No! Mid July in late June!

Yes indeedydoody – it’s the next to the last week in June and there are no black flies. The horse flies and deer flies are out and the mosquitoes are declining! The water temperature is 77F with a slight breeze from the south. My vegetable garden is growing quickly too. We will be enjoying battered and fried Zucchini blossoms, leaf lettuce, chard and radishes in no time at all! Janet and I went out fishing yesterday in her newly refurbished boat and caught about 8 nice sized bass. No pike though. We took Rudy and Kirby and a few beers too. It was a beautiful day with little wind. The fishing was slow – we got nary a bite of over the shoal on minnows! We caught all of our fish just off shore on mepps. The bass must still be bedding even though the water temp is up and I’ve seen so many newly hatched bass pinheads.

No one is in camp so I can work on the cabins with impunity and I am getting a lot of things accomplished – propane heaters put in the two new cabins, a new double bowl stainless steel sink in cabin #6 and hundreds – nay, thousands of maintenance related small jobs completed. Don’t expect to come up and see major changes – nobody notices the troubles I’ve seen.

I am sitting here in my shorts thinking about the things I want to get done but I also realize that my reader needs a “pretty picture” occasionally to keep satisfied – ok ok, I’ll post the annual Lupine picture.

This just in – The infamous Firth Lake SHARK (You’ve never heard of it? I told you it was infamous) has been sited off of Kathy Rock! All the beaches are now closed to swimming – parents are cautioned to keep an eye on children (unless you don’t like them), don’t wash your hands in the lake and whenever you see the triangular fin knifing through the water you must do the Jaws theme – dum dum… dum dum dum dum dum dum dum – you get the idea. If anyone needs help with the theme see me. Bring your children down to the lake and we’ll do a demonstration of a possible bad outcome with a shark encounter. Hey that’s the ticket – I just renamed the camp – Its now Northern Ontario Shark Encounter, come swim with the sharks. Hmmm, I wonder how this will affect our insurance?

But I will be able to sell mice caught in the store to feed the shark. “Five dollah Canadian for a bucket of mice tah feed da shark – COME GIT YA SHARK BAIT HEYAH – COME GIT YA SHARK… what? HELL YEAH DEY’RE FRESH! LOOK AT DA LIL BASTARDS JUMPIN IN DA PAIL. Yeah da pail is extra (fuckin moron kids). Come out on the dock kids – its OK to push yur way forward to watch – if another kid gits in yur way push his dumb ass in da lake!

The beautiful outdoors of Northern Ontario!

The weather here at camp remains beautiful – 80’s humid sunny with some scattered showers. The lake temperature measured at the end of the dock approximately 1.5 ft down was at 76 F! The black flies are almost gone and there are few mosquitoes about. The dragonflies are definitely having their way this year. I have noticed many newly hatched bass pinheads loitering around the docks feeding on plankton and pinhead minnows. My wild roses, columbine, and lupine are blooming. The grass has been cut several times and we are hoping for it’s growth to slow soon. Summer is here – that is to say that the weather conditions are approximately 3 weeks ahead of schedule! Fishing has been good and not being bothered by black flies is a definite bonus! This all bodes very well for all our friends coming up over the rest of the season.

I went into pigeon for an overnight camping trip with the Watson crew and had a great time. We saw moose on the edge of the lake and caught a bunch of pike and some quality walleye (pickerel). The swimming in pigeon was great too. After breaking camp we stopped and did some fishing in Arthur (the headwaters of Pigeon). Caught a bunch of small pike and I got one nice walleye. Gorgeous water all! It has only taken me one day to recuperate from the trip!

A pike fishing we will go.

Off to Kapiskong we (Paul, Bob and me) went. The day was hot, in the 80’s, and sunny with little wind. The Grassy road to the Mattagami turn off has been graded so the first leg of the journey was smooth and quick. The road north of the turn off is as bad as normal – which is to say a bit hard on the kidneys. We drove to the #2 Sinclair landing and embarked by boat for Kapiskong. We didn’t see nary a boat the whole run north. At Kapiskong there was one boat trolling the shoreline but they soon left for greener pastures. We started by casting one of my favorite shorelines with spoons and plugs. I normally pick up some walleye in addition to pike on this shore but all we got were pike. The water temperature and the brightness were probably conspiring to keep the walleye deeper than we were fishing but this was fine as we were targeting pike anyway. Over the period of the day we caught many small to medium sized pike but didn’t get into any 40”+ pike. But the black flies weren’t bothering us and it was a beauty of a day.

The pictures are of a typical sized pike for the day and the waterfall just south of Kapiskong. All told it was a great day. Janet made us “wildassed” sandwiches and we had an ample supply of 50 for quaffing by parched fishermen.

We got to see a beaver repairing a dam along the road south! We didn’t get to see any moose or bald eagles. But we did get to see something more rare in these parts. Painted turtles! There is a very small population of turtles on the grassy. I guess the conditions for a turtle to live and grow are good enough, lots of habitat and food but I believe the conditions for good egg incubation are probably pretty bad. I opine that the late spring early summer weather is just too variable for good egg incubation. On the way back we saw three, count ‘em three, healthy full sized turtles walking the road near Loonwing lake looking for a suitable location to dig in for some egg laying! The only other times I have seen turtles up here was on the upper Grassy landing when I saw a turtle putting some eggs down and one crossing the road going into Elk Lake. Over the 20 plus years I’ve been here in the summer I’ve only seen 5 turtles! Three of them yesterday. This is such a direct contrast to the vast numbers of turtles in the southern Ontario Kawarthas region. As a child I recall literally hundreds of turtleheads poking from the smooth lake surface watching as we pulled away from the dock in the morning at Bald Lake. I hope the ladies found a soft sandy place for their eggs and that this season provides good weather for incubation. It’s always nice to see a little turtlehead pop up and give you the eye when fishing!

Sanna sanna hey – sanna hey sanna Super Star.
Hey DragonFly don’t pass me wow, come light on my shoulder now!

Yes children, as outlandish as it may appear the major dragonfly hatch is on! I just returned from the lake to get the most recent lake temperature and saw several hundred dragonflies happily gorging themselves on blackflies! The lake temperature at 6:00 PM was 68F! If a reasonable air temperature prevails for the next 2 weeks or so it will spell an early doom to this year’s blackfly onslaught! Hosanna haysanna sanna sanna hey! The grass is growing like crazy too.

Fishing wise, the lake is operating as though its mid to late June, the bass are nesting and catching them in the shallows with floating jointed rapalas are the order of the day. We just make sure to carefully release them at the point of capture and thank them for the good fight. Every year at this time I am reminded of our good friend Leon White, who passed a couple years ago. Leon was the consummate fisherman for these conditions – he liked to use ultralight tackle and would toss a jointed floating rapala to the bass on the shore line and points all day long. He would count how many fish he caught over his day and the number would generally be in the upper forties! In these conditions we no longer refer to our rapalas by that name – we instead call them “Leon Lures” in his honor. Well Leon we miss you and enjoy emulating your prowess in these conditions.

Tomorrow Paul, Bob and I are taking a break from camp work and trekking to the Grassy to fish on Kapiskong, stalking the leviathan PIKE. I’ll recount our exploits in my next entry.