solopaddler

Check your messages bud Here's a few more assorted pic's from the weekend: cheers, Mike

Looks like a great time Mike! What depth were you catching them at?

It's definitely too far for just a weekend, you need at least 3 days, preferably 4 to make it worthwhile. I actually go up quite often, at least a couple times a month for 4 days, and 2 separate weeks in the summer with the family. Yeah, the gas is getting to be a killer, but even so it's still worth it.

That's what it's all about, thanks for posting!

Another nice one! You're now officially the OFC Paddlefish master

About 61/2-7 hours depending on stops or traffic. Thank's for the kind words everyone!

Man, those are some nice looking trout, that spec is like a little football! Sounds like a great trip and one I can relate to!

I left last Thursday with my dad and uncle to my place in N/W Quebec. I hadn't been up there since last fall and was anxious to see if everything was okay. First order of business once we arrived was to uncover the boat, clean it out a bit and throw on the motor. We loaded all our gear into it, hooked it up to the truck and backed her in. Believe it or not that's a small load, usually I'm hauling wood and other building supplies over, but this wasn't a work trip. It was a gorgeous day, bluebird skies, warm temps., and not a single bug! The drive over to the cabin was great. Here's us just approaching the cabin. First thing I did was hook up the dock (man that water is cold!) After we unpacked I had to re-hook all the plumbing and get the water pump going. That was a bit of a pain as the foot valve wasn't working and I had to take it apart , clean it up and re-assemble it, but in the end it was fine and I managed to fill our water tank. Here's a couple of shots of the inside of the main cabin, the sunroom and the deck, most of which I rebuilt last year. Here's a couple of shots from the water. Everything was fine, so we poured a couple of drinks, relaxed and readied our tackle for the Quebec Walleye opener on my lake the next day, Friday the 18th. Friday we were up early and were greeted by another picture perfect, warm and sunny day. Here's the ice breaker, a decent pike for my dad! My uncle with a keeper. My dad with another. I caught some as well All in all it was an incredible day. We caught a ton of fish, and shared a lot of laughs . Over dinner that night we talked about our plans for Saturday. My place is right on the Ontario border and I happen to know an excellent little back lake just filled with fish. That's where we headed the next morning for our second consecutive opening day . Forgot to mention, we awoke Saturday to a massive cold front. From 20 degrees on Friday to a high of 3 on Saturday with bone chilling wind...it was brutal conditions! Still, once we launched and started fishing we caught a ridiculous number of fish! It was total mayhem, with many triple headers. Mostly walleye, but a lot of pike as well. I decided to move to another spot and in short order we began to catch OOS smallmouth bass. We were getting quite a few walleye as well, but eventually moved so as not to disturb the bass... This was the typical size of the walleyes After a while the 2 old guys (both in their 70's) couldn't take the cold anymore, so we pulled ashore at a sheltered spot and I lit a fire for them. I kept a few fish for a shorelunch, and that was definitely the highlight of the day for my dad and uncle! After lunch, we fished for a bit more and caught another pile of fish. Here's my dad with one. I caught the last fish of the trip ('course it was the largest ). I'm really not giving everyone the finger here, just showing off my war wound. The fish's gill plate cut me pretty bad when I grabbed it. At this point it ice pellets and rain started to fall, so it was definitely time to go. Another great day with my dad and uncle though, with the fishing being unreal. Definitely fly-in calibre! . The old boys had a great day! Sunday we didn't fish at all. My dad and uncle lounged and relaxed all day around the fire and I started working on a much needed new outhouse. (dirty job digging the hole but it had to be done!). We barbecued some killer steaks and had a few drinks Sunday night to cap off a perfect trip. Couldn't have gone any better (except for the drive home today , that I could've lived without). Can't wait to get back up there though, I miss it already cheers, Mike

It does look frigid, great report nevertheless. Love seeing brook trout reports!

Nice report Bill, thanks!

Agreed. Great looking family you've got there, looks like a blast!

Another great report, you do have a knack! Have a great long weekend

Cool looking paddlefish bud! The fish you can't identify is a quillback sucker, member of the carp family actually....

Awesome, way to go Jen!

Have you ever heard the term shrinkage? Seriously, the water was numbingly cold. Even holding our underwater camera in the drink for moments became physically painful!

I'm dead serious, it was tough . Really though, I figured being there for 4 days most of our time would be spent just fishing with the camera turned off, and that wasn't the case at all. It was all business for the bulk of our time spent there. Most of our time was spent trying to get each shot perfect, and believe me it's not that easy. Between stumbling over our words and serious issues with one of the microphones not working, there were multiple takes for almost every single shot. I know I mentioned that Ben fixed one of the mic's on Wed. night, what I didn't mention was that the second mic crapped out when we were in the park. It was really frustrating... (it was fun though )

Wow, that is truly unbelievable, incredible fish!

Beauty!

