[attachment 28606 White-Lake.jpg]
One advantage of growing older is the fact that you have experienced many different things. Many that post here can attest to that. Someone will post something and it will bring back a memory that had been long lost, like the one about trying to cut the deers throat. Dumb but many of the things I have done have been dumb. I have sorta blocked out most but it just takes a little reminder to bring them back.
I am gonna do something a little bit different. I am going to post this under one header but am going to stick with things that I have experienced on my many fishing trips. Most of them will be Canadian trips but maybe I will have others. I will just do them as they come to me. I will just add them under this post to save room. I will get a little long winded at times but that is just me.
I know no other way of telling some storys and encourage others to do the same. This is the place for long posts
I used to fish a lot. A lot like three or four times a week, from ice out till ice in. I used to ice fish but never took to it well.
What I thought I would do is post some of my memories of my Canadian fishing trips. I have mentioned them before but there have been so many and with so many people over the years that sometimes they get blurred a bit. It is somethimes hard to remember what lake or with who or what year something happened but as I think of them, I will just add them to this post.
I will tell them as best as I can remember but since I have made 20 trips into the bush and the first was in 1963 or 1964, some things get sorta confused like.
My first trip is pretty clear to me though. I am not saying that my brothers memory of it or my cousins memory of it might vary from mine but this is my story.
They can do their own. Well Gary can as Bruce died last year.
As a young boy I always dreamed of fishing in Canada. Canada was a magic place in Field and Stream and Outdoor Life where the lakes were full of huge Pike and Walleye. The problem was that these lakes were not as accessable back then as they are now. There was no I-75 running the length of my state, Michigan straight through the Soo and into that magic land of Canada. Land of many dreams.
I lived in Keego Harbor and we had two daughters, Sherry and Carolyn. We had a small cottage like dump of 800 sq ft and not much in the way of money. I worked at Fisher Body's in Pontiac on production and there was not much money to spare. I neve, figured I would ever fish those lakes that I dreamed of but what the dreams are what makes life worth living.
I had a neighbor across the street, Orie Ellenwood, who lived to fish. I was about 24 or so and he was about 45, which made him an old man to me. He was an ice fisherman too and actually seemed to enjoy it.
Orie also went to Canada every spring to fish the Walleye run, which is right after ice out. He also made a fall trip. I would pump him every time I could about these trips and I never really knew if he was pulling my leg or not. I rememeber him telling me that he would have to weight his bait pretty heavily to get it down to the bottom fast or the dang pike would tear it up. He wanted Walleye and wanted big ones.
The lake he went to was White Lake, which is right on highway 17, north of Lake Superior. It is about 20 miles north of the little village of White River Ontario. I got a Ontario map and studied it, I found White River, followed the road north and there was White Lake! Man it was a big lake too. It was over 10 miles long and maybe 5 wide in places.
I started thinking about making a trip up there but with who. I usually fished alone but my cousin Bruce, who I joined the Marines with and went through boot camp with was a fisherman. We used to fish together quite a bit. My brother Gary was not a fisherman but when I started talking about making a trip he joined in too. I asked Bruce and he was interested too.
We didn't have much in the way of equiptment though. I had a boat, a 14 ft Starcraft Explorer with a 5 1/2 hp Evenrude on it. Not much of a motor for that lake but what the heck, it is what we had.
We had no camping gear to speak of, no tent and not much else. We sure didn't have much money to buy any either.
We started making plans, like we really had a clue what it would take. Fishing gear I had. At least fishing gear for bass. None of us knew diddly about fishing Pike or Walleye though but if they were as thick as the books said and Orie said, we could just dip them out of the dang lake. Orie did tell us that we should get Rapallas though. They were fairly new back then and Monkey Wards had them on sale for 80 cents each!! For some reason I remember that. I liked Rapallas as I had had great success with them for pike on Van Etten Lake near Oscoda, in the past.
We all three stocked up on Rapallas, maybe 10 each and leaders. We were not gonna be using live bait because it was too hard to keep or even get up there. We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into really.
We really had plenty of time to plan this trip as we had started thinking about it in the winter and our time off was not until September. I borrowed a tent from a friend at work, not one of these modern tents but one made of heavy canvas and there was no screen for it either. Heck, was a screen really necessary? Black flys were only there in the spring anyway. Skeeters could not be all that bad, could they?
