Author: Nick

North Ontario – 2022

Lake of the Woods

High water as we are approaching dock and old cabin. Highest since 1950.
Dock borrowed from Dan earlier in the season – see the boat here? See next picture.
Boat isolated from South wind after it was swamped earlier in the trip at Dan’s dock (aft port quarter was well under water). Despite the family tradition, neither Bill nor I (both in 70s) died while working furiously to lift, bail and restore it to full buoyancy.
Step carefully if you need tools from the old cabin
Some had problems worse than we did
Maggie
Damn flies
Smallmouth bass at 2+ lbs. – We caught a fair number of GNP (great northern pike or “northerns” in Ontario parlance) as well as some walleye on a trip out with Dan and Mel but nothing like the sizes at Trout lake.

After just over a week at the Island Paul and Rick picked me up in Sioux Narrows for the trip to Trout Lake

Early departure from Red Lake Ontario
Now at Sandy Beach Lodge, the water was about as exceptionally high as at Lake of the Woods. The fixed dock extends well beyond the break-water materials seen here on the right side
Above is our cabin (furtherest from the lodge!) Below is a shot as we await evening card games inside
My stylish outfit indicates rainy day fishing. The largest of these fish was my best walleye at 23″ (about 4-5#). That’s the largest walleye I’ve ever caught but was about half the weight of Melanie’s walleye, mounted and on the wall at their cabin. All fish went back in the lake except a fair number (including these, above and below) that participated in our shore lunches. These are from just one of the two boats. Typically we’d have lunch caught in 20 to 40 minutes and for the rest of the day whatever we caught went back in the lake. We ate a lot of walleye and did not tire of it after 6 days. I confess I ate them with the very good, slightly spicy cornmeal batter. I even sampled the fried potatoes and canned bake beans.
Our guide (Taylor) with my 22″ walleye. I had several in the 18-22″ range as well as others. Paul and Rick both had walleyes at ~24″ so these were not exceptional.
Shore Lunch fishing
Rainy day fishing (again) – 33″ GNP
Paul’s 36″ GNP. Below – Rick caught 2 at 38″ (below) on the last morning, before going in early because he was feeling sick. (If only I could catch whatever illness he had!) The guides were disappointed we didm’t get any >40″ but they said the rain is detrimental when fishing for northerns
Plane arriving for return to Red Lake (above) and flight back (below)