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We just got back from the Nemio river in the Gouin Reservoir... Excellent sunny weather (except for one storm). Wonderfull food (we went american plan) and lots of laughs

We left on saturday afternoon and spent the night in parent. Drinking the gross bieres in the Hotel Central was a treat let me tell you...The road up from Mont St. Michel is gravel up to parent but very smooth. Took us 5 1/2 hours to drive to Parent from Ottawa. The road from parent into Nemio is pretty good too. 78 km of gravel, direct to the lodge.

When we arrived, they were in a bit of a panic due to electrical problems but we didn't care as we wanted to go fishing... We also met fish-hawker McQ who was heading out but he did give us some tips before leaving. Thanks Bill ! During our stay we also met fish-hawk member snip and his buddies from pennsylvania. Nice to meet you guys... They looked like they were having a fun time. We sat around a fire one night and chatted and sipped scotch. Snip and friends were going for bigger fish and were throwing anything less that 18 inches back. I'll let him post his own stories...

The fishing was consistent but we didn't catch any big ones. Biggest pike was 10.5 and walleye 2.2 ... There were 4 digital cameras and these are the pics from mine. Some of the other fish are on those (especially my fish) and I'll update the pics when I get them. The river is a joy to fish. Lots of structure to explore and even if the wind is up, the river protects you. On the main lake, the waves can get pretty big. The river does give you access to the main Baie du Nord where you can find the larger walleye later in the season.

Some pics for your enjoyment...

The boys ...
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Rosie and Ron ... the owners

Rosie cooked for us and made us excellent meals. Ron works his butt off fixing up the camp (he was building new cabins and renovating existing ones). He also insisted that he clean all our fish and we were happy to let him. Ron is a great story teller so if you go, ask him about the Hotel Central and Wednesday nights. They bought this year and are working really hard to upgrad the camp. It's already nice and getting much nicer. We already have plans to go back.

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Shore Lunch

One day we had shore lunch. We made a small fire, cooked potatoes and onions and fresh fish. It was wonderfull.
We did forget a spatula so we made due with a stick for stirring the potatos and onions.
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For those of you who've had a shore lunch there lost of standing around and eating while you say things like mmmmmm, good or "doesn't get any better than this"...

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Many fish were caught. The biggest ones were a 10.5 lb pike and a 2.2 lb walleye.

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Some pics of the camp area ...

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And lastly some scenery...

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John aka jsdx ...

Great pics and Report!

I've always wanted to head up to a spot like that.....

Ballpark cost for the package?

RJ

re: ballpark cost.
You can do it fairly inexpensively or live large. The basic cabin plus fishing is 65 per day. You can bring your own food or have them cook for you. The prices are here... http://www.nemio.com/forfait-e.html

I know McQ is running a trip there in early august, 500 bucks for a week plus some for gas and travel which is shared cost. McQ could tell you more.
See http://groups.msn.com/McQonFishing/fish ... flair.msnw

jsdx:

Thanks for your report. I have a few questions if you don't mind. I'm scheduled to go up to Nemio's with McQ first week of August. I noticed in your pictures a couple of fellows wearing shorts. Were there no bugs or have you guys got some magical repellent? You commented that your biggest walleye was 2.2 lbs and that bigger walleyes were available in Baie du Nord later in the season. Where were the bigger walleyes supposed to be during your time there? Did anyone else in camp catch bigger walleyes? When you say that fishing was consistent, on average, how many walleyes were you catching per day per person? How difficult was it to navigate the Nemio River in either direction - were water levels sufficiently high so as to not worry about banging your skegs? Thanks in advance.

wow, I could use a tiny pike like that in my aquarium!

Tomcat wrote:jsdx:

Thanks for your report. I have a few questions if you don't mind. I'm scheduled to go up to Nemio's with McQ first week of August. I noticed in your pictures a couple of fellows wearing shorts. Were there no bugs or have you guys got some magical repellent? You commented that your biggest walleye was 2.2 lbs and that bigger walleyes were available in Baie du Nord later in the season. Where were the bigger walleyes supposed to be during your time there? Did anyone else in camp catch bigger walleyes? When you say that fishing was consistent, on average, how many walleyes were you catching per day per person? How difficult was it to navigate the Nemio River in either direction - were water levels sufficiently high so as to not worry about banging your skegs? Thanks in advance.