Gary had to buy all new fishing gear, as I rememeber it. He was not married and could get away with that. We amassed a huge pile of gear on my garage floor, over the ensuing months, trying to think of everything.If we forgot anything, we were screwed. We had no idea where we would be camping, Orie suggested one of the many islands because Bear could be a problem. That was a real danger, but what did we know?
Bruce was a year older than I and Gary two years younger. Bruce was a computer tech and he started with IBM in 1960 when we got out of the Marines. He and I were about as much different as a dog and a popcycle stick. He was very bright and was the type of guy that enjoyed problems. He would dig into a problem and chew on that sucker until he bested it and he usually did. Then he lost his interest. Take golf as an example. He had a bad ticker and had his first heart attack at the age of about 26. The doc told him to take up golf for the exercise. He was a short little runt, legs about as long as a turtle and he walked like a bloody duck which our DI was quick to bring to his attention, but that is another story.
Bruce took up golf and studyed it like it was a problem to be solved. He practiced at the range and golfed. In those years I rarely saw him I had little interest in Pasture Pool. The little sucker played golf until he was a one handycap and quit. Lost his interest. He got into astronomy. This was many years ago. He wanted to photograph the planets and stars but to do this he had to have a tracking system because the planets are constantly moving and the photos were timelaps shots. Did he buy a system? No. The goofy sucker went to a junk electronics store and bought a bunch of servo's and other magic junk and designed his own. It took a while but it worked great.
He wanted a computer program to these photos but there was none at the time so he designed his own program and ended up selling a bunch on the web. He learned programming to do this. The guy was friggin nuts but he and I got g just fine. For some reason he always called me a "Rat Bastud" He did for years
Heck I could go on and on about the goofy sucker but this is about our first Canadian fishing trip. I figure you ought to know the people involved. I can see this is gonna be a long sucker but I don't know any other way to tell a story. Bruce and I were different but we could be together and always be able to finish the others sentences. It was wierd, like we could read each others minds.
I had two brothers Gary and Skip. None of us are much alike in any way. I never had much ot do with Skip as I did not believe in his life choices and Gary and I never had much in common either. He was into motorcycles, I think he has four but he has always been single, except for a couple marriges that lasted a year or so. He was always able to do as he chose. Gary always had a sensible way about him. He wants something he will study it and know all about it before he buys. Me? I buy it and then think about it. That is why I have a house full of THINGS! I never had any sense. Gary and I always got along, as adults but never did much together. Gary joined the Marines after I got out. Like me, he worked at GM as an electrician and is about to retire.
Well back to the story.
Like I said, none of us knew what to expect on a Canadian fishing trip other than lots of fish without having to work for them. Right? That is how Field and Stream discribed it but of course those guys flew into the great lakes like Great Slave Lake and we were going to White Lake. Now White Lake was not a great name for a Canadian lake like Lake Nimigosinda or Lake Gopukeyourgutsout or some exositic named lake like that but we did not care because Orie said there was great fishing in this lake! To a young kid like me Orie was a hero because he was "THE MAN" He had fished in Canada and I knew nobody else that had back then.
That summer the only thing I could think about was the great fishing we were gonna have in Canada. We slowly assembled our gear on my garage floor. Tent, cooler, Colman stove, fishing gear-enough for ten men, Boat and motor, extra gas cans as there we had to take plenty back on the lake because it would be a long way to get more. It would take time too and our time was gonna be used hauling in huge Pike and Walleye. I prefered the Pike because they were bigger. I heard of a 12 lb walleye coming out of White Lake though and the largest any of us caught-not our first year, was a 9 pounder my buddy Jay- of the Lorenze Lake story caught.
We read everything we could find about Pike and Walleye fishing. I drove Orie nuts about where to go and how to fish. He told us he only fished Walleye and did all his fishing in the Shabodic River, which flowed into the lake at the north end. That was a bloody long way from the launch site but we would check it out. He said a lot of people fish down there and I prefered to fish away from others. It is funny but I never saw the Shebodic river until my sixth trip to the lake.
Well the great day came and we had the boat loaded and all our gear was jammed in it, covered with canvas. That boat was loaded!! I didn't know where the heck we were gonna set but we would worry about that 620 miles north of where we were now.
