Penhurst Lake Fishing near Hornepayne, Ontario

• Overview

  Look for Penhurst Lake in Algoma, Ontario. The country here is northern bush. At about 17 hectares, a day is enough to walk the shoreline properly. At about 5.7 km of edge, most people work one arm at a time. Hornepayne at 23 km is the nearest place to stop. After that come Hearst at 78 km and Manitouwadge at 100 km. No boundary runs near, so the local rules hold throughout.

• Where to Fish on Penhurst Lake

  No depth figure has reached our records, which makes a plummet useful. Still water like this holds fish on the edges rather than out in the open. A soft bed grows weed late into autumn, which keeps fish shallow. Open biodiversity records for Algoma list walleye, northern pike and Iowa darter. Those are county-wide records, so not every one of them will be in this water. Fish Penhurst Lake to its features, not to its size.

• Seasonal Patterns

  The year swings from about -18°C in January to roughly 16°C in July. Water stays cold even at the height of the year. After early May the shallows warm and the fish move up. Break-up near early May, freeze-up near mid November: that is the shape of an average year. September and October fish steadily right up to the freeze. That is the shape of the year on Penhurst Lake.

• Tackle & Baits

  Access is not recorded for this water. It formed naturally, so levels move with rainfall rather than with a gate. No slipway, car park or made path shows up nearby in mapping, so treat access as rough. Bass water: a Texas-rigged worm near cover, a spinnerbait when you need to cover ground. Provincial rules still apply whatever the bank status. Some ground is open by custom rather than by right, so tread carefully. Should this one be busy, Mountain Lake is 3.9 km off. What applies at Penhurst Lake may have changed since it was mapped.