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Poring over maps has always been a favorite pastime of mine, especially when planning trips in Ontario's far north. Looking over a detailed topographic map of Windsor lake, a widening of the fabled Attawapiskat River, the opportunities seemed endless. It encompasses thousands upon thousands of acres of fishable water, and with the obvious potential for trophy fish it's a destination that's long intrigued me. Last year Eddie North acquired an older outpost camp on Windsor lake, his goal being to open it up to anglers in 2014. Life, not unexpectedly, tends to throw us a curve every once in a while, and when a proposed September trip to northern Saskatchewan fell through Eddie stepped up to the plate. "How would you guys feel about fishing Windsor in mid September? The camp isn't completely ready for guests yet, but it's in decent shape and I'd love to see what the fishing is really like before I open it up next year!" Pretty easy decision for me. A call to my friend Joe, and two other board members, Rick and Julian had the cast of characters quickly pinned down. We'd be fishing Windsor on the week of September 13. With the full moon on the 20th and blessed with a favorable weather forecast expectations were running high... An Inauspicious Start As the otter banked and began its descent onto Windsor I was struck by two things: Water, its course convoluted in nature and littered with islands, stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. Also evident were thousands upon thousands of rocks. The river was obviously low and presented a literal mine field of hazards. The pilot, a capable young woman, circled the camp and merely shook her head. "No way we're landing there!" With nothing else said she dropped the plane onto a rock-free zone and taxied over to a beach a good kilometer east of the camp. With the wind blowing she hopped out barefoot with a rope as we watched. We quickly followed suit shedding our shoes and socks and jumping into the frigid water to help unload the plane. Visions of Castaway popped to mind as in short order our gear was piled high on the beach along with two motors and a drum of gas. Of course we had no boats, they were at the outpost camp. "Good luck gentlemen, hope you have a great week!" And with that she revved the engine and was quickly gone, a tight schedule to maintain. Rick quickly set out along the shoreline heading for the outpost camp, his goal being to get one of the boats and paddle or pole it back to beach. We busied ourselves organizing gear and donning dry socks and boots, and in no time at all it seemed we heard a whoop from Rick as he turned the point with one of the boats. We quickly had one of the outboards clamped onto the transom and began loading our gear. It took a couple of trips to complete the task, but we were soon unloaded at the camp and quickly set about unpacking and settling in. As promised the camp was in decent shape, and with a bit of work it has the potential to be great. Still, there were a few issues that needed attention. First order of business being installing the woodstove. A bit of sweeping and cleaning, some screening tacked up onto a couple of open windows in the screen porch, some dry wood cut and split and we were good to go, we were home for a week. The dock, while in good shape, was left mostly high and dry with the low water so we had to improvise there too. Fortunately for us there were two old log boat ramps set back high on the bank and buried in the weeds. With a bit effort we dragged them both down to the waters edge, one on each side of the dock. They would prove to be an ideal substitute. With our chores out of the way we put our tackle together and readied the boats, it was time to fish. A Plethora Of Pike When I'm fishing a location that has the potential to produce a trophy pike on any given cast I find it difficult to fish for anything else and this trip was no exception. The problem was where to find them? With such a vast amount of territory to explore and fish eliminating unproductive water and quickly establishing a pattern was essential. Being familiar with the pike in this system I knew that bays or feeding shelves directly adjacent to main river channel and associated current were key. A large percentage of this waterway is comprised of backwater areas, some kilometers away from the deeper water and current. While I'm sure they'd be hotspots early in the season, it was an easy task eliminating them in September. Still there was a lot of water to cover, and cover it we did exploring every inch both upstream and down from camp. Not unexpectedly we were somewhat constrained by the low water. Many channels which would otherwise be navigable, were high and dry. Still, the navigable water was endless and we enjoyed every minute spent exploring it. Being September and in the midst of a prime moon phase I wasn't anticipating finesse to play a big role and that proved true. Casting spinnerbaits, inline bucktails, a variety of spoons and occasionally 6 inch twister tails along deep weed edges and always adjacent to current we found success. Copious amounts of large, aggressive and willing