Summer fishing in Montreal - August 2019

August turned out to be another interesting month this summer. With my wife and younger ones out of town for much of the month, I took the time to explore many of the ideas I had for local venues, being that I'm "stuck" in town due to kaddish obligations. I made the best of the situation by fishing short outings on a frequent basis, almost daily.

My two goals were to catch some big carp, and to fish some big topwater lures for muskies, either from shore, or from my float tube.

Starting with carp, my plans to use giant boilies to try to eliminate catching smaller carp, did not work out, to say the least. There were two schools of thought regarding the plan, the first, being to fish giant tennis ball sized boilies after chumming standard boilies of the same flavour. The second, was to chum with giant boilies, in hope of having smaller carp move off the spot, leaving only big ones.

After many hours of trial end error, what I didn't factor into the equation, were channel catfish. Being that even a smaller catfish's mouth is way larger than that of a big carp, I managed to draw in a catch many medium sized cats in the 8 to 10 lbs range.

This went of throughout the month of August, will see what happens as water temp starts to cool off.

I still managed to catch some good carp, as well as put some friends onto some good carping, using my standard tactics.

Hoping the cooling weather will get me one of those early fall giants in the next few weeks...

The rest of the month's outings were dedicated to fishing big topwater lures for musky, figuring that some good sized pike may be in order as well.

I started off going out with my friend Mike, getting a couple lures from him, as well as a lesson of what to look for, as well as the wheres, whens, and hows of topwater musky fishing.

Hit some topwater success on that outing, I did catch a nice pike on a Topraider.

As well as a small musky caught while trolling.

A few days later, I put the knowledge to test. Headed out on my float tube in hopes of catching my first topwater musky of the season, and putting some teeth marks into my new topraider.

Sure enough, Mike's tips paid off, it didn't take long for me to trigger and explosive bite, hook, and land a nice 42 inch musky. It has to be my most memorable freshwater catch of the season so far, as I managed to land it by hand, after a short, but intense battle.

Turned out to be the only time I managed to get a topwater musky in August, despite a couple more short outings.  Being that a spent most of my good days chasing muskies, I neglected bass fishing most of the month. Did manage to hook a couple smaller ones, nothing too interesting.

As September has arrived, I'm looking forward to catching some bigger specimens of both predators and bottom feeders going on the feed to bulk up before winter.

Stay tuned...