The New Year

With the new year upon us, how about sharing your favorite fishing adventure with all of us. Here’s a story from my 9 year old son’s first trip to Canada in 2003. We made a trip to Northwest Ontario in June and my son Andrew was allowed to go on his first Canadian adventure. We left at 5:00am on a Friday and Andrew was just antsy with anticipation. I told my buddies that he would sleep the whole way up, but boy was I wrong. He talked non-stop about fishing, who was going to catch the biggest fish, where we were going to stay, etc. We spent the night in Virginia, Minnesota (halfway) and Andrew enjoyed a dinner out with the guys. We left early the next morning and arrived in camp at 11:30am. Typically, Andrew is not too helpful when it comes to unloading, but he got right in there and helped unload the truck and boat. We got on the water at 1:00pm and he caught his first Canadian Walleye at 1:20pm, a nice fat 24″er that smacked a jig and plastic combo. He was going on and on about his first fish. The fishing was exceptional during this trip but the weather during the middle of the week was rain for a day and a half. Andrew and his cousin (Dusty) didn’t want to go out in the rain after spending four hours getting soaked, so we let them stay in the cabin and play Cribbage. The men went out in the rain and fished anyway. We were catching a few walleyes but decided to see if we could find some big northerns. We found a shallow weedy flat off of the main river channel (English River) with wind blowing right up onto the flat. We made a couple of casts and the northerns were everywhere on this flat. After catching 15-20 fish, we decided to go get the boys. We ran back to camp and got the boys, they were more than happy to get out after being in the cabin all day. We ran out to the flat and anchored. We tied on Chug Bugs for the boys and the first cast netted a 5 lber for Andrew. I had never seen him so excited. Dusty then nailed a 6 lber and the contest was on. For 3 hours, the boys caught northerns on this flat on almost every cast. We kept changing baits from Chug Bugs to jerkbaits, to stickbaits, to spinner baits. Didn’t seem to matter what bait the boys were using the fish were going nuts. It is so satisifying to watch a couple of boys catch fish and the smiles on their faces is worth more than you can imagine. After three hours of non-stop action, it was time to go back and get dinner started. The boys had to tell all the guys about their action for the afternoon and for 2 hours they related their northern fishing to all the guys. This was by far my best trip to Canada, not because the fishing was great, but because I had the priveledge to experience a couple of boys having the times of their lives. Take a kid fishing and light up your life.