KAMATSI LAKE, Saskatchewan _ We'd been exploring a new part of the lake, catching lake trout with just enough regularity to keep things interesting, when Peter Howard suggested we try a nearby shoreline point at the mouth of a narrows we'd been fishing for the past hour.
Good plan, that. Shoreline points often mean dropoffs into deeper water, and dropoffs often mean lake trout, those spotted, grayish-blue packages of fins and power and beauty that head for the depths when surface water temperatures rise past 50 degrees.
Even in the wilds of northern Saskatchewan, that means depths of 40 to 60 feet in the heat of summer.
Working our way to the mouth of the narrows, Howard and I had just passed the tip of the point when we noticed a long, submerged shoal about 50 yards from shore.
I looked down at the fish finder screen, a Humminbird Helix 5, and saw the bottom of the lake was stacked with marks on top of marks betraying the presence of lake trout some 50 feet below.
To say the fish were thick would be an understatement. We'd stumbled on the lake trout fishing equivalent of nirvana.
"Get ready," I blubbered to Howard, or words to that effect, backing the stern of the boat into the wind to set up a drift as both of us scrambled for our fishing rods. "We've found them."
This was going to be fun.
