Sportsmen's Camp

Leeches are for fishing not for bloodletting!!!

We had to feed seven – count ‘em – seven ravenous fish eaters yesterday. It was the first rainfree day in a string of about 5 warmish days with scattered drizzle to heavy downpours so we aimed to “make hay while the sun shined”.  The plan was to send out the infamous Japanese long liners! The long liners consist of me, the evil Janeeto (Yes, of the planet Janetron), Baxter and Bart. We take our tiny ultralight fishing poles and park on “the Shoal” in the Piscarious with about 10 beverages and about 3 dozen leeches and fill up a stringer with eating sized bass (say 12 to 15 inchers). We also enjoy a beautiful day on the water. This time we needed about 10 fish to feed this crowd of gourmands! It took us about an hour and a half to complete our task. The cool thing is that several “whompers” were caught and released on the way, Janet caught a 19″, 18.5″ and a 17″ on the way and I (not to be out done) caught a 19.5 incher. Oh, that precious half inch! On initial measurement I only got the fish at about 18 inches – but it was curled and flopping so I remeasured it and it came in at 19.5! The Evil One may leave a comment disparaging my measuring technique but I can assure you all that it was on the up and up! What a beautiful day on the water – northwesterly breezes with a strong westerly component puffy cumulus clouds and warm sun. The bass tasted fantastic for supper too. We wrapped up the expedition a little early and journeyed back for bean bags and keeping a squirrel treed and fun on the beach. What a great day!

It is warmer and sunnier today but still with the comforting northwesterly breeze and I am slated to put a new roof on cabin number 9 – so I may have to get a little long-winded on this blog to delay the inevitable. The lake temperature is in the high 70’s F. The water level on this lake is about normal for late summer. The fish are biting and the insects are fast approaching their low point for the seasons activities. The Humming birds have hatched and fledged and I have to refill the feeders almost daily as the little winged piggies drink and fight with each other all day. Well lunch  and a roof beckons so I must bid you all adieu.

Goddamn Fantastic!

The fishing and weather have been wonderful. The lake temperature is in the upper 70’s F near 80 and the bulk of the mayflies (Janet suggests that they be called “July flies”) have hatched and the fish are nailing leeches and minnows. They are also responding very well to hardware and jitterbugs. Last night me, Janet and the boys spent about 2 hours on the lake at dusk. I caught about a dozen bass on my mepps none smaller than 12 inches and a good one at 17 1/2 inches. I also caught a very well built 30″ pike. Janet nailed a few bass on her jitterbug as well as a small pike. We didn’t do any fishing over deeper shoals, we were fishing the deeper weed beds where the minnows are schooling. Carol Fuller also got a nice perch north of elephant rock – we could hear her squealing in delight from about a quarter mile!

It won’t be all that long until the summer holidays of Vodka on the beach day, Mojito monday, Beer contest on the beach day, All Hail Caesar day, Polish dinner and cocktails, sailing in blustery or calm conditions (depending on the age of the crew – except for “I’m up for any conditions” – Bob Poczik) and the daily bean bag competition as well as all night darts. The Evil Janeeto (from the planet Janetron) has been doing a great job of turf management for beer croquet as well as cross country bocce too! We never run out of beach and lake driven activities and we sometime enjoy a cold drink during the fun!

It rained pretty good today and has cooled to about 75 F so its a very comfortable day. Firth lake levels are not all that different from dryer years. We seem to be getting enough rain to keep up with the demands of the growing season but levels are dropping steadily on the Wapus/Montreal river system and the Grassy is going to record lows this summer. I expect that it will end up about 6.5 to 7 feet below the norm. Sinclair is about 5.5 – 6 feet down now – you can actually walk around the lake now and vast amounts of shoreline rocks and hundreds of feet of gorgeous beach are exposed that haven’t been seen before in this lifetime. The fishing is still very good though and the landing is still in good shape. I actually think that its easier to put a boat in and out this year. I am thinking about a trek to Kapiskong to see the conditions there. It would also be a great year to take another group into Sinclair for beach combing, picnicking, shore lunching and swimming as the die-hards beat the water.  So its all good. Is this heaven? No, its the boreal forest of northern Canada – Sportsmen’s Camp to be specific.

