Lac Baptiste Fishing Guide, Lanaudière, Quebec

• Overview

  Set in Lanaudière, Quebec, this is Lac Baptiste. Everything around it is pine and birch. At 8 hectares it is the sort of place you fish for an evening rather than a day. Compared with other Quebec water on our list, it sits high. Saint-Michel-des-Saints is the closest town at 16 km. The big place round here is Saint-Louis-de-Terrebonne, 93 km distant. No border sits close enough to matter.

• Where to Fish on Lac Baptiste

  Depth is not on record here, which means reading the ground instead. The productive water is a rod length or two out, not a hundred. On a natural lake the weed line and the shelf beyond it do the work. Records held for Lanaudière cover pumpkinseed, smallmouth bass and yellow perch. Those are county-wide records, so not every one of them will be in this water. Lac Baptiste repays a walk before the first cast.

• Seasonal Patterns

  Temperature averages peak at 17°C in July and bottom out at -15°C in January. Winter puts a hard lid on this one. Count on hard cover from midwinter, and open water from early May. Climate figures give an open season running early May to late November. September and October fish steadily right up to the freeze. The season on Lac Baptiste follows the weather closely.

• Tackle & Baits

  Whether the bank is open is not something our records settle. Mapping records no facilities at all near this water. For the bass here, soft plastics worked slow along cover and a spinnerbait for searching do most of the work. A landowner's word beats anything printed elsewhere. A polite question at the farm gate opens more banks than anything else. For a change of water, Lac Levot is 0.6 km distant. Check the current arrangement for Lac Baptiste.