WHERE HAVE ALL THE WALLEYE GONE?

OK I FINALLY have reliable Internet, and will no doubt expand on this idea at a later time.  When I posted my last entry I was headed to Missanabie for a couple days at a lodge for some walleye fishing.  Well, Google Maps is a fairly reliable indicator of travel TIME in Southern Ontario, in my experience, and when I was planning this trip I used it to gauge reasonable distances for travel.  I do not prefer long days in the saddle, and I have lots of time, so I plan to travel maybe five hours a day on the average travel day.  As I said, that was the plan.....................and Google Maps is woefully inadequate for estimates of travel time in Northern Ontario – plus the shortest distance between two points is under construction.  All this to say that my estimates for daily driving were not even in the ballpark.

And so it was that, even leaving Serpent River Campground at Spragge at around 0800, my planned ETA for noonish in Missanabie turned into a late afternoon arrival.  Now part of that has to do with the lodge’s directions for how to find their place, to wit:  go to Chapleau, call the lodge, then continue on to Wawa by such and such a highway, turn north on another highway and so on.  Chapleau is actually a fair bit NORTH of the highway to Wawa, and so there I was, lost in Chapleau looking for Highway 101 West.  HINT!!!  When in doubt, consult a map.  My GPS was not functional and yes there will be more on this later also...........

I phoned the lodge as instructed, left a voice mail as instructed, and was assured that the lodge would meet me at the landing in Missanabie in an hour and a half.  I got there about three hours later, having driven the rig as fast as I dared over a highway that had been freshly macadamized.  (that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?  Being macadamized does not involve buggery, it involves asphalt and gravel being added to the road surface.)  Loose gravel, fresh asphalt, a very narrow road, and yes you guessed it also some construction delays conspired to make this (very cautious) driver take his time.  But when I arrived at the landing, indeed the lodge owner Warren was there to greet me with a large boat, and we loaded my gear onto the deck and off we went up the lake.

So this was a substantial boat with a large motor on it and the waves were moving us around a bit.  Warren remarked that once we passed a headland the ride would be a bit bumpy, which indeed it was.  No sweat, I have never been sea-sick and am quite at home in boats.  We got to the lodge, I got installed in my cabin, settled my bill, bought some worms, and also got a map of the lake with some annotated “hot spots” to try.  Those of you who have fished out of small boats will know that boat control for a single boater, in heavy winds and waves, is somewhat challenging.  My efforts to get out of the home bay and out to the hot spots were thwarted repeatedly by the conditions.  And I even put on my life jacket for some of the attempts, it being somewhat reckless to tackle the waves solo without such a safeguard.  I fished in a number of fishy-looking spots, but without success.  After a few hours, well into the evening, the wind subsided somewhat and I made it out to a small island, where I set the anchor on its full length of line.  About ten minutes later, when I observed that the boat was getting closer all the time to the island, I pulled the anchor and headed for camp.

Now there is a cabin to the right of the lodge with a red roof, and I observed a cabin with a red roof where I supposed the lodge should be, and I got into some sheltered water enroute back to the lodge, where I decided to continue fishing.  Then I noticed that the water was MUCH shallower than I had been fishing, and there was a shoal that I do not remember.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm, and where the heck was the lodge?  And how did people build a brand new peeled pine log cabin on that head land, in the two hours since I was last here?  Oh yes I was definitely LOST on a fairly big lake that I had never previously been on, in a small boat with marginal weather conditions, and darkness not too long distant.  No problem, in my boat pack I have water, a couple granola bars, matches, a space blanket, flashlight, etc just in case I need to spend some time ashore when not intending to do so.  I ALSO have a GPS!!!  And Praise The Lord, I had actually remembered to mark the lodge location as a waypoint in my GPS before I left the dock.  So I powered up the GPS, found out that my batteries were low!!! And got a fix on the lodge, which was not at all where I thought it should be.  But when I followed the GPS, by golly there was the lodge, as if by magic!  I tied up alongside just at dusk.