It was taken down by the wind in the last line of thunder showers that came through. Apparently an ant-hill near its base had weakened the roots and the wind toppled it. As I was cleaning up the remains Janet stepped from the house and informed me that our friend Al Watson had passed in the night. Unfortunately I only get to see Al one maybe two times a year. I was looking forward to this years installment or perhaps “fix” would be more appropriate.

I am lucky, I get to see people at their best – their happiest – their most relaxed, but I don’t think that that was a factor with Al. Even when it was cold and pissing down rain on a fishing trip he had a shit eating grin on his face. Al was a fun magnet. He would attract the fun to any situation and you’d get sucked in too. Before you realized it there was a party going on with everyone as grinning and as happy as Al. He had an odd penchant for hand held self portraits with the digital camera. The eastern mystics like to blow smoke up a person’s ass by saying  – “You’re an old soul.” Well Al wasn’t an “old soul” he was a young soul! He saw things with the brightness and positive perspective of a kid – a young man. To hell with being an old soul I wanna be a young soul like Al. I think that Al had the secret to eternal youth – a young soul. Al was a catalyst, a jovial sort, a good fisherman, a good father, an outdoors-man, a friend and my brother (I knew it even before Jeff started calling me uncle Jack). He is sorely missed – I feel as though I’ve been kicked in the gut. But I warm myself with the memories I share with him and my aspirations to achieving young soul status.

Yes dear reader as so often happens here at Sportsmen’s Camp the lake temperature will be higher than the ambient air temperature (thats tempeeechur for residents of Mogadore) and a haze or fog will form over the lake. It also seems to happen, consistently I might add, when the Walkers are here. I am still not quite sure of the nature of this phenomenon but I do my best (from a purely scientific perspective) to investigate its causation fully. Part of the research entails examining the pictures taken over the past week. Most are not blurry or foggy, but – for the life of me – I don’t recall taking them. The pictures also seem to have very odd subject matter. I sent this last batch to HAL at Starbase Bryson and he’s doing a spectrographic analysis. He was a little cranky about it though muttering some nonsense about “beer haze” and “beer goggles with bifocals” – I’ll probably remove a few of his upper cortical function modules and degauss them with a ceramic magnet when I get back home. But anyway I’ll post two of them here so our reader can posit the situation or at least suggest a likely elucidative caption.

One of the theories floating around camp is that Billy fell asleep whilst smoking in one of our older wooden boats.

But there is still much to report. We (Pat, Carol, Gil, Joyce, Baxter,and Bart included) made a trip to the Mond and caught a lot of fish. But there will probably be no more people getting into that lake this year. The entire Grassy river system is down about 3.5 to 4 feet! It was a very difficult push into the lake, what with all of the Evil Janeeto’s – of planet Janetron – bitching and moaning and the low water levels. I would stay with the idiomatic “pissing and moaning” but Janet has raised the art of pissing to new level so I will stay away from that. I had a great time and the fishing was delightful but when the other participants recount the trip they will probably dwell on “Oh it was so hard to walk in the bush and the mud was soooo deeeeep and…” Wa wa wa what a bunch of fucking babies!

I also went up to Sinclair lake a couple days back with the Walkers and it was absolutely amazing to see all the structure high and dry. The drop in water level there appeared to be a good clean 4 feet! You could walk around the lake if you wanted to! But the fishing was still good and the newly exposed rocks on the shore line were gorgeous.  The boat launch at Sinclair was very easy with a 4 wheel drive truck but the launch at Loonwing was about 100 ft away from the water.  We caught several pike, many pickeye or wallyerels, and the bass are now firmly established in the southern grassy system. It occurs to me that any trips to outlying lakes should be investigated prior to packing the boat up and travelling there this year.