Hey Mike, it was a pleasure meeting you and your party. What I'd like to know is do you have any pic's of the huge Brook Trout you guys caught Sunday morning? I'd love to see it! For everyone elses benefit it was caught fly fishing and was 22 or 23" long I believe. Very impressive! (these guys definitely know their stuff! )

Thank's for the kind words everyone! Bill and Jen, to answer your question, at this point the show hasn't been sold yet. We've got some serious interest from a couple of networks, but no decisions are going to be made until our "official" pilot is produced sometime in late June and they've got something to see...I'll let you know as soon as I find out. tony, the episode in June is going to start with us portaging our gear into Union Station in Toronto. From there we'll travel 22 hours north and get dropped off basically in the middle of nowhere alongside the tracks west of Armstrong. The route I've chosen has a nice mix of larger lakes, a river with some fantastic rapids (filled with walleye ), and some really cool back lakes. The adjacent back lakes are neat 'cause they're too small for planes to land in, and aren't part of any logical canoe route, so very, very few people go in there. They'll be as untouched as it's possible to be in this day and age. For what it's worth (I think) Breakfast Television is likely going to do a little segment with us on Front Street on June 7th when we're portaging our gear into the train station. I'll confirm that soon BTW, I just noticed that my pictures of the Wolf Den are pretty dark. The 3 bathroom signs are : Does, Bucks, and Bucks & Does. Not sure if you can make it out, but we thought it was funny

Well, it was an experience that's for sure! We all learned a lot and had a blast doing it, but I'll tell you I thought it would be way easier than the reality of the situation was. Filming a show, especially for several days in the bush is a LOT of work! Anyhow, we arrived at the Wolf Den just outside the West gate along hwy. 60 Wed. evening. It's a great (cheap) place to spend the night before heading into the interior. We had a really cool old log cabin to stay in These were the communal bathrooms. The first 2 are pretty self explanatory, but we were wondering about the 3rd one! We tried to do an interview with Ben and Robin Wed. evening and found out much to our dismay that one of the wireless microphones wasn't working. Amazingly, Ben used to be an electronics tech and he actually ripped the thing apart, soldered a couple of connections and fixed it! Pretty much saved our bacon as only having one functioning microphone would've been disastrous. Our trip started at the landing Thursday morning loading all our gear into the water taxi After a 10km portage we made it to the first lake (that's Dan in the bow) We had one more short portage before we made it to our destination lake, set up camp and cooked an awesome dinner! The next day we made our way over to a nearby river to film some footage and do some fishing. Along the way I caught the worlds smallest Brook Trout It really was an incredibly beautiful river We caught TONS of Brookies this size, it was a blast! Release shot We set up along side the river to film Dan butterfly filleting our trout Once that was done, we filmed the trout being cooked on the grill (they were delicious!) Here's a shot of the scenery heading back to camp The next day we decided to head to a beach at the north end of the lake to check it out Amazingly we found the remnants of a wolf kill, finding the spot where they pulled the deer down Also found the remains of an old ranger cabin way back in the bush hidden from everything, it was pretty cool too (sorry, no pic's). When we did have time to fish on our lake, we caught a lot of lake trout, most of them around this size Our cameraman Steve even caught a few! Here's our support guy Bruce landing at the campsite with Steve. Bruce is Dan's brother in law and works for the M.N.R. in Bancroft. A more competent, knowledgable woodsman I've never met. He was an incredible asset to have and help make this happen! Here's Dan and Bruce cutting wood Finally, a beaver dam right at the lake. There were hundreds of suckers spawning in the little riffle flowing into the lake and a bunch of trout that followed them in to feed on the sucker spawn It really was a great experience. The weather was picture perfect, the bugs were'nt too bad, and we've now got 7 hours of footage to edit down into 23 minutes! I'm as excited as anyone to see what the final product will be like, 'cause I really don't have a clue! Next film shoot will be on June 7th in the Armstrong area. I'm really looking forward to that one and I think (hope) some of the problems we encountered will have been ironed out! Cheers, Mike

Thank's everyone for the support and advice. I've gotta quickly cut the grass, do some last minute shopping then I'm outta here! See y'all next week!

Very cool new product for those of us who like their coffee in the bush... http://www.venturedesignworks.com/pressbot.html Why didn't I think of that!

Mondays and Tuesdays are always tough for me. My shifts at the weather office run from 2pm Monday, 'till 6am Tuesday, then 2pm Tuesday 'till 6am Wednesday with basically no sleep from Sun night to Wed night.(my choice btw) Anyhow, as I sit here in my office with my last shift winding down trying to clear my head and pry my eyes open with nuclear strength java , I'm filled with nervous anticipation. We leave later today at 1pm for our first film shoot in Algonquin Park. Hope things go well, there's a lot of people counting on me. Report to follow next week cheers, Mike

Congratulations! There is no bigger news than that