At one time Watta Lake Lodge used manufactured lures exclusively. About the summer of '97 a fishing group from Alberta stayed at the lodge. It was the middle of summer and the Trout had gone deep. They had brought their own downriggers, depth finders, and even brought boat seats. They also brought bait, ciscos. Their success rate compared to lures was quite noticeable, at least 3 times more hits and hooks than normal lures. We have used ciscos to 'lure' in the Elusive Giants ever since.

   Ciscos are in the same family as Whitefish, found in most lakes, and can be dip-netted in local waters with a regular fishing license. Ever since 2003, we (my friends Greg and Al) have been trying to get our share which is 350 (about 40 packages) and every year we have been unsuccesful. Long stories short, we had misadventures trying to get to the river, and had no luck timing the run right and missed them entirely. That was the story every year until last fall. Through the grapevine we heard they were running so off we went and we were successful!!! Again, a long (funny, cold, life endangering) story short. The significance of this cisco (mis)adventure is that every year that we couldn't find the ciscos we were still able to purchase them locally. This year the sale of ciscos was reduced to almost none as the local provider lost his fishing license (no fault of his own) so there were none to bought. So, as luck would have it, we prevailed and will share the spoils with our guests so that the deep water search for an Elusive Giant will go on.

    

   We were so excited and proud of our catch that we vacuum sealed the prescious little go getters and even put labels on the packages. Hopefully the video of us 'rounding' up the bait turns up because it's quite interesting and extremely funny. Ask us about the story when your out fishing anyway!!!