The may-fly hatch appears to be concluding. The green drakes were heavy on the water the last few nights so it is possible that the early July guests will experience some of the best fishing of their lives – sans mayfly. The lake temperature is about 73F but we have some cool nights predicted for the coming week but as long as the days are mostly sunny the temps should stay pretty constant.

What with the impending and lamented demise of the Penguin’s beloved igloo (aka Civic Arena/Mellon Arena) Janet (evil one nee of planet Janetron) was  pissing and moaning about the loss of such a wondrous piece of architectural innovation – I believe her exact words were, “Do you realize how much Pens tickets are gonna be in the new rink – SHEEEIT!” Being the doting husband and caring partner I am – I thought about what I could do to ameliorate her grief. So I rummaged around in my briefcase and retrieved my good old Architectural Miniaturizing Device (AMD) that I constructed in high school shop class. It seemed no worse for the wear as I dusted it off after removing it from its’ Seagramms bag. And so my plan was hatched. I donned my blues brothers suit (sans hat) and put on my ray ban shades and assumed the guise of a federal agent (“man in black”). I then caught the CN Northlander to Toronto and made connections to Pittsburgh via Greyhound. I had no problems at the boarder because I used my Freedonian Diplomatic Passport that Groucho Marx willed me – Hunter S. Thompson wanted it but he only smoked shitty cigars and he and Groucho were never really close so I got it. I arrived in Pittsburgh in the middle of the night and trudged up to the Arena and set up the crystal transponders around the perimeter of the structure to be miniaturized and fired up the AMD and waited for the the old zenith TV tubes to warm up before engaging it. But alas the 5 D cells had died from when I last used it on Forbes Field (I screwed up on that one misplacing the crystal transponders leaving part of the outfield wall). Shit! Where was I gonna find 5D cells in the middle of the night in downtawn Pittsburgh? So I walked down to Liberty Avenue and looked for an open convenience store. Nothing was open but as luck would have it Pegasus was having an amateur Go Go boy dancer night contest with the second prize being 5 D cell batteries – I guess it was just fate. So I stripped down to my  buttoned down white dress shirt and ray ban shades and channeled Margaret Dumont singing the Fredonia national anthem. ” Hail, hail Fredonia land of the brave and free… ” It was a hit! I told you I looked hot naked! It was either that or the ultra long shirttails on my shirt did not completely cover my massive endowment. I had to do three encores! But was entirely chagrined to realize that I had overplayed my – ER – hand – as it were winning first prize! SHIT! But the second prize winner – Ricky Martin, doing I think, Vita Loco was gracious enough to trade the batteries for the first prize of the two free Beto’s Pizza coupons. What a nice guy and he didn’t seem gay at all! Who would have thunk it??? It was difficult getting dressed with everyone pawing at me (at least they had nice soft hands) but I soon was walking back up the hill to the Civic arena. I plugged the batteries into place after cleaning the contacts and powered up the tubes. Everything hummed and glowed nicely. I punched in the mini factor and toggled the engage switch (from a 1963 Jag XKE dome light) and ZAP! The Civic Arena was shrunk down to the size of a single contact lens! Now for the hard part – it took me two goddamn hours with a flash light to find it! I then placed it with my tweezers into the contact lens case that Slick left at camp years ago and pocketed my architectural artifact. I was soon on my way to the Canadian boarder. At the boarder I did have a little problem – you see apparently someone had posted a youtube video of my Pegasus performance and the Boarder Patrol demanded a repeat performance – Damned Internet! But they couldn’t hold me since I had the Diplomatic passport and I was soon on my way – after narrowly averting a cavity search. I told them I had enchiladas and re-fried beans for supper. So now I am back at camp with my ill gotten gains and have re-sized it for use here in camp.

After it was happily re-sized, I made a replica of the Stanley Cup from a salad bowl and some stainless steel stove pipe and re-sized it and fixed it on top of the arena.

The Civic arena will now be placed on the frame for the roof of the new diesel generator house. So let no Pens fans lament, the beloved Igloo is now preserved for all time here at Sportsmen’s Camp.

