Exploring the Wild Waters of Savant Lake: Early Season Pike and Walleye Action
A Journey Into Ontario’s Remote Wilderness
Fishing trips into Ontario’s Sunset Country are always an adventure, and this journey to Wildwood on Savant Lake proved to be no exception. Located roughly 75 miles northeast of Sioux Lookout, Savant Lake is a sprawling 90,000-acre wilderness lake dotted with over 100 islands. The remote setting and variety of gamefish—walleye, northern pike, lake trout, and whitefish—make this a true angler’s paradise.
Getting to Wildwood Lodge isn’t a simple drive-up experience. Instead, it feels more like a backcountry expedition. Guests must load their gear and supplies onto an ATV trailer and make a rugged couple-mile journey through the bush to reach the lodge—no roads, no planes—just raw wilderness. It’s about as close as you can get to a fly-in experience without leaving the ground.
Wildwood Lodge: Comfort in the Wilderness
Once you arrive, you’ll find Wildwood is a full-service resort, offering comfortable housekeeping cabins complete with full cooking facilities, quality boats, gas, bait, freezers, and even guiding services. Whether you’re a seasoned angler or a newcomer, everything is in place for a memorable trip. 
We arrived in early June, during what lodge owner Andy described as the third week of the camp being open. High water conditions and a cold spring made it a classic early-season trip. Understanding the seasonal fish movements is key to success here. Shallow southeast bays fed by creeks warm up quickly and serve as prime spawning grounds for both walleye and pike. Areas like Bear Paw Bay and Never Freeze Bay offer ideal spring conditions with sanctuary protections in place to support reproduction.
A Lake Built for Exploration
Despite its size, Savant Lake can feel intimate. With its numerous arms, bays, and islands, anglers can choose to fish close to the lodge or venture up to 20 miles away. You can spend a week exploring one section and still feel like you’ve only scratched the surface.
Early season fishing is straightforward: most fish are shallow. Flat bays with creek inlets are ideal zones to target, particularly for pike and walleye still in post-spawn behavior. It’s a beautiful setting—classic northern Ontario waters with stained shallows, weed growth, and log-strewn creek mouths.
Targeting Early Season Fish
Our approach began with the usual: casting to the bank, targeting visible cover. But in these back bays, mid-bay depressions or submerged creek channels—sometimes just 4 to 8 feet deep—often hold inactive fish. That’s why we made sure to cast not just toward shore but also across the center of the bays. Experience has taught us that you can often find schools of fish suspended or holding tight to cover in these slightly deeper zones.
The action didn’t take long. Fish started biting steadily. Surprisingly, the best bite occurred during warmer, sunny spells—possibly due to the cold, high-water conditions of the season. As one of the seasoned visitors to Sunset Country, I relied on a St. Croix Legend Elite 7’6” medium-heavy, moderate-fast rod for long casting and hook setting from a distance. Paired with a Daiwa Zillion TWHD 7.3:1 reel, this setup allowed fast pickups and powerful presentations.
Gear and Tactics That Deliver
You don’t need to get right on top of these fish. Casting from a distance into just 3 to 5 feet of water is often the ticket. The pike may seem aggressive, but stealth and distance go a long way. Long casts and fast gear ratios help keep your bait in the strike zone and your hookup rate high.
On this trip, we brought an arsenal of early-season pike baits:
- 4-inch casting spoons
- ½-ounce Terminator Pro Series Spinnerbaits
- 4- and 5-inch Storm Wild-Eyed Swim Shads
- ½-ounce VMC Boxer Jigs with 5- and 7-inch Big Bite Suicide Shads
- No. 12 X-Raps
- 30–50 lb Terminator Titanium Leaders, chosen for their durability and kink resistance
It wasn’t long before we were consistently connecting with solid fish. Even when they weren’t giants, the numbers and action made for an incredibly fun day. Tools like the Bubba hook extractor simplified catch-and-release, especially when dealing with toothy critters.
Conservation in Practice
With frequent fish catches, conservation-minded tactics come into play. For treble-hooked lures, switching to single hooks or flattening the barbs can make a big difference. This allows for quicker releases and reduces damage to the fish—something particularly important in waters with high catch rates and trophy potential.
We encountered numerous healthy specimens, some still showing signs of spawning wear. While we caught plenty of quality pike, we knew that even bigger ones were out there—perhaps just around the next island, or tucked into the next bay.
Finishing Strong on Savant Lake: Adapting Tactics and Embracing the Experience
When the Bite Turns On
Despite a chilly start to the day and the lingering effects of a cold front, patience and persistence paid off. Early on, many of the back bays felt lifeless—like the fish had vanished. But the key was understanding that in those moments, the fish were there, just inactive, often holding in the deeper depressions in the middle of the bay. And when they turned on, it happened fast.
We didn’t bring our own boat for this trip, but we did bring our electronics—and they were essential. A Humminbird Helix 7 All-Season unit, rigged with a Humminbird AutoChart Zero Lines map card, proved invaluable. Not only did it provide sonar and GPS, but it let us build custom contours in real-time, a huge asset when navigating and locating structure on a massive, island-rich lake like Savant.
The Gear That Delivered
Throughout the trip, our arsenal of presentations adapted to the fish’s moods. For walleye, early-season go-to lures included:
- Jig-and-minnow combos
- Jigging soft plastics
- Hair jigs
- Crankbaits
- Rattlebaits
We relied heavily on VMC Moon Eye Jigs ranging from 1/8 to 3/8 oz, paired with bright 3.5” Big Bite Suicide Shads and Slim Minnows. For hard baits, two stood out: the Rapala Glass Shad Rap (sizes 5 and 7) and the Rapala Rippin’ Rap (size 6). These baits let us cover water effectively, whether casting or trolling.
Given the rocky lakebed, especially on windblown points and shoals, we fished swim baits just above bottom. A slow, swimming retrieve with light jig heads helped avoid constant snags and kept us in the strike zone. This method proved particularly effective in 4 to 7 feet of water—the sweet spot for both pike and walleye during this trip.
Rods, Lines, and Leader Tips
With limited space for gear, versatility was important. One standout rod was a 7’6” medium-light power, extra-fast action Icon Series rod, which handled crankbaits and jigs equally well. For line, we spooled up with 10 lb Sufix 832 braid for walleye and 30–40 lb Sufix Pro-Mix braid for pike. We also kept 10–12 lb fluorocarbon on hand for leader material to improve stealth in clear water.
And yes, the walleyes kept coming—”one after the other,” as we joked. When conditions aligned, the fish fed aggressively, and we found ourselves quickly swapping rods to match the moment, whether casting crankbaits to rocky points, jigging for trout outside bays, or flipping soft plastics deep into pike territory.
