformed into quite a resort. Located on Flack Lake, it’s a great place for a family getaway or for an avid sportsperson to go fishing or hunting –you can even have your wedding up there!
Flack Lake offers brook trout, lake trout, and smallmouth bass right in the immediate area of the lodge, or you can go to one of several hundred other lakes in the area to fish for all kinds of species. What I’ve always liked about the Algoma region is the vast number of lakes that are available to fish on. I’m talking about lakes that are teeming with fish and receive very little fishing pressure because of the low population base in the area. One of the cool aspects of this particular region is that the bass season is open year-round north of Highway 17, in Ontario’s Zone 10.
On this May trip, I was fishing with a guide who lived in Elliot Lake for a number of years. We started fishing right out from the lodge on Flack Lake and caught 10 lake trout in about three hours of fishing. We trolled slowly with the Motorguide Xi5 remote control electric motor while long-lining Johnson Slama spoons that we tipped with a minnow. The fishing was pretty decent, and it was easy pickings to catch those lakers.
We got all of our lake trout taping done on day one, and I thought it would be fun to see about the smallmouth bass fishing in the area. I asked the guide about it, and he told me that years ago, there were no smallmouth bass, so he’d never fished Flack Lake for them, but he was eager to give it a try. So before we headed back to the dock, we decided that we’d try the smallmouth. In a few short hours, we caught more than 25 smallmouth by using lipless Sebile Lipless Seeker and Flatt Shad crankbaits. It was incredibly easy fishing. After catching the bass, we decided to call it a day and prepare for day two.
On our second day, we decided to venture to another one of the many lakes in the area to try for smallmouth bass, but when we got there, we were faced with 20-mile-per-hour winds, a cold front, and some pretty tough fishing conditions. Even though the weather was not in our favour, the fish didn’t seem to mind, and Frank and I ended up catching about 15 bass.
My brother Wayne, who was with us running the camera boat, and his buddy Jerry Collins ended up catching a dozen bass. The biggest fish in each boat was just over six pounds, and we also had a 5-14, three other five-pounders and numerous four-pound fish. Jerry’s five heaviest fish weighed an incredible 27 pounds, 4 ounces – and he’s not even a hard-core bass fisherman! It really was some incredible smallmouth bass fishing.
We caught all of our smallmouth on lipless crankbaits, in water between six and 10 feet deep. Because it was early in the year, the water temperature was still at the 50-degree mark, and the smallmouth were in a pre-spawn pattern. We found them holding on to the edges of the spawning flats, where the bottom dropped off into deeper water. The key was to make long casts and to use a medium-speed retrieve with our lures.
This was one of those trips that had me wanting to stay longer, but because of my tight work schedule, I had to leave after two days. I do a lot of smallmouth bass fishing every year, both in tournaments and recreationally, and I’ve got to say that this area of Ontario offers some of the best fishing I’ve come across recently. All the way home, I kept wishing that I could have stayed up there for another day.
If you like your bass fishing as much as I do, but can’t get onto some of the bigger waters like Lakes Erie, Simcoe or Ontario, the Flack Lake region just might be what you’ve been looking for. Laurentian Lodge offers great fishing on Flack Lake, and it’s also a perfect base for fishing the numerous other lakes in the region. I know I can’t wait to get back up there.