It’s also time for the annual Lupine Picture:

The lake temperature is back up to 70F and I have the reef makers placed on the lake. As I was placing the markers I caught about a dozen nice bass on a brown wooly bugger and silver mepps. The bass have already vacated their beds and there are swarms of bass fry all along the beach.

I was walking totally nude in the delightful sunshine back to the house from a searingly hot shower (gee I hope your not reading this before breakfast!) when it occurred to me that entropy certainly takes its toll – I was looking at the paint on the workshop you asshole – I can’t see my body without a mirror and I wasn’t wearing my glasses anyway so just shut the fuck up and quit your snickering and besides I look hot as hell naked and well never mind, where was I? But entropy seems to work in reverse when it comes to technology. All new products are more complex, have more stupid features, are harder to use and don’t last as long. (fasten your seat belts you’re in for an old fart curmudgeon rant) The latest Microsoft product, Microsoft (insert any random fucked up string of numbers or focus group marketing crap word here) will be about 10x more complex, use 10x more memory space and computing power, will be more difficult to use and will crash your system more often. The new refrigerators will urinate streams of cold water and defecate ice cubes from their double doors, they will be frost free, they will be programmable, they will cost more than a thousand dollars, they will break down in 5 to 7 years. The new TVs will be hi-definition with stereo surround sound and sub woofers and include yellow as one of the basic colors on the screen pattern and be a flat panel screen and have space shuttle like console remote controls and die in 4 years. Cars will have 10 times the moving parts and have them all controlled by an inscrutably obscure Microsoft program and GPS so they know where you are and how fast you’re going and your state of sexual arousal and the dashboard will have people talk to you from remote locations via satellite and your seats will have memories and be heated, simulating pissing your pants on cold morning. Easy chairs will have internal massage rollers and integrate into sectionals and the foot rests will fall off. Well I think its all fucking CRAP! Cut the complexity and make things do what they’re supposed to do properly and durably.  That’s why people cherish old tools and antiques – these things were built simply and with care for durability and easy comfortable long term use. Just a second … I think I’ve come up with a way I can put a microprocessor in a shovel – this will make me a million dollars…

Its another rainy cool day here but we need the moisture. The weather will be rebounding quickly into sunny warm days by Sunday and for the rest of the week. The fishing has been good if you’re willing to go out in a north wind with misty rain – but why the hell would I do that – I’m here all summer Ha ha ha ha ha – eat your heart out – and there ain’t no goddamn black flies - La la la la (as Babe the pig would say).

And reopening employing a new business paradigm.

Yes dear reader the inevitable ibis has come to roost in our proverbial rafters. Janet tipped me off this morning. After an evening of preparing a sumptuous doggie repast of brown rice, chicken, hot dogs, ground meat, green beans, carrots, corn, broccoli, and beef broth and a morning of running the boys on the beach after their morning meal it occurred to Janet that everything we do here revolves around our dogs! Their personal chef (chef Jack – pronounced with a really bad french accent) prepares gourmet meals two sometimes three times a day. Their personal trainer The Evil Janeeto (from the planet Janetron) runs them for about a mile daily. Their personal masseur Pat gives them a daily rub down on the table in the store, their personal chauffeur drives them twice a week to the dump so they may sniff the interesting smells and bark at bears, ravens, seas gulls and the occasional wolf. Their personal activities director Carol keeps them sated on delicious doggie treats and throws sticks and toys for them at the beach. Their personal fishing guide takes them for boat rides and fishing on Firth  and various other far away fishing destinations. Their personal maid and staff picks up after them and grooms them daily. In short the staff here at the camp devotes all their energy catering to the every whim and want of the spoiled pair.  So we are reopening the camp as a doggie spa. It has everything a doggie could want and need. I think we will use the same pricing structure but anyone not bringing a dog will have to charged extra in order to finance our VIPs (very important pups). I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that my bonsai collection will have to be put down on the patio so they have something interesting to pee on and Bart has informed me that all the doors must be removed from the cabins so that they can come and go everywhere they like and these silly rules about jumping up on guests tables and dining from their plates have to be abolished. In addition all guests not bringing a dog must bring a small kitty to be chased and mauled – not harmed just terrorized. I am sure the list of demands will grow as the day goes on.