pike came to play. ​ A Windfall Of Walleye With such phenomenal pike fishing the walleye by and large took a back seat. That however doesn't diminish the quality of the fishery. Elsewhere on the Attawapiskat I've caught trophy sized fish, many in the 7-10lb class. While on Windsor we never did capture any behemoths, but the numbers were unprecedented. Windsor in a nutshell is a bona fide walleye factory. If you strictly concentrated on them you could easily catch 100 a day. Mostly in the 17-21" range, with a handful larger, Windsor's walleye are fat, feisty and will seemingly hit anything. As always I brought a flat of worms with me, but they were completely unnecessary. Ultimately we mostly used 4" Fin S Fish and Northland minnows. Run clean on a 1/4 or 3/8 oz head they inflicted grievous harm on the walleye population. Every single current area, and there were lots of them, held scads of hungry walleye. ​ ​ ​ Breathtaking Vistas And An Unexpected Visitor The terrain at Windsor is something special. Mile upon mile of convoluted twisting water interspersed with countless islands, neck downs and current areas all set in a backdrop of northern taiga. It has a wild feel, a true sense of remoteness and quite easily gets under your skin. It's a special place. ​ Late one evening around 7:30 Joe and I were working a small rock pile not far from camp when we heard the unmistakable drone a float plane drawing closer. With less than an hour of light left and being so far north we were surprised to say the least. It circled it overhead then quickly landed about a kilometer away. I knew it wasn't Nakina Air and honestly didn't quite know what to expect as I fired up the outboard to drive over and greet them. It never dawned on me for a moment that it was the MNR, I honestly would have been less surprised to see a pink unicorn land on the lake. They were on a milk run that day hitting up all the remote outpost camps to check on the occupants. Windsor being the furthest north was their last stop of the day before flying back to Geraldton. With the sun sinking fast they were polite enough gent's, but a bit rushed. When asked if they could check our cabin for fish, I told them sure no problem, but you'll have to hop into my boat if you want to. "Why's that?" asked older guy in charge. "Water's too low, you can't dock your plane at the camp" says I. "Never mind then" says older guy in charge. After checking our boat thoroughly as well as our licenses older guy asks what's in the thermos? I had one beside me in the boat filled with coffee as the day had been cold. He unscrews the lid, smells it, then says "I think we have a problem." "Really, why?" says I. "It appears as though there's Bailey's in your coffee sir!" I explained to him that it was actually French Vanilla flavored Coffeemate. "How sure are you that's Coffeemate sir?" "100% sure, although I wish I had some Bailey's right about now." He looked at me kind of dubiously as he handed the thermos back. My impression was that I had just narrowly escaped some big trouble. Nevertheless we chatted pleasantly for a spell before they went on their way. Tax payers dollars hard at work! The Camp And A Tip Of The Hat To The Boys As I've said the Windsor outpost is nice, but has the potential to be truly great with a small amount of cleaning and fixing. For our purposes it was an ideal venue, and being a single cabin outpost on such an outstanding body of water I'll definitely be back. For those of you interested in a trip to Windsor I shot this short video tour of the camp: The outfitter is Eddie North out of Nakina and his contact info can be found on his website at eddienorth.com Once again a big thank you to Eddie who has always been a pleasure to deal with, especially this time accommodating us at the very last minute. You're a good man my friend and I'm sure we'll do it again! Finally I'd like to thank Joe, Rick and Julian. You guys made this trip extra special and I'm sure there'll be more. Cheers boys! Hope you enjoyed, Mike

Recently I was looking to bring my 6 year old son Brendan on a trip, just the two of us. While the kid's already a veteran of these types of trips, never before have we gone alone. I thought it was long overdue as the lad has already fostered a fierce passion for the sport and from experience it's a perfect way to bond. So the question was where to go? Within the last year I've flown twice with Hearst Air. Once to the Sutton river late last August, truly the experience of a lifetime, and again in May when my group flew into their new outpost camp on the Attawapiskat river. Both trips were flawless with the overriding theme being the friendliness and professionalism of Hearst Air Service. What makes Hearst even more of an attractive option, the drive from southern Ontario straight up highway 11 is relatively painless and short. With only 4 nights available for this trip Hearst is at my driving limit. Any further and a shorter trip just isn't worth the long haul. So what constitutes the perfect destination when bringing along a 6 year old boy? In an ideal world a smaller lake that's easy to figure out that teems with fish. Non stop action is what it's all about. Second, the