I'm going to be up in the Sylvania Wilderness next month and they have pretty strict regs when it comes to bait. "Live bait, dead or preserved bait, organic or processed food or scented material may not be used or possessed at any time..."
That being the case, what do you all recommend for panfish considering those limitations?
TIA,
Joe
There are some huge bass in some of those lakes. Many are so clear you wonder how much life the water can support. Still not all are short on fish. Casting a diving plug in a small side lake had hits from huge perch. The same rules apply in Quetico provincial Park, so I'm familiar with no-scent, no lead restrictions. Once we paddled into a lake just out of the park and did well on blugills using up bait we had before entering the park, then ate the fish camping in the park. We tried deep jigging spoons for lakers with no success. You'll figure it out . Have fun paddling and bring DEET; the black flies can be really bad in the spring.
Don't forget it's barbless hooks too, which you probably already knew...
We did a trip there 2 summers ago in mid June and had zero luck with panfish, threw a lot of soft plastics (a lot of store bought plastics do have a scent on them which are technically not legal, but there are plenty that are scentless), spinners, rapalas and top-waters at them primarily. The water is so clear we saw a ton of HUGE bluegills and crappie and could get them to chase but not commit. Hope you have better luck than us.
Smallie fishing was unreal for us, some lakes we were catching them on every cast. Those lakes they weren't too big but we broke the 20" mark multiple times on the bigger lakes. I think all 4 of us in our group landed at least one over 20". Green yamamoto crayfish plastic out-fished any other bait by far.
Beautiful area, have fun!
