Stacey, Joshua, and I made our fourth family vacation/fishing trip together to Arcadia Lodge up on Big Turtle Lake. This was probably by far our best trip to Arcadia Lodge! We stayed in the Rustic cabin for the second time.
Stacey was brave and went on the new big swing drop and big slide of the many water toys. Joshua loved swimming every day and floating around with his life vest. Ice cream in the lodge was our treat and playing foosball, billiards, and ping pong kept our family entertained for hours. Joshua created another Arcadia tie-dye shirt to add to his collection. Stacey and I are going to make our own shirts next year.
Weather was in the low-50s to mid-80s for most of the week. The first two days a cold front came through putting temps in the low 40’s. The smallmouth fishing was slow early in the week but as the week progressed the fishing got better. Most mornings started off slow but the action picked up later in the day, especially when we had a little bit of wind. The 1/8 oz. skirted jig or the 1/4 oz. mushroom jighead rigged with the X Zone Lures Muscle Back Finesse Craw worked slow with twitches and long pauses did exceptionally well.
The highlight of the week was on Thursday evening, July 24th the night of the full moon, I saw several nice smallmouth all packed on the point and channel where I happened to be fishing. Several surface activity spotted of bass slurping bugs and baitfish off the surface around the 8:30 pm mark. I quickly put on my favorite topwater, the Rebel Pop-R. With that tied on, I caught 4, lost 2 at boatside, and had 1 snapped off. Check video below for the full action.
We really enjoyed our stay, rebooked again for next year before we left. Looking forward to our next trip!
Nam Nguyen's Angling Adventures 