camp has got to be clean and neat and the equipment top notch. Third, and this is many times a stretch even on a fly in, my son LOVES fishing by himself off the dock. Ideally we'd fly to a location where he could do that with success. Talking with Melanie at Hearst Air she suggested their Sunshine lake outpost would fit all the criteria. It's their smallest outpost lake, but as she said is full of fish with the bonus being a surprising number of larger pike. Hearst Air has gained the reputation of being a first class outfitter over the years and for good reason. They never take shortcuts. It was an easy decision for me to book Sunshine for our trip, and the planning and anticipation began! Arriving at the airbase we had a slight weather related delay, but that was short lived. With the word from Melanie that things were a go we quickly unloaded our gear. In no time at all it was weighed and packed in the plane with military precision, these guys are efficient and good! Because it was just the two of us I'd packed a little differently than I normally do, wanting the trip to be extra special for the kid. Stuff I would normally never bring like cases of bottled water and his favorite pop. I know for a fact I was more than a little overweight, but no one blinked an eye, it all went on the plane with no extra charge. One of many reasons why I'm so high on this particular outfitter. My boy was practically vibrating with excitement when the pilot snapped this pic on the plane's pontoon prior to boarding. It's about a 35-40 min flight into Sunshine from the airbase and I shot this cool video of our landing as we approached. As you'll see near the end of the video, regardless of excitement, the drone of a float plane has a soothing quality when it comes to young kids. The second we tied off at the dock Bren scrambled out of the plane asking if he could check out the cabin. The pilot and I quickly unloaded and I took stock of the scene. It really was a pretty spot set back in a grove of cedars with neatly trimmed grass out in front. Best of all the dock looked incredible. A narrow spit of sand led out into the lake with a boardwalk on top. That terminated at a big granite rock with a brand new floating dock tied off in front. It was an obvious piece of structure and one that I'd have fished regardless. The pilot spent a few minutes going over the ins and outs of the camp and was soon gone, leaving us to our own devices (and a whole lot of fish!) Not surprisingly Brendan begged me to rig up a rod for him and while I unpacked he ran down to the dock. It didn't take long.... The dock would quickly become his favorite spot. Beyond the ease of catching fish I think he liked it because he was a little more independent than in the boat with dad. That said it didn't take me long to ready the boat and we began the enslaught. Enslaught truly is the only way to describe the fishing we had. It was non stop action, catching walleye after walleye. None were huge but that didn't matter, Bren was having the time of his life! Yes there were some key spots that produced crazy numbers, but the fact of the matter is we caught fish all over this small lake. Didn't really matter what we used either, the fish weren't fussy. I even caught one or two myself. As mentioned the camp itself was a gem. Once on the water during a rare clear break I snapped a quick pic to show you guys the setting. It was a long but memorable first day. Around 8pm I poured a drink and fired up the barbeque, while Brendan, God bless him, refused to give up. I watched from the deck while the kid continued to fish away happily. Every few minutes he'd come running up excitedly with another fish that he couldn't unhook. Does it get any better than that? It would quickly get redundant if I posted pictures of every single fish we caught over the course of the next few days, so here's the highlights. The easiest and most productive way to catch Sunshine lake walleye is with a simple jig, a 3 or 4 inch twister tail and a chunk of worm. Either sitting on them and vertically jigging, drifting with the wind or slowly trolling, it all worked. When we tired of jigging we'd throw on a crankbait and troll with equal success. There's a large population of perch in this lake and perch colored cranks, especially a #7 Shad Rap was lethal. As mentioned there's lots of pike in Sunshine lake. The south and west shorelines were shallower and reedy in tight, quickly dropping into 10-12' of water just offshore. These areas were rife with smaller pike. Casting weedless spoons as well as smaller sized spinnerbaits and bucktails the action was steady. Here's a few more vids of the action. Crankbaits as noted, were deadly and put a ton of fish in the boat! We used Berkley Gulp minnows at times with great results, although I don't really know whether that's actually relevant or not. I'm pretty sure we could've used shoelaces or beer caps with equal success. In this clip Brendan struggles a bit with the unhooking part, but gets the job done in his own way. As usual anytime we were back at camp Brendan fished relentlessly from the dock. I could have taken a thousand pic's and video clips of his antics, but here's