The bugs were not bad at all. During the day I didn't have to wear bug stuff in the boat. Could have been because the wind kept them away. We were warned about bugs on shore so for the shore lunch, we picked a windy spot with a big rock to shelter the fire. Worked great, no bugs harassed us even when cleaning the fish. The only annoying bug was the deerfly which follows you around in the boat. Easy to kill cause they're so slow. At night, when some bugs came out, a little bug spray and you're fine. I expected much worse.

Consistent means we caught fish almost everywhere and not very long times without catching something. Walleye numbers would be over 10 per day per person (some were smaller 12 inch fish) plus lots of pike. My first walleye was only 4 inches long. I was impressed We found a few spots where you would catch a fish every drift and you'd get 10 just in an hour. You have to hit the *exact* spot or you'd miss the fish. We also trolled shorelines between 10 and 15 feet and caught fish everywhere but many were pike. We didn't actually try too hard to find big walleye - we just explored and tried to find new spots to fish. We did a run across the baie for pike (a spot we hit last year) and water was low so the weeds were not holding like before.

The water level was down (5 ft maybe) compared to past years. This was my first time at Nemio, but we've been to Baie du Nord before and to the mouth of the Nemio river when it was much higher. The navigation is tricky in a few spots but the owner put out buoys. Water was still high enough to get all the way to the Nemio rapids which are pretty but didn't hold any fish for us. The owner personally showed us the route through the channel to get to the north (save his motors you know!) It wasn't really a problem getting around.

Re: big walleyes. McQ told us the nemio is a spawing river so the numbers of big walleye are in the river in the early season. They move out to the main lake area after they spawn and when we were there, it appears the majority of big fish had moved out. We also had super hot weather (25-30) so the sunny hot weather probably didn't help. There are resident river fish of course, but I think the bigger pigs are out on the main lake area. The beauty of Nemio is you have access to the main lake easily (less than 20 minute ride) but when its windy, you can fish the protected river.
And yes, I saw bigger walleyes than ours being caught No need to rub it in. Snip and his crew were catching bigger. They can tell you their secrets.

If you're going with McQ, you should have nothing to worry about, he's got a handle on the river... Should be no problem finding fish.

You're gonna have a great time.

jsdx:

Thanks very much for the detailed info.

Jon, It was nice to meet you and your friends there at Nemio. We enjoyed chatting and shooting the bull with you around the campfire. We had a good time there even with the lack of electricity for a few days.

Ron and Rosie didn't seem to stop much from working around the camp. Ron always had a good story to tell us about. He showed us a new way to fillet pike that was neat. The new cabins they put up are very nice and the new princecraft 15' boats with new mercury 15 hp motors were great. I was glad we had those boats going out in the north bay and also when the winds put a heavy chop on the water.

The fishing started off a little slow, but by the end of our stay (after we learned the area better) we were picking up better numbers of fish. We fished mainly in 5 to 15 feet of water using jigs and worms primarily. I did have one good evening using just a jig and a orange/yellow powerbait grub. I got about 10 eyes in about an hour that evening. The fishing really improved when we got some cloud cover on Tuesday and Thursday.

Pike fishing was fairly simple using jerk baits and spoons/silver minnows. Usually when we went into a "pikey" looking area we got at least one. We also picked up a few jigging for 'eyes.

The biggest walleye landed was 21" and weighed 3 pounds even. The biggest pike was only 30". I will have to say that we caught mostly 13 to 16 inch walleye, but they were very healthy and seemed to be eating well. The last day we were there our one boat landed about 40 in 2.5 hours with many doubles. It really helps to have a portable fishfinder along to find the dropoffs that they were stacked in. Jon was right in that you had to go right over certain holes and couldn't be off by more than a few feet if you wanted to stay on the fish. Our group of 4 probably landed about 130 to 150 walleye and around 25-30 pike during our 5 day stay. We only kept 20 'eyes and 2 pike.

The dirt road in from Mont St Michel was pretty good, but the last 15 miles you had to take your time to avoid rocks and runoff areas. It's a good thing to wear your seatbelt as I came out of my seat a few times on the ride in and out. We did see a fairly new truck with broken wheel studs along the road from Parent to Mont St Michel on the way home. Also, we saw 2 boat trailers broken down with wheel problems. We didn't receive any stone damage going in, but both trucks got hit on the way home. Our truck got a rock in the windshield that made a small mark and the other truck got hit in the roof that took off some paint and knocked open the ceiling compartments. I was glad there weren't any logging trucks on the roads going in and out.

