Lake Sakakawea

... and, and so he came out to the house, and then we went to the camp for a week.

It was out in the middle of a, you know, like it was like a, it was a, a Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sakakawea we call it in-

Mm

...

Uh, you'd seem them in people's tackle boxes and it was just really rare.

What I love about a number 11 or a number nine if I'm fishing heavy current, uh, if I'm out, let's say in South Dakota, lake Oahe or something like that or Sakakawea like where they just had the NWT, what's nice about a number nine or a number eleven, those fish are moving like crazy, and if you need to get a bait down in front of a fish's face quickly, it is so nice to have that nine or eleven.

Uh, bigger profiles sometimes.

Uh, w- I've even seen it on Mille Lacs where This year in particular, we have a huge bait fish hatch.

Right.

There's a master plan for Lake Sakakawea, and everything that was zoned wildlife has to be managed for wildlife habitat, and that's what we do is manage a lot of that stuff that's zoned wildlife.

There's...

There's a little bit that the Corps manages here or there that they do themselves, but the vast majority would be stuff that Game of Fish manages.

A lot of people know what Mallard Island is, especially maybe pheasant hunters.

Well, one of your questions on the list here was unique WMAs.

And that was going to be my main probably example was Mallard Island is a 2,500-acre island in Lake Sakakawea.

So it's really unique in that...

I'm your host, Taylor Michaels, and our guest this episode, we've got Isaac Lokich back on the show.

Isaac recently won the NWT Championship over here on Lake Sakakawea in western North Dakota.

The bite was pretty tough for most of the field, so Isaac obviously figured out something special, and we hear all about it here in this interview.

So let's get to it here.

I just fished some random areas and pretty much if I seen a spot where there was no boats and the points looked good, me and Luke would just fly around and run the best stuff that we've seen.

And I mean, obviously it works out and whatnot now, but it's on Sakakawea though, that was more, I know exactly, I knew exactly where Isaac was fishing the tournament.

I knew exactly what was there.

And I had a really long conversation with him.

That's something that I've really heard a lot more in recent years with Forward Sonar being the thing, is that it isn't always about how big your network is.

In fact, the guys that can put their blinders on, no doc talk, not getting anything in your head from somebody else, that's just a thing that's now, you're just hearing that so much more.

But yeah, to get back on track, With all of that, you're talking about, like, I'm sure you were hearing throughout Prefish on Sakakawea, you were hearing that everybody's talking about the tough bite.

You know, I mean, you're kind of aware, you're probably, you know, aware of what they're probably talking about, but you're feeling pretty good about your program.

I believe it was their championship tournament.

Not a whole lot different than the NWT championship that's going on right now in Sakakawea.

But this particular tournament was on Mille Lacs in August.

And I know the bite had been really up and down because I was guiding.

into trolling and how I believe that once we get through this sort of honeymoon casting phase of forward facing sonar, you're going to see a lot of anglers start leaning on some trolling practices to cover water.

Because me as an angler being out on Lake Superior and casting to a lot of fish right now, I can see where I could incorporate some trolling techniques into catching fish out there.

But then also being out on some of the, the, Dakota Reservoirs, Oahe, even talking about Sakakawea.

Breaking down some trolling techniques that we can use with forward-facing sonar has sort of been on my radar, and I've been experimenting with it a little bit here after being out with Marcus Quam last year on Oahe and being very successful with some harvest shads and that sort of thing, some miners.

We are actually just coming up with a new water source for the city of Minot.

It's the Northwest Area Water Supply Project that is going to be bringing water from Lake Sakakawea to be treated.

And they talk about the environmental

impacts of that and the biosphere

did that one time up in uh It's in Missouri.

What's it called? Sakakawea, Sakajawea, the lake.

Yeah.

There's a little bar up there called Littles.