just one. We enjoyed a couple of meals of walleye and for the first time I had him fillet his own fish (with some help). He breaded the fish himslf then helped dad get the fire lit. I honestly think he had more fun doing that than anything else! Nothing beats freshly caught walleye over an open fire. Of all the things he's been bragging about to his mom and sister, catching, cleaning and cooking his own fish was the biggest highlight. Of course it wasn't all about the fishing. Blessed with mostly sunny weather we spent a fair bit of time at the lakes only beach cooling off. Best part was we had a constant breeze which really kept the bugs down. It was as close to paradise on earth as I believe it's possible to get. Another highlight was Brendan's very first time on the tiller by himself with no help from dad. We were trolling at the time and probably caught a dozen fish in the short time he was at the helm. As he said "Daddy, I'm a better fisherman than you I think!" He also loved fishing from shore whenever the opportunity presented itself. As mentioned I think he felt a little more independent when he wasn't in the boat with dad. Pretty much everywhere we tried from shore we caught fish, although none of the spots produced as well as the dock. Twice we had campfires, roasting marshmallows and discussing important things like why fish like to eat leeches. "Even if I was a fish I wouldn't eat them daddy, they're gross!" Whether there's a bear watching him when he goes to the outhouse. He was convinced there was and subsequently refused to go to the bathroom for two straight days. And where does the sun go at night?. That was a big one that he couldn't wrap his head around. HAHA! One morning I awoke early at 6:45 and made coffee. It was the only really peaceful sunrise we had while at Sunshine as most of the time the winds were blowing like crazy. As I sauntered out onto the porch coffee in hand, Brendan burst past me racing down to the dock to begin fishing again. While he didn't catch a fish on cue, it's still a beautiful scene nonetheless. As I've said there's a healthy population of pike in Sunshine lake as well as some larger specimens to boot. We put in our time trying hard for a bigger pike and twice I had high 30's possibly even 40" class fish on. Just before I shot this video clip of Brendan a very large pike came unbuttoned right at boatside, so the big girls are indeed lurking in the weedy fringes. An interesting phenomenon was the abundance of loons. I've seen large concentrations of them before, but usually it's in September as they begin to gather enmasse before migrating south. A couple of times I counted over 20 of them clustered together, and they were really vocal! On our last evening the winds subsided and we were treated to a picture perfect sunset providing a glorious capper to our trip. All in all it was a trip for the ages, and one that I know Brendan will remember for a long time. The amazing fishing aside there were a number of important firsts on this trip and my son did me proud! Speaking of fishing I'm not normally into actual numbers, but in this case I'll make an exception for Brendan. He took it upon himself to try and keep count using paper and pencil, and according to him we landed more than a years worth of fish in 31/2 days of fishing. 368 to be exact. Sunshine more than lived up to its billing! The camp itself was absolutely spotless, clean and fresh. I shot this short video tour and not unexpectedly my kid burst inside halfway through with a jigless rod. A pike had bitten him off while I was filming. Perfect. Finally a big thanks to Melanie Veilleux of Hearst Air. She's been an absolute pleasure to deal with over the last few trips! On a related note if any of you guys do decide to book with Hearst, please remember that Melanie is partial to dark chocolate... I've done a great many fly in trips over the years, and flown with countless outfitters. Some are good, some are bad, some are great, and some are just ugly. Hearst Air falls into the category of great, I honestly can't say enough good things about them! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! Cheers, Mike

For me the true harbinger of spring is ice out in Algonquin Park. Winter weary muscles strain under the heft of a pack as you pick your way along a wet portage trail. The rich smell of earth and fallen leaves waft in your nostrils as you plod along. There is little new growth, yet the forest seems alive and reborn. Being a part of it all is panacea for the soul. This is where I belong, it is my Church. Recently I was able to share this experience with a good friend and fellow board member. We set up a comfortable base camp and did day trips into several small, isolated lakes, none of which had groomed trails leading into them. It was bushwhacking at its finest. Fish are always a bonus on these trips and we did catch a few. None were large, but that didn't matter. Here are some images: End Of The Trail Fresh Bear Scat Struggling A Comfortable Camp Camp Cuisine Ascending A Steep Hill In Search Of Trout The Wolves Were Busy Our Pulses Quicken When We Spy The Lake Success! Picture Perfect Slippery! Hope you enjoyed, Cheers, Mike