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!

Free at last! Free at last! Thank my imaginary friend I’m free at last!

We will be translating to the great white north on Tuesday the 11th. Janet and I can’t can’t wait to get back to camp! Baxter and Bart are also chaffing at the bit and clawing the turf in anticipation. Harvey was up at Camp a couple weeks earlier and found two very large moose antlers and reports that the camp has weathered the winter reasonably well. There are some roof issues but we knew that this was going to be a summer of new roofs. Pat and Carol will be visiting to so we’ll have a lot of help getting things up and running and have have someone to assess how the vodka has made it through the winter and to see if Labatt is still brewing 50 properly. I purchased some new fishing equipment and am itching to test its limits against spring bass and “pike of note”. I am also planning on getting all the overhead power wires underground on the lake front area and building a couple maybe three new wooden boats. But ambition and plans are always optimistic until faced with reality of so much to do. I still can’t wait to be exhausted drinking a 50 at the end of the day and swatting a snow melt mosquito as I listen to the loons welcome me back home.