The lake temperature is 68F and there has been a north west wind blowing at about 10mph for a couple days. We haven’t been fishing for a while so I don’t have first hand info on the fishing but its always great so don’t sweat it. The really cool thing is that I have been working outside for the last few days and have not been bothered by a single blackfly! The dragon flies are out in full force and the north wind has bee concentrating them in camp and they are scouring it clean. The water levels are hovering around typical mid summer levels. That is to say that the Montreal river landing ramp is only about half submerged – I was down at the rapids north of Penassi (caught a lot of fish) and the large rock in the center of the rapid is about a foot out of the water and the second rock (to its left facing down stream) is also above the water. The weeds have had a very good start and weed beds are flourishing.

I have just been informed by Baxter TWD that it is now time for the scheduled dump outing and that I must wrap this meaningless drivel up. So off I go on another perfectly ordinary day.

I don’t want baby steps I want action NOW!!

But then again I have never been accused of being impatient or unreasonable or irascible or a curmudgeon or – ok, ok, quit your fucking snickering you’ll wake the dog!

Progress is being made here at camp. But its slow. With my extremely high quality standards and perfectionist ideals – stop that! Stop your fucking laughing, you bastard – its not funny. But I did get the lettering painted on the naming rights signs yesterday and I am lacquering them on the patio before I waterproof them with the varnish.

I think they look pretty good. Or as my mother would say, “They look just fine if you step back, take off your glasses, squint your eyes and blur – yeah they look just fine”. Hey shut the fuck up! I view my work as an artistic event – I draw my painting style from the post impressionists and tend to shy away from the Norman Rockwellian realism of the pedestrian small minded narrow right! Observe the free flow of the brush strokes (no stroke jokes at my age either you pricks! Its not funny once you get past – oh just never mind) and the liberal use of color and copious amounts of paint as well as the multimedia presentation…. I can just hear the rave reviews from the New York critics (from around Buffalo). But I digress.

Things are moving along here, but to me, at a snails pace. But Hell, am I having fun? Fuck yeah!! As Dave Henderson would say “This is more fun than picking your nose!” Of course he had a pretty big nose – but what with cartilage growth continuing even as we get older my nose is getting bigger too and -  Oh shut up – quit your giggling and do something productive…

What a Long Strange Trip its been!

In the 26 years we’ve owned the camp I’ve never seen a spring like this one! Two weeks of dry weather in the upper 80’s F to lower 90’s and little rain. The lake temp today is 76F and the lake level is at normal summer pool. We have gotten some rain in the last few days but I am sure we’re still behind normal levels. Everything is operating as though its late June. The dragonflies have hatched, blackflies appear to be in early retreat, the bass are nesting early and the weeds are already to the surface several places on the lake. Speaking of first – I went swimming in Firth for the first time in May! It was delightful – a little cold at the bottom but just fine – No Shit! Another first that I’ve noticed is the number of bass nests near our beach. We even have a nice nest about 10 feet out from shore between the docks! I got pictures of them breeding a couple days ago.

They built a really beautiful symmetrical nest that looks just fabulous with all the multicolored granite pebbles. They must feel safe there since there is little boat traffic yet and besides all the pebbles are of the right size. The fishing has been similar to late June early July too! The pike and bass are in the fully formed weed beds. The bass must be really torn between setting up nests and breeding versus hanging out in the weeds and dining on the shoals of minnows.