Now I am an optimist, always have been, and my planned supper meal for my first night in camp was fresh walleye fillets.  Luckily, I had also brought some other rations and so had a can of soup and a sandwich for my evening feast before turning in for the night, with all of the cabin windows open so as to catch some bit of breeze.  In the middle of the night I awoke to find that bit of breeze at maybe forty knots, blowing rain in through three sides of the cabin with some vigour.  Batten the hatches!  And back to bed............

I awoke nice and early, made a coffee, and was delighted to see that the lake was flat calm.  So away I went in great haste to the mouth of Emily Bay (that sounds dirty also, but it is not at all so).  There I found a couple of willing walleye and also some snags, but enjoyed a few hours of exploring a long narrow bay.  I decided to check out another hot spot, went out into the main lake basin, and you guessed it, the wind had come up rather nicely again....................so I proceeded in the general direction of the lodge, where I could drop a line along the shores of Chris Island.  By this time the wind and waves made fishing pretty dicey, so I decided to head back to camp to fillet my catch and enjoy a nap and maybe get some Internet time.  But somebody had hidden the lodge again...............and by golly I had remembered to change the GPS batteries the night before, so I rung up the lodge and sure enough it had moved about 180 degrees from where it had been earlier that morning.  After a refreshing run into steady seas, I tied up alongside again and hauled my extremely heavy cooler of fish (HA!) up the hill to my cabin.  After filleting my brace of smallish walleye I made a sandwich for lunch and decided that a snooze was in order.  An hour or so later, I awoke to find the bay in whitecaps, or as we used to call it back in Meaford, beer clouds on the horizon.  No problem, I will ring up the Internet.  Umm, no.  So I loafed about the camp and enjoyed a couple cold drinks.

By early evening the wind had subsided enough that I could make my way to a close bay, where a couple anglers from Michigan had reported good success the prior evening.  Drifting with the wind was basically impossible, and back-tolling was fairly damp, so eventually I decided to anchor.  I caught several very nice rocks, part of the Canadian Shield, and one respectable walleye.  By the time darkness was falling it was high time to tail it back to the dock, where I decided to empty the boat completely of my gear, in case of inclement weather, which was propitious indeed.  I filleted my walleye and returned to my cabin, where once again I opened all of the windows to allow a bit of breeze to cool the place.  I did not mention that the daytime temperature was somewhere north of plus thirty and with a goodly dose of humidity to boot.

And now, the moment I had been waiting for during this long time since I have enjoyed a feed of fresh walleye!  I coated the fillets with some bread mixture that Gary my Owen Sound buddy had brought from Texas (very tasty on those whiting fillets!), and found to my great delight a nice CLEAN cast iron frying pan of exactly the right size to cook my first four fillets at the same time.  Hungrily, I added oil to the pan, set it on the rather venerable propane stove, and turned on the burner to “HIGH.”  Five minutes later, the oil was all the way up to “sweat” which is somewhat sub-optimal for pan-frying fish fillets.  But that was as hot as it was going to get, so I added the fillets to the pan.  You know that delightful sound when you add fillets to hot oil and it sizzles enticingly?  That did not occur in this case.  In fact I am distinctly certain I heard a sucking noise as the fillets absorbed most of the oil in the pan.  Quite some time later, after turning the fillets repeatedly in the vain hope of crisping them up a bit, I removed the fillets onto a waiting paper towel.  With a glass of white wine as an accompaniment, I lit into my feast.  Four soggy greasy horrible fillets later, my stomach declared that since I had declared war on it, I would be punished mightily.  Which was the case.

I went to bed with an unhappy belly, and tossed and turned until finally the stomach acid relented a bit and I found slumber.  Not very long thereafter I awoke to find a gale battering the camp, with rain coming in through three sides once again, and a blast of Arctic air for an accompaniment.  Once again I battened the hatches and returned to a fitful sleep.  The morning dawned cool and windy, and I decided that I should take the first available water taxi out of there.  Walleye fishing after a cold front moves through is tough work, and the wind would have been just plain ignorant.  So I cut my losses and caught the 0700 boat back to the mainland.  There I was reunited with my rig, loaded her up again and hit the road.

And this epistle is long enough, even though that was several days ago.  More later!