Lac Ross Fishing Guide, Saguenay/Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec

• Overview

  Within Saguenay/Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, you have Lac Ross. The setting is spruce and muskeg. With some 46 hectares of water, there is room for a boat but no need of one. With about 4.6 km of edge, you can try several depths in one session. Few waters listed in Saguenay/Lac-Saint-Jean are bigger. The closest town, Saint-Honoré, is 57 km away. Saguenay is the closest city, 70 km away. No border sits close enough to matter.

• Where to Fish on Lac Ross

  Depth is not on record here, so the bank has to tell you. Read the surface for the wind lane, then fish the edge of it. On a natural lake the weed line and the shelf beyond it do the work. Open biodiversity records for Saguenay/Lac-Saint-Jean list northern pike, Atlantic salmon, lake whitefish and fallfish. Protected fish appear in the records for this area, so treat the list as information, not an invitation. At Lac Ross the first feature you find is worth twenty minutes.

• Seasonal Patterns

  Averages move between -18°C in January and 16°C in July. Cold dominates the calendar on water this far north. Ice is part of the season here, ending near early May. Break-up near early May, freeze-up near mid November: that is the shape of an average year. Just after the ice goes and just before it returns, the fishing lifts. On Lac Ross the same rules apply, with local timing.

• Tackle & Baits

  The rules here are undocumented as far as public sources go. This is a natural basin, not a dammed one. Access is unmapped, which usually means a farm track and a walk. Pike mean a wire trace, no exceptions; big spoons and jerkbaits do the searching. Gates get locked out of season on water like this. Close seasons apply to some species and not others. The nearest alternative is Lac du Panache, 2.1 km out. Where Lac Ross is concerned, a local answer beats a written one.