We went fishing down the Montreal and caught a shit load of small pike and many nice sized walleyes too. As exciting as the fishing was (and it was exciting) it didn’t hold a candle to the hair raising trip back from Penassi! A huge thunder storm kicked up and hit us with high winds and drenched us with torrential rain. This was actually quite refreshing as the day was so fucking hot. But then the lightening started. Wow! We were involved with a few nearby strikes and were headed for shore when Pat said “Gee the only way this could be worse is HAIL.” What a fucking bastard!!!! (At least he didn’t say “It could only be worse if a cyclone came up killing us all”!) It immediately began to beat the shit out of us with walnut sized hailstones! I shit you not! It was like being caught in a frozen meteor shower creating small geysers whenever they hit the lake surface! We had to put our seat cushions over our heads to avoid injury! But our exposed fingers on the top of the cushion took a beating. We also hit a submerged log with the motor on the way back! Jeesh! But we all got back in one piece and had great fishing and an eventful day worthy of many stories for the retelling.

Much is happening here at camp. I am fixing boats and motors, upgrading the showers (Hailstorm-Pat jacked up the southwest corner), putting a new washroom on cabin #9, making stop gap repairs to roofs, completing the underground wiring on the beach front as well as constructing a new building for the used generator we just purchased in Haileybury. The person handling the parts to reconstruct the Lister is no longer working for Maine Diesel and he never ordered the parts sooooooo – the Lister reconstruct will be delayed. Sooooo when we saw the used heavy-duty generator for a good price, we decided to over-stress our  camp budget to bring it on board. I picked up a full sized 10′+ diameter fiberglass TV dish at the dump last year and have decided to use it as the generator building roof. Get this, we’ll have the only camp in the north with a trebuchet AND a generator rotunda dome! I hope the Milner county architectural purity committee doesn’t catch wind of it! Of course this is all in addition to all the normal things we have to do here at camp – fishing, happy hours, painting, cleaning, changing the oil on all the equipment, dock setup, dump runs, fixing boats and motors, cabin repairs and so on. Its really a lot of fun – is this heaven? No its Sportsmen’s Camp

Yes dear reader we’re back at camp. The weather has been absolutely beautiful – in the 70’s low 80’s F for the last week and no apparent end in sight. We’ve been fishing several times with excellent success. I caught the first two fish of the season a small pike and large bass respectively and Janet got the third – another nice big female bass – all these fish went back in but it didn’t take us long to catch enough small males for supper.

We’ve also caught a lot of nice walleye/pickerel. But the best fish I caught was off the dock over in the weed bed bay. Whats that you say? This makes no sense, how could I catch a pike off the dock over in the weed bed? Pat, Baxter and Bart, took me over to retrieve the docks from they’re winter resting place over in the weed bed bay. As I was motoring the dock back to camp I made a short tour of the bay and cast a Mepps around. It was quite comfortable walking along the dock and casting through the new weeds in the bay. I had a very large pike (36 to 40 inches) follow it right next to the dock. He paused next to me looked up and  rolled his eyes in disdain and slowly moved away. He wasn’t impressed. After a few more casts I caught a small pike and then motored over to the beach. Fun stuff – I caught a pike off the dock in the weed bed!

Things are moving along well here – the docks are set, the grass is cut, the water is on, the rest room has been torn off of cabin number 9, and I am laying out the wiring for the underground transmission wires for the waterfront. I’ll get started on that tomorrow. We’ll also get started on the new restroom on cabin 9 soon. Pat is working on jacking up the back corner of the shower house – but thats rough going. I will probably put a coat of varnish on the naming rights signs tomorrow – or at least when I can’t work outside and get them put up. Janet and Carol just about have all the spring cleaning done on the cabins. We haven’t started on the roofs yet but they’re on the docket.

The weather has been substantially warmer here than Toronto or western Pennsylvania and the lake temperature is already up to 62F, 2ft down at the end of the right dock. Janet is expecting an early dragonfly hatch (hope hope). The black flies haven’t been all that bad yet but they are ramping up and there are already a few mosquitoes in evidence. There have been some small hatches of little mayflies, but the water temperature is still too low for the bass to start working them off the lake surface and fishing hasn’t been effected.

Bart and Baxter have been having the greatest time running all over camp worrying the groundhogs, crows, mergansers, squirrels etc as well as chasing each other like wild dogs and jumping into the lake to cool off. Bart still moves like a fighter jet – kicking in the afterburners whenever Baxter catches up with him!