I also got to meet Bill McCue there on our last evening. It was nice talking to and meeting him. I hear that he will be at Nemio a lot this summer. I think he also did some wiring of one of the cabins. lol
I think those going with him on his August trip will have a good time, but will probably have to fish a tad deeper than we had to.

You took some nice pictures, Jon. I wish I would have taken a few more. I'll see if I can post some later.

I'm glad you folks had a great time at Nemio. It sure is one of my favorite spots on the Gouin - so many options!

Was up over the last weekend and the bite was really hot at the mouth of the river, jigging or trolling produced full limits in a very short time for all boats. The jig bite was fast and furious in 18' of water off the reefs. My partner boated his limit in less than an hour on a 1/8th oz jig and leech. Another boat trolled the same area and had a full limit of 18 - 22" walleye. The hot crank was a Hot n Tot (gold/black) fished on the bottom at a fairly quick speed.

The hot weather has slowed the fishing up the river but the fish are still there - everyone was catching good sized pike. Went into the big bay opposite the turn to the rapids and scanned the water for about an hour - want to get some of the deep holes marked for my trip in August - 20' is the depth they are holding at.

Looks like I may get one more trip in soon and will give the harnesses a go with a bottom bouncer. There is a night bite on shore and I also plan to give the boards a try too.

Ron has most oi the construction done and the camp is in great shape. The new 16' Princecraft boats and Merc 15 hsp are the real deal for getting around the area safely and comfortably. Can't wait to get into one of Rosie's great desserts - last week's chocolate cake treat didn't last very long.

Oh and by the way - my new camp name is "BILL for SHORTS" - nuf said!

jsdx,

WOW -- what a great post and fun, gorgeous pictures. I always love to read these reports about peoples' getaways....it almost feels like a mini vacation for me.

It must have been an absolute delight! Yummy pics of the shore lunch!

W.

McQ wrote: Oh and by the way - my new camp name is "BILL for SHORTS" - nuf said!

Not to stir up trouble but perhaps they should consider calling you Electric Bill We had good luck with the hot-n-tot as well. Solid lure for sure. The best colour we found (for all crankbaits) was silver sided with black back.

wolfe wrote: It must have been an absolute delight! Yummy pics of the shore lunch!

It was a lot of fun... Yes, the food was yummy, but wolfe, tell the truth , I think *you* really liked the pics because they show men cooking . Now thats a vacation eh ?.

john

Thanks for the (not stirring up trouble) comment - will advise the authorities.

Heading back up at noon today and will be trying a number of different tactics on the river. I just received some beautiful hand crafted cranks that should appeal to those finicky eaters. Will post on my return.

Can't send pictures - ran over my camera which is another story - been an expensive summer so far.

"Electric Bill" is the perfect moniker. Hope the remaining summer doesn't get any more expensive for you.

I finally uploaded some pics so here's a few from Nemio. Sorry for dial up folks.


The road into Nemio where it got skinny


Dave's 1st pike


Dave's 30" pike



Moon & Lew bringing one in


Moon & Lew's stringer


Moon, me, and Dave


21" walleye


29" pike


Walleye Shore Lunch


The view from Cabin 3

Thanks to both you guys (jsdx and snip) for providing us some great pics - kind of like being there!

Question for snip. What kind of water depths did you find in Baie du Nord? Did you mark any big girls (walleyes) while fishing there?

Tomcat, We never fished in the main bay except at the mouth of the nemio river (which was one of our better spots) and the northeast corner. In the northeast corner of north bay we fished behind an island that was around 5 to 15 feet in depth. We tried to stay in less than 15' of water because that was the most productive for us. We picked up a few 'eyes there but left after about 2 hours.
I had my vexilar fl-18 with ice-transducer, so I just used it to check depth quickly. I did mark some fish about a foot off the bottom with it, but didn't keep the x-ducer in the water very long(just a quick depth check). I wish I would have brought a portable LCD fishfinder like our other boat had. They said you could see the fish stacked up in certain holes.