From One End to The Other Lake Diefenbaker is an Angler’s Paradise
It had been over 15 years since I last fished Lake Diefenbaker, but it has always been a lake I wanted to return to and fish again. Lake Diefenbaker was formed by the construction of the Gardiner Dam and the Qu’Appelle River Dam across the South Saskatchewan River creating the reservoir we now know as Lake Diefenbaker. Construction began in 1959 and the lake was filled in 1967.
MASSIVE WATER
Lake Diefenbaker is a large water body stretching a little over 225 kilometres (140 miles) long with approximately 800 kilometres (500 miles) of shoreline. There are 26 different native and stocked fish species swimming within the depths! With that, an angler knows that a lake or reservoir this large, with endless structure and fish habitat, is going to host some amazing fishing opportunities.
In August 2023, we booked two nights in Elbow, Saskatchewan at Sarah’s Cove Condo Rentals and launched at the Lakeside Marina. I was fishing with my good friend Tom Koizumi, a long-time tournament and Lake Diefenbaker angler.
LOCATION
We were targeting walleye and quickly found schools off points and sharp drop-offs, in 16 to 23 feet of water. To our surprise, even during the heat of the day, we also found walleye in seven feet of water and even the odd walleye as shallow as four feet in large cutouts along the shoreline. I believe the walleye were chasing bait into the shallows and holding on the mud and sand flats picking the bait off as they tried to retreat from the shallows to deeper water.
PRESENTATION
Walleye would bite a jig tipped with a frozen minnow, vertically jigged in the deeper water or slowly crawling the bait along the bottom in the shallows. However, the bulk of our bites came while bottom-bouncing a Sure Death pink blade from PK Lures behind a 2oz bottom-bouncer weight. This presentation also produced some of our larger walleye.
BOAT CONTROL CRITICAL
Boat speed was at .8 to 1.1mph in a zig-zag pattern across the flats and on/off structure. The zig-zag pattern would allow the blade to change the speed of the bottom-bouncer blade to spin faster on outside turns and slower on the inside turns.
The hook was tipped with either a leech, frozen minnow, or a Liquid Mayhem 4-inch soft plastic. Throughout the day, one bait would produce more bites than the other and the key was to change out your bait as soon as the bite turned off. Walleye and Lake Diefenbaker’s healthy population of sauger would take the slow-moving presentation with a subtle bite. In most cases, we wouldn’t feel the bite, just the weight of the fish on the end of our line. However, once they realized they were hooked, the fight was on.
A LOCATION CHANGE
Two days were spent fishing at the Elbow end of the lake with incredible walleye and sauger fishing. On the third morning, we loaded our gear and trailered the Tracker boat crossing on the Riverhurst ferry to the Village of Riverhurst. Here we booked into one of the 2-bedroom cabins at Mainstay Inn. Before long we were on the water and turned our attention to trout fishing.
RAINBOW TROUT PRESENTED A CHALLENGE!
If you’re an avid anger, then there is no doubt you know about the abundance and quality rainbow trout that call Lake Diefenbaker home. We spent several hours targeting rainbow, including fishing near the trout farm where over 400,000 trout escaped from the nets in May of 2000. However, we had no trout luck.
While we could see the trout on our Humminbird fish finders we only triggered one bite with no hookup. After a few hours, we turned our attention back to walleye fishing. We picked up a few walleye and one nice northern pike, but it was the perch that were stealing half our baits while bottom-bouncing for walleye that we decided to focus on.
Covering water, we found a school of perch and quickly dropped down a Tic-Tack jig from Big Sky Jigs and instantly set the hook on a perch. We sifted through the school of perch catching and releasing several small perch but did manage to land seven great perch for the frying pan which we enjoyed back in the comforts of our cabin.
The next morning, we loaded our gear and trailered my boat to Kyle, Saskatchewan at the west end of Lake Diefenbaker. We checked into the HI Way 4 Motel right in the town of Kyle. Once situated, we drove 10 minutes and launched at the Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park boat launch.
SASKATCHEWAN LANDING
We made about a 15-mile run down Lake Diefenbaker and once again focused on walleye. The same presentation, locations, and structure (mentioned above at Elbow) were working at this end of the lake. However, during the heat of the day the walleye would move into 22 feet of water and were consistently found holding on deep water humps.
Larger walleye would be holding tight to the bottom on the deeper side of the sunken humps while the smaller walleye were holding on top of the humps. Northern pike were on these same structures in 12 to 15 feet of water. Searching for active walleye we picked up a few pike but unfortunately, our presentation was often bit off by the toothy pike. We quickly learned to stay out of the pike zones.
We spent two days fishing out of Kyle and Saskatchewan Landing and a total of five days fishing Lake Diefenbaker from one end to the other. We didn’t catch any eight to 12-pound walleye that Lake Diefenbaker is well known for however, we did catch both quality and quantity walleye, northern pike, perch, and sauger.
GREAT HOSPITALITY
In all the communities we visited during our five days on Lake Diefenbaker, we enjoyed great accommodations, restaurants, and many friendly residents who understand how important hunting and fishing are to their local communities.
There were many times we would talk for 30 minutes with locals about everything from hunting, fishing, farming, and ranching at the boat launches, restaurants, or gas stations. I can’t wait to return to Lake Diefenbaker for some more great walleye fishing and another chance to set the hook on a Lake Diefenbaker trout.
For more information on fishing and all the sights and activities on and around Lake Diefenbaker, contact Lake Diefenbaker Tourism. https://lakediefenbakertourism.com