this year due to some scheduling conflicts our trip wont be until early august, whereas my previous 9 trips were all early june.

naturally the fishing lures/equipment i bring will be different. ive done a little sorting already and am favoring heavier jigs for deeper water applications, larger deeper diving crankbaits, and brighter colors as the deeper water blocks more light.

this year it will also just be 2 of us, my older brother and myself. we plan to do some night fishing as well as early early morning outings. the brighter colors will help in this style of fishing also i think. by brighter i mean more firetiger/clown/uv patterns.

my standard canada fishing lure trays consisted of 15 ft taildancers, deep shad body xraps, and 1/8 oz jigs and ringworms.

this year, its bigger brighter deeper stuff... i have a fairly wide array of musky equipment but its hard for me to justify bringing one large bait that takes the same space as 4-5 smaller ones.

what do you guys bring in august?

I'm not a fan of August fishing, but here is what I would do. Fish early & late in day. Use larger size lures to match the hatch. Troll everywhere. Be erratic with retrieves. Pray.

Jax,
My main trips each year are from the beginning of August until Labor Day and I like to fish.  As I'm sure you're aware, if you want to catch Walleye and Lakers that time of year you'll have to get down deep.  That being said, how deep really depends on the year.  For example, two years ago I was fishing between 50 and 60 feet down for good size Lakers.  Last year I only had to get down to 30 - 35 feet.  The issue is the water temp.  Lakers like it between 48 and 55 degrees.  I have a little Fish Hawk gauge that gives me temp readings every 5 feet so that gives me a pretty good idea where the fish are likely to be (at least with regards to thermocline.)
As for lures.  The simplest for me when going for Walleye has been Tail Dancers.  As you probably know they come in 15, 20 and 30 foot varieties and I generally carry at least a few of each.  I have even caught a few Lakers using the 30 foot TDs (that was on Jean maybe 4 years back.)  I have had a lot of success with Fire Tiger in August but I find anything with Chartreuse to be effective.
In more recent years I have begun fishing with with snap weights.  They are a pain in the ass since they are supposed to be snapped between 30 and 50 feet up the line from the lure.  That means a hassle when reeling in.  I find just tying the weights 5 feet or so up the line is actually a lot easier.  When fishing with weights almost any lure will do.  My favourite is the Vision 110 by Mega Bass.  Expensive but very effective and I've caught everything from  Walleye and Lakers to good sized Pike using a weighted Vision.  Again the brighter colours and I always use something with Chartreuse at that time of year.
This year as I mentioned in earlier posts I'm going to try fishing with jigs.  I got a lot of good advice on this board and some great pointers and ideas about jig and safety pin spinner selection from MT.  So this year I'll be carrying a lot of jig components - safety pin spinners, various creature baits (mostly curly tail grubs in white and chartreuse) and a wide variety of jig heads in a broad range of weights from ¼ oz all the way up to 1½ oz. (The Esox jig heads that MT recommended look incredible, by the way.)  Probably overkill but I'm not sure what my preferences will be or what will work for me until I give it a shot.  We'll (my wife and I) be heading out for WCPP early in August and be on the water for a grand 23 days of pure heaven.  We count on fish for our dinners and I've never had a problem.
Good luck on your trip this August.  Trust me, it may not be the absolute best time of year for fishing but I've always caught a ton and never been disappointed.

Jax
I have spent a fair amount of time fishing the shield in August. I think much might depend on the lake. A few years back I had stellar fishing for size on basswood with my biggest walleye and biggest laker coming on that trip. Usually I say I'm not going in August after several poor trips so go figure. Last summers August trip was reasonably decent. I hooked one very memorable fish which pulled my boat some ten feet before breaking off and she hit shallow at dark in 15 ft.

But here is my suspicion and it is a strong suspicion. I like to travel so my mornings are usually spent breaking camp and moving on down the road a bit. I usually fish late and with only the Basswood trip as a notable exception late evening fishing in August is usually poor.

If I were base camp fishing in August my focus would be very, very, very early in the morning. Did I mention fishing early? I think I might of. I would get up while it was still dark and be on the water as soon as it was light enough to see. I think the big girls could be quite vulnerable up to about 9 and then my guess it is over. Go back to bed for a few hours.

Then in the afternoon I would concentrate on jigging spoons which provoke fish to bite wether they are hungry or not. They don't have to hunt something down and kill it like with a crank bait but rather instinct kicks in to kill the injured erratic fluttering piece of annoying metal which is just daring something to end its suffering. Of course good electronics would be vital to pinpoint key areas, the fish will show up while trolling your taildancers. Then drop your butterfly jig down (jigging spoon) right on their nose and pop it a few times. Braid helps........I did this on Conmee last year, that being trolled a taildancer and marked fish and dropped the spoon.......2 snaps was all it took before I was hooked up. Unfortunately the hooks pulled but the important aspect was the fish ate. Sooner or later I will spend some real quality time with the butterly jigs and give them a thorough test but they are the bomb offshore......the fish get frustrated and worked up in a lather by them.

we actually were planning on doing a lot of early morning fishing and some night stuff. being that it will just be my older brother and i, the smaller group allows us a bit more flexibility in terms of experimentation. also, i work nights so being up at weird hours and sleeping during the day is my usual.

and we also planned on more vertical jigging. im a really big tube jig fan, so i will be bringing some 4" white tubes and a giant hair jig. i will take a look at some vertical spoons as well