It’s hard to believe that our group has been fishing Wilderness North’s D’Alton Lake, in Northwest Ontario Canada for 18 years. They say that time flies when you’re having fun, and it seems that time has been very good to the old 7-mile long lake, because the fishing continues to be great and arguably even better than the early years. In fact, our top six trips, in terms of the number of walleyes that we’ve caught over 20-inches have all been since 2011.
Our most recent trip in late summer ranked #2 on our all-time rankings list, with 292 walleyes measuring between 20 and 25-inches, not to mention the hundreds of smaller fish we didn’t keep track of. We also caught and released 8 walleyes between 26 and 29-inches and 3 northern between 35 and 38-inches. Probably sounds like we’re bragging about our angling abilities but that’s not the case. It’s a testament to the lake and how prolific the fishing has remained over the years. D’Alton Lake offers big fish, small fish and everything in-between but the lakes ability to consistently produce big walleyes is what amazes us. It’s also amazing the variety of ways you can catch the big fish on this lake. For example, we took two trips to D’Alton this season. Between the two trips we boated thirteen 26 to 29-inch walleyes that were fooled by a wide variety of presentations, including jig and plastic, jig and minnow, jig and sucker, jig and leech, Slow Death rig, slow sucker rig, slip bobber & minnow or leech, and jigging spoons. The moral of this point is, walleye anglers can choose virtually any of their favorite styles to fish and have success at D’Alton.
In the 18 years that we’ve been fishing D’Alton our group has amassed over 3,500 walleyes 20-inches or larger, including 127 over 26-inches, with the largest two being 31-inches caught in 2003 and 2015. That’s crazy good, I believe the lakes ability to produce season after season can be attributed to the lakes cisco based forage combined with good catch & release practices.
If you’re looking for a place to have the opportunity to catch a walleye of a lifetime and don’t mind catching it in a beautiful remote setting hanging out with your best fishing buds, I would highly recommend giving Wilderness North a shout and checking out D’Alton Lake next season. Who knows, maybe you’ll find your next 18 years of fishing to be as rewarding as ours have been.
-Chris Clemmons
D’Alton can accommodate up to 6 people, and if you get a group of 6 folks together you each get a night FREE! Interested in trying out this excellent fishery? Here are some available dates in our 2018 season:
- 4 nights June 2-6th
- 4 nights July 16-20th
- 6 nights July 31-Aug 6th
Intrigued? Send us your info and we can tell you more:
