Fishing at Lac au Tonnerre, Lanaudière, Quebec

• Overview

  Lac au Tonnerre is a Lanaudière water, Quebec side. The water sits 435 metres up. With some 31 hectares of water, there is room for a boat but no need of one. A shoreline of some 3.0 km keeps the choices simple. Some 13 km away sits Manawan, the nearest settlement. Weymontachie is 80 km away, with Saint-Michel-des-Saints at 82 km. The nearest edge is a long way off, so local rules apply throughout.

• Where to Fish on Lac au Tonnerre

  We hold no depth figure for this one. On a natural lake the weed line and the shelf beyond it do the work. Bays and points beat straight shoreline every time on water like this. Open biodiversity records for Lanaudière list pumpkinseed, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, rock bass and brook trout. What holds for the county may not hold for this water. On Lac au Tonnerre the first feature you find is usually worth a session.

• Seasonal Patterns

  The seasonal spread runs -16°C to 17°C. Winter runs most of the calendar, and everything worth doing happens in the gap. The lid usually goes in early May, which opens the strongest weeks of the year. On the long-run averages the water opens up around early May and starts locking again about mid November. The weeks after the thaw and the ones before the freeze are the strongest. The season on Lac au Tonnerre rarely departs from it.

• Tackle & Baits

  No access rule appears in what we hold. This is a natural basin, not a dammed one. Mapping records no facilities at all near this water. Bass water: a Texas-rigged worm near cover, a spinnerbait when you need to cover ground. Look for a notice board at the entrance. Some stretches are reserved and marked as such on the ground. Lac Tonio, 1.2 km away, makes the obvious fallback. Treat access at Lac au Tonnerre as something to verify.