The biggest and the best is my automatic reply when someone inquires about the lake trout potential at Ontario's Lake Nipigon. There’s more than a few grey trout glory holes across Canada, but I'm betting that if a new world record should fall, it will come from the big lake north of Thunder Bay. For the past four summers I've been fishing Nipigon and the numbers and size of fish I come across never fails to amaze me.

Nipigon stretches out at 62 miles in length and measures across at 44 miles. It has a recorded depth of 450 feet. The lake's bottom is a mass of ridges, valleys and humps. Islands and shoals dot the surface. The water is also fresh and cold. Ideal lake trout habitat. Ideal lunker trout habitat.

Nipigon has a two lake trout per day limit. Only one fish can be greater than 27 1/2 inches in length. The trouble being, that most often it’s near impossible to find smaller fish. I've had the good fortune to test some of the continent’s best trout waters and presently rate Nipigon as the best.

Over the past two years Walker Downrigger president Randy Ford and myself have been video taping the underwater world of Nipigon with the Walker Strike Vision camera system. The results have been mind boggling. Not only are we catching 30 to 40 pound grey trout each and every day, but we've also recorded sightings of as many as six or seven giants at a time missing, striking and throwing our offerings of Williams Wablers and Williams Quick Silver spoons.

The lake trout here, are some of the fastest growing in Canada. In fact, compared to some areas of the country, Nipigon lake trout are putting on the pounds twice as fast as their counterparts. Much of this growth spurt is due to the introduction of smelt back in the early 1970's.