As I write this, I am still recovering from our latest Great Northwoods Adventure. I capitalize that phrase as if it were the title of a book because I feel like I could write a voluminous tomb on all the things that went wrong this year. I’ve been making this trip for 20 years now, and usually things go very smoothly. I’m purposefully going to omit the name of the lodge we were fishing with because for almost all of those years, they have done a bang-up job.
This year things were going wrong from the get-go! We flew through Toronto to Winnipeg without a hitch. At the luggage carousel all of us had grabbed our bags but one. His never showed up. Thanks, Air Canada. While we scrambled around to find out what happened to his bags, we found out that our final flight with Calm Air into the tiny mining town of Flin Flon, Manitoba (population 5,185) was canceled. Thanks, wildfires. I had planned our entire difficult itinerary around this one leg of our trip! It wasn't easy because Calm Air had cancelled many their flights on the weekends this year. Thanks, Calm Air. Gratefully, the wonderful people at Bakers Narrows Lodge (located a stone’s throw from Flin Flon) were willing to drive an hour and a half to the much bigger town of The Pas, Manitoba (population 5,639). So, we were finally able to make it into Flin Flon and spend a restful night letting the stresses of the day melt away. Tomorrow had to be better. Not.
The lost bag was supposed to catch up to us the next day. It didn’t. Thanks again, Air Canada. We were spending two nights at Bakers Narrows and bravely soldiered on spending a day fishing with a very nice young fishing guide. The lake trout and northern pike were very willing, if you had the right lure tied on.* Had a great day fishing, but we were very excited to get to our remote fly in for the week.
Early the morning of the big day, the owner of Bakers Narrows came to our cabin and woke us up. She said we had to get across the road to the airport pronto or miss our float plane to our remote fly in! No one from the (nameless) lodge let us know when they were coming (in spite of numerous attempts to get them to give us the pick-up time!) But dear reader, that’s just the beginning! After they picked us up at the Flin Flon airport, I confirmed for the third time that we would meet our provisions at the float base the way we always have. It was then that they informed us that they had no idea that we had ordered provisions!
They stopped at the Flin Flon Walmart and gave us 15 minutes to try to grab everything we needed for the week including poor (we’ll call him) Dave, whose bag was still lost. Keep in mind the Walmart there has very limited groceries, and we’re being dropped in the middle of nowhere for a week. No apologies or attempts to make it right for us just “Hurry! You’ll miss your flight!” I’m not making a bit of this up. But wait! It gets even better! We scrambled on to the float plane, a Dehavilland Otter, only to be met by a grumpy pilot. “Where the hell are we going!?” he demanded. Taken aback, poor (we’ll call him) Stewart, seated in the copilot’s seat in order to fit us all in, stammered the name of our lake. “Where the hell is that!?” He demanded.
Literally 5 minutes later, he had the plane at 1500 feet trimmed out and flying straight and level. He was flying angry! He tried to yell something to Stewart, but the Otter is an uber-noisy airplane. So, then the pilot gestures to Stewart that he needs to take over flying the plane while the pilot grabs some lunch. Seriously, I’m not making any of this up. I have the whole thing on video in my cell phone. He gestured that Stewart should fly with his thumb and forefinger. Poor Stewart was so gob smacked that the pilot had unscrewed the yoke (that thingy that pilots use to steer a plane) and moved it over to his side, that he was momentarily paralyzed. When he realized the pilot was reaching behind his seat for his cooler, he grabbed the yoke with both hands, full fisted and white knuckled! Still not making this up. The pilot slaps his hand off the yoke and wildly gesticulates, "Thumb and forefingers only, idiot!" Then waves his free hand at the GPS screen on the opposite side of the cockpit while he munches on his sandwich with the other. He spends the next 5 minutes alternating between reaching over and making corrections to how Stewart is piloting and having his lunch. Seriously, I have it all on video.
He circled down quickly as we reached our lake and put us down smoothly. Thanks God. He hurriedly unloaded us and our equipment and ran back to the plane, got in and flew away. We never saw him again. We never saw our provisions. Dave never got his bag. But the good news…. we did all get COVID. So, we had that going for us. Which was nice. NOT making this up. We managed to get a few good days of fishing in between broken boats and an out house with the pile so high you didn’t feel safe sitting down. Half of us could not sit up for a couple of days with COVID raging through the cabin.
This is a post about fishing with handmade lures, right? Not to be too negative about how disastrous our trip was. (Too late) I’m happy to report that the walleye fishing was great. A new lure design I brought along provided us with more walleye than we could eat. Well, for most of us. One of us, (we’ll call him Jim), could eat his weight in walleye! I was catching so many with my new lure, I was giddy. Everyone else was catching fish at a pace of about three small northern to one walleye with our normal go to lures. I was sitting in the boat right next to Jim and caught four in a row. Bang! Bang! Bang! 15 minutes later, tired of his incessant begging, I broke down and gave him a slightly lighter colored prototype. He immediately out fished me! He dubbed the lure the "Walleye Deadeye." Interestingly, he never gave it back to me. Thanks, Jim. No doubt he has memory loss is a side effect of long haul COVID.
The guys in the other boat noticed a lot of bent rods and what sounded like giddiness coming from our boat. For our safety of course, they came over to find out what was going on. After a lot of heated discussion and negotiations, they commandeered the last of my newly dubbed Walleye Deadeyes. We caught nearly 40 nice ones in the next hour. That lure continued to perform well the rest of our time there. There is so much more to this story but that will have to wait for another post. So what did I learn this year?
Well, Air Canada doesn’t know how to move luggage from point A to point B. Dave was finally reunited with his bag as we came back through Winnipeg. He checked it again for the return trip home. They lost it again. As of this writing, he still didn’t know where it was.
Calm Air is just plane crazy canceling so many of its most popular flights. Seriously, you look around yourself on a weekend flight and the only ones on the plane are other folks going up to fish! What pilot shortage!? Stewart has recently completed his rigorous 39 second pilot training course and is looking for a job.
Bakers Narrows is a great place. Look them up. I’m a big fan now.
The Walleye Deadeye is a winner and is going on the website for you to try.
And finally, I have a bunch of incredibly patient fishing buddies who conducted themselves as gentleman through the almost unbelievable events of Canada ‘23. Well, with the notable exception of commandeering my lures.
Happy Fishing,
Doc
PS After writing this I got some follow up from the lodge. The pilot was fired. The entire team there apologized to us. They made it right for us financially. They corrected every one of the things that they had control over. I know the COVID pandemic was the most challenging thing their outfit had ever experienced. I’m impressed at how hard they are trying to get back to their previous level of service. After 20 years, with ‘23 being the notable exception to otherwise good service, I am willing to give them my business again. The lakes we fish are breathtaking. They are loaded with fish. They are peaceful, serene, and almost eerily quiet. I’m hooked.
Footnote:
*One of my newest lures looks so goofy, I was almost embarrassed to tie it on in front of our guide. He had tied on some extremely realistic looking fish body segmented undulating lures for all the other guys. “We were catching the big ones with these yesterday!” he said. I tied on my 12ga 00 Buck-tail lure determined to give it a chance no matter how uncomfortable I was with its appearance. I caught more northern than the rest of the group combined and the largest one caught that entire day. It is very different looking but catches the pike very well. I believe you can wire a treble hook onto a Barbie doll, drag it through the water and catch a pike. But to catch them while those around you are not having much luck, and to catch bigger fish…… well, you decide. I’m putting it on the site as well take a look. Catch the big one!
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