Photo Essay

COUNTING CASTS AT LAKE OF THE WOODS

Infinity Eights

Firelight near dusk made for pleasant evenings on Ontario’s Lake of the Woods. Photo: Copi Vojta
Firelight near dusk made for pleasant evenings on Ontario’s Lake of the Woods. Cue up a backcast from Rod Krahmer, my boat partner for the trip, and there was plenty to keep my eyes happy. We’d fished this bay once before with no follows but were able to draw a musky to the fly this evening, though it remained shy.
Words and Photos: Copi Vojta

I’ve caught exactly one tiger musky—that sterile pike/musky hybrid—yet seen many, both expressing interest in my fly and completely ignoring it. That one felt like a gimme—I count it, but it came within the first hour of fishing and wasn’t terribly big. It felt like a “jinxed-the-rest-of-the-day” kind of thing. It came in a stocked-and-managed reservoir in Washington state, far from the natural range of the true muskellunge, which just so happens to include Ontario, Canada’s Lake of the Woods.

The first time I saw the acronym for the lake—LOTW—I thought I’d clicked the wrong YouTube link and was about to watch some Lord of the Rings cosplay influencer. Thankfully, it was a musky video. I was daydreaming and managing expectations for a July trip to Epic Narrows Musky Camp, on the Ontario side of the massive lake that spills into Manitoba and Minnesota. There are more than 14,000 islands on LOTW. Cartographers must have had an aneurysm figuring it out.

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