Canadian Fly-in Fishing Trip  -  September 1999

Notes from Jack's Canadian Fishing trip.

On Saturday September 11th 1999 I left with 5 other fellows from the Dayton area for a week-long fishing trip to Canada. One of the fellows had worked with me previously at Grandview hospital. We drove for approximately 14 hours into Ontario Canada through northern Michigan. Approximately one-hour East and 2 1/2 hours north of the Michigan-Canada border we reached a lake called Red Pines lodge. From there, we took a small plane with pontoons instead of wheels. We split up into two groups along with all of our gear. The pilot made two separate flights to take us to another lodge. There, we unloaded from plane and loaded ourselves and our gear into three small fishing boats for the trip to our cabin which was one-hour by water over the river. The cabin we landed at sits on a beautiful Canadian lake.

	Here is the group at the loading dock. That orange and white plane was our "transportation" for the 15 minute flight to our remote destination. With out 800 lbs of gear, food, etc. and 6 of us it took 2 flights to make it. The lane is a WW2 era DeHavilland Beaver. Not luxurious at all but quite rugged. There are only 2 ways to supply the fishing cabins: by boat which is a 40+ mile trip from a small town along the northern branch of the Canadian Northern rail line (that's how they bring in major supplies & material) and by float plane like we went.
	We landed at a dock on that little island in the middle of the picture. There is a cabin there (but not the one we stayed at). You can barely see the dock at the water's edge in left center. There we off-loaded our gear and put the stuff into 3  16' aluminum fishing boats for the 1 hour trip down river to our final destination.
	This was our "home" for the week. The cabin has the green walls on the ridge on the right. The Nemagosenda river flows over the waterfall at the left. The sound of the river roaring over the falls was always nearby.

When we reached our cabin, we passed the bend in the river than the river opened up into a small lake. At the other end of the lake where the river entered it, there was a two-level waterfall and just at the edge of the waterfall, a group of cabins on the ridge. One of these is ours. The other cabin was unoccupied at the time and we were the only guests there so it was only our group of six people who shared the entire facility. In the picture above you'll see the green cabin in which we stayed. It was about 50 feet from a waterfall. It was a beautiful setting, totally unspoiled Canadian wilderness. There were no other human beings within twelve miles of us (except for the fisherman at the other cabin where we landed). The nearest "town" was probably  40 miles away. A close-up view of the falls is included below.

This was the view from our side door. The falls was about 50 feet away.

Cabin life was slightly more primitive than were used to at home but, we did have running river water (which had to be boiled before consuming it). We brought in most our our liquids to consume in the form of beer, soda or juice. We did have warm or hot water for a shower in a separate building. The temperature of water depended on what kind of mood the hot water heater was in on any given day. Not exactly all of the creature comforts of home but not bad for being in the middle of nowhere.

Fishing was excellent. We were able to fish both above and below the falls. They had boats on both sides. The only problem is we only had one set of outboard motors. That required us to carry the outboard motors up over the ridge and down the opposite side to get to the second set of boats. We spent time fishing on both sides of the falls. The better fishing was up river where we caught a lot of northern pike. There are several pictures of the fish below.In one picture Jack is holding a large Northern pike which was the trophy fish of the week which I caught. (Dan Schultz SAYS he caught a bigger one... but it got away...sounds like a "fish story" to me!) The second picture shows Dan with some of our daily catch.

	We didn't have a scale to weigh it but we suspect this girl weighed about 10-12 lbs. It was almost 30" in length. I caught it trolling a spoon along the edge of a river channel connecting two lakes. It was the biggest fish we caught and kept all week.
	Here is Dan with a stringer of the kind of northerns we caught most days when we were out. Dan caught the "biggest" fish but it broke open the stringer and got off before they could get it back to the cabin.

We also caught some walleye but we weren't really fishing for them. Some of these fish we caught right below the falls in the lake in front of our cabin. Also see the photos showing the  view from our cabin.

	Here are a sample of small northern pike and walleye which we caught mostly in the lake just below the falls. We fished the edge of the current casting small lures and retrieving them across the current break into slack water. We could do this either from the rocks on the side of the falls or from a boat.
	From our cabin this was the view toward the left looking down river below the falls which you can see along the right side of the picture.
	Looking upriver above the falls showed this part of the river. Up-river about 2 miles was the lake pictured in the scenery below.

We had lots of good food to eat including fish, fish and, more fish. We ate fish fried, baked, in chowder and just about every other way. All of us men did a good job with our "housekeeping chores" and thanks to several of the guys who were good cooks, we ate very well.

	Most of the fishing was done is a chain of lakes along the river. This was a typical scene from along those lakes.
	This was a view along the river coming back to our cabin and out-buildings which you can see on the ridge toward the left. Just past the picture the river turns to the right then goes over the waterfall.

We saw Beavers, Eagles, all kinds of ducks and geese and also, Dan Schultz and myself saw a moose and. There is a story behind this that I have to have to tell.

We were coming back from fishing our first day out to a lake which was upstream. We were fishing by ourselves since the other group had gone in the opposite direction. Dan spotted the moose first far in the distance along the edge of lake. It was feeding on reeds that were along the side of lake. We came up to it slowly in our boat then stopped just offshore. It probably had never seen a human being before. It looked at us curiously but did not seem agitated first. Then, Dan started to tease it by talking to it and singing to it and, at that point, the moose started to get a little agitated. We thought we would start the motor and get on out of there since moose can be dangerous when they're mad. However, Dan had the motor in reverse and when we started the boat, it started to back up. Now the wind had cause the boat to shift position so the back was facing toward the moose. So, when the engine started,  we moved closer and the moose thought we were challenging it. At that point, she got very, very mad. She started to smack the water with her front hooves and, started to follow us along the shoreline as we motored along the lake. The picture attached  was taken while we were relatively close. There was no rack of antlers so we assumed that it was a cow rather than a bull. It was quite experience being that close to a wild animal like that.

Here is a picture of bullwinkle's mother whom we encountered along the side of the lake while we were fishing.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience and someday, I hope to get the opportunity to do it again. Neither Patrick of Jon had a chance to go but since both are avid fishermen, I'm sure they would like to go. They would have a blast. Hopefully We'll get back there some day.

	Time to pack up the boats ad head out for out pick-up flight to take us home. The morning we left was crisp with fog along the river.
	We're loading up the Beaver to take us home.

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