bronzeback

Cliff, Regarding the Garmin Striker 4. You might want to check out this site. I think it's the most detailed site out there on the features of the unit.

My report for Hambleton lake is the one on Mike's site. The lake is stuffed with walleye and the average size is bigger than any of the other lakes we have fished in the area. Pike were few and far between but the bragging wall in the cabin shows they are there if you target them. I wouldn't hesitate to go back. PM me with any questions.

Trip of a lifetime for someone for sure. My entry submitted as fast as I could type.

What a timely report Scott! Charlotte and I leave this Friday for our second trip to Abbey. Glad to hear you and your family had a great time. Cheers.

Fantastic Mike. You get my vote for Dad of the year. Thanks for sharing.

Both my daughters just bought new Elantra sedans and love them. A lot of car for the money. As far as I know, the sedans are built in Montgomery Alabama while the coupes and GT are built in Korea.

Back to Abbey Lake for a second visit to this beautiful fly-in spot in the Chapleau area. A north of Nakina trip is on the bucket list for sure though.

Simply amazing Mike. A beautifully written story of an epic trip. Living the dream for sure.

Thanks Roy. We shot lots of video as well including one clip of a black bear swimming across the lake while we fished. I'm sure we'll relive those memories all winter long. Thanks to all for taking the time to read and a special thanks to Mike Borger for all your help and advice.

Mike Borger did the definitive report last summer on Abbey Lake in the Chapleau game preserve. It sounded like the perfect spot for my wife, Charlotte, and I to spend some much needed quality time in the solitude and majesty of this beautiful part of the world. Knowing that many fly-in destinations understandably want a minimum of 3-4 people to make a booking, I didn't have high hopes when I called Warren and Jennifer of Parks Fly-In Fishing in mid winter of actually getting into Abbey. Much to my surprise, Warren said the last week of August was still available and it was ours if we wanted it. I snapped it up in a heartbeat and we were set to go. 6 months never took so long to pass. 3:00 a:m on Sat. Aug 25th. saw us backing out of the driveway to begin the drive to Wawa where we would overnite before flying out Sunday morning with Hawk Air. This was only our second trip up the Lake Superior shoreline and the scenery was spectacular. Charlotte and I had only ever done one fly-in trip before this and, as luck would have it, on that trip we hit a week long cold front with nasty weather and predictably bad fishing. Waking up to grey skies and the threat of rain did not inspire confidence and indeed, by the time we reached Hawk Air, the rain was falling and our 9:30 departure time had changed to noon. Further bad news, upon weigh in, we were overweight and had to decide what could be left behind. Half of our most precious cargo (my beer) and some other non-essentials (food) was selected and we were soon airborne. The flight was made in a zigzag pattern to avoid the patchy weather and a bumpy 40 minutes later we touched down at Abbey. Meeting us at the dock was Warren and Jennifer who had flown in the night before and had the beautiful log cabin neat as a pin for our stay. After Warren gave us a quick tour and some helpful tips for greenhorns, he and Jenn departed with our pilot and we settled in. The rain ended shortly after we unpacked and we never saw another drop all week. In fact the weather was perfect with temps in the low 20's C daytime, cooler at night. Charlotte and I will never be mistaken for hardcore fisherpeople. Usually one main trip a year with perhaps a trip to a friend's cottage thrown in is the extent of our fishing. I usually have a bucketful of reasons why we didn't catch many fish whether it be the weather, not knowing the lake or whatever. This time however all the elements seemed to be in our favour so I felt a certain amount of pressure to show some results. Especially since Mike had been kind enough to provide us a map with many hotspots highlighted. The fishing was, in a word, astounding. Numbers would be meaningless even if we had been able to keep track. Suffice to say we caught and released more fish on this trip than all our other trips combined. We are still wearing our "war wounds" with pride as our hands are still a mass of cuts and punctures from sharp fins. As mentioned in other posts, Abbey is not a lake where you can expect to catch giant walleye. But neither are they the small 12-14 inch cigars you might think. Fully 90% of our catch was between the 16-18 inch range and as scrappy as they come. Pike were few and far between although we didn't target them anyways. The folks from Hawk Air dropped in for a check on us on Wednesday and God love them, they brought my beer. Part of breakfast and dinner every day. The colours on some of the fish were a beautiful blue. Hopefully they show up in this shot. I'll close by saying that, the fishing aside, a fly-in trip to a lake such as Abbey is something that everyone should experience at least once. I can remember sitting around the campfire after a long day on the water, watching the full moon bathe the lake in light and thinking that it can't get better than this.

I think I passed "stoked" about the beginning of June. We fly into Abbey Aug 26th for a week. Seems like it will never get here.

Mike, you are creating memories that will only get sweeter as time passes. A week spent with one of your children in that unspoiled paradise is more precious than gold. Thanks to you, Riley, Dan and "The Rifleman" for taking us along for the ride.

Excellent report... My wife and I are heading up there ourselves the last week of August and I'm in count down mode already. Mike's advice and recommendations are sure sending a bunch of us Park's way. Can't wait.

I'd like to echo the comments most have made about how helpful Mike has been when asked for advice. My wife and I did our first fly-in trip last year to a lake in the Wawa area. I sent Mike a message asking for a couple of tips on what might work best up there. I wasn't sure if he would even have the time to respond as he seemed very busy at the time. Much to my surprise, he replied with a detailed report of what should work and what to try if it didn't, as well as a host of other tips that we found invaluable. I happen to be Canadian but I'm sure his response would of have been the same whatever my nationality. I don't want to keep this post going any longer than it should but I believe Mike to be one of the most helpful guys on this board and it's obvious most feel the same.