Northern Wilds

Sometimes it seems there are as many ways to catch fish as there are anglers. But experienced anglers usually have a few tricks up their sleeve for consistently catching fish. Very often, those tricks include the use of a favorite lure. We talked to three experienced fishing guides who shared their favorite fishing lures for consistently catching fish in the Northern Wilds.

John Fehnel
Great Lakes Fly Shop, Duluth

Dahlberg Diver

Fly-fishing used to be mostly about catching trout, but in recent years, interest in catching other fish spcies on a fly has surged. John Fehnel is a fan of smallmouth bass, a common species that doesn’t attract much attention from most anglers.

“People don’t realize we have good bass lakes in the area,” Fehnel says. “When June and July come around, it’s bass time.”

He says smallmouths predominate, but some waters have largemouths, too. For waters to try, he suggests the St. Louis River at Fond du Lac, Island Lake north of Duluth, Stewart Lake north of Two Harbors and Dumbell and Dunnigan lakes near Isabella.

His favorite bass flies are:

• Dahlberg Diver—available at his shop is a chartreuse version called the Highway 53 North.
• Hot Legs Crawdad—a fly with rubber legs and rabbit hair to impart lifelike motion.
• Frog Popper—a cork popper with a concave face.

Eli Hill
Red Hooks Guide Service, Ely and Grand Marais

Eli Hill

Guide Eli Hill says he carries 500 lures and uses 15 of them. Most are Rapalas.

“A Number 11 Floating Rapala in black, silver or gold will catch anything,” says Hill. “In the Boundary Waters you can troll it behind a canoe as you travel.”

He also likes to use Rapala Husky Jerks. In dark water (bog-stained) walleye lakes, he suggests Number 5 Shad Raps. For fishing in deeper water, he suggests the Rapala Tail Dancer, which dives as deep as 35 feet. In fact, there is hardly a fishing situation where he wouldn’t try a Rapala.

“Stickbaits are my favorites,” he says.

Kelly Shepard
North Shore Outdoors, Grand Marais

North Shore native Kelly Shepard divides his fishing time between inland waters and his Lake Superior charterboat. Much of his inland fishing is for walleyes in May and June, before the fishing action heats up on Lake Superior. Like many experienced anglers, he prefers to use a jig.

“I like a jig with an orange head and a white Mister Twister tail,” he says. “For some reason, the orange head seems to attract more bites.”

On Lake Superior, he likes another tried-and-true lure—the Watermelon Spoon. While the watermelon color is available on a variety of Great Lakes trolling spoons, his preferred brand is Luhr Jenson.

“I’ll run several different lures and colors on a charter,” he says. “But I usually have a Watermelon Spoon in the mix.”