That poor old Nash Rambler I had could hardly pull that load but it did. I always timmed my departure from my home at a time so that we would arrive at the Soo at dawn. I wanted to be able to see the country. And what beautiful country it is.
We would take I-75 north and it ends at the Soo. We would cross the bridge, which is the border and then head north on Highway 17, which follows the norther shore of Lake Superior. What a wonderful drive. The road sucked back then because it was before they rebuilt it. I think they started rebuilding, they rerouted it too, in about 1967 or 68, I am not sure but the original road really sucked. That had to be the crookedist dang road in existance because it twisted around and between every dang little pond and lake on the north shore! They were just beautiful though and we wanted to stop and fish ever dang one of them and there were at least 50 of the things. The country is extremely rough though, all what we would call mountains in Michigan and rock! I saw telephone poles that were set in holes drilled in the dang bedrock! After we got out of the Soo a ways there were not even any telephone poles and the next town was Wawa! That was a long way north of where we were!
There were places that we were high above Lake Superior and we could see probably a hundred miles out and there was not a boat to be seen. None! There were places that the bluffs came out of the lake an went up hundreds of feet. We were watching every dang little lake and pond for Moose and we saw some along the road north of Wawa. We were all in hog heaven and the excitement kept three tired guys awake. The new road was straightened quite a bit and some of the small ponds were just filled in. The old road just went around them. There are parts of the old road still in existance but not much. That road was rough too!! It was like taking a dang tow track through the Michigan northland. I remember telling Bruce that it looked like the road crew just took trucks of tar and dumped them on the hills and let it be road.
Some of the hills were really something too. There is one hill, south of Wawa and runs along the big lake that is 5 miles long! I was going up that thing with my Rambler, towing all our gear and kept going slower and slower. By the time we topped out my gas pedal was on the dang floor.
We stopped at Wawa for gas. Only place to get it. It was and is a small town on a beautiful lake, Wawa Lake. Wawa is the place I wrote about where my buddy was in a bar having a burger and a beer and an Indian got mouthy with a Mounty anthed the Mounty just shot him. Another time and another story.
We gased up and headed north toward the little town of White River and then on to White Lake. We were really getting fired up and seeing all the lakes stoked the fires.
I have to tell you that in the hundreds of miles we traveled north of the Soo we saw only a couple houses back then. There was nothing for miles and miles. Not a telephone pole or a gas station. It is a bit different now but not back then. There is not much now but at least if you got in trouble there would be a chance of help. Mary and I took the drive around Lake Superior a couple years ago and it is much more civilized now days.
We finally arrived at White River and it was not much. We had to stop to buy our fishing licensed and call home to let our familys know we had made it. I saw a pay phone and walked over to the booth. It was a dang Crank Phone!! In a phone booth. I didn't know how the hell to use a crank phone but figured I could not go wrong by cranking it! I picked up the reciever and stuck it to my ear and cranked the sucker. An operator came on and I gave her the phone number and she took care of the rest.
I can not remember what time we got to the lake, it must have been around eleven in the morning, maybe a little earlier, I am just guessing but there was gonna be plenty of time to find a camping site. It did not get dark until after 10pm up there.
We were not gonna camp at a campsite. There were none. We were gonna launch the boat and head north. That is what Orie said to do. We had a map of the lake and he said we could camp anywhere we wanted. There were absolutely no homes on the lake or roads anywhere near it other than highway 17 that we were on. We could camp anywhere at all. Heck that was easy enough.
We finally got to the lake and crossed the bridge at the narrows. The boat launch was just across the bridge and to the right. We pulled off the road and drove to the launch. There were maybe a dozen cars there, most from Michigan we noticed. I swung the car around and backed the boat to the water. We pulled the tarp off and loaded our fishing tackle, which was in the car. I backed the boat in and after it was floating and Gary had the rope I pulled the car and trailer out and parked it.
Man was I excited. I was a bit disappointed though because there was nothing exciting about the launch area. It was all flat land and grubby looking. Nothing like the wonderful lakes we were seeing along the highway but what the heck, we were there.
We three climbed in the boat and I took the motor, started it up and headed out to the chanel and north. Man was that a lot of water and we had no clue where we were going or where we were gonna camp. We had no clue what that lake was like or what we were getting ourselves into. Hell we never even listened to a weather forcast but we didn't care. We were on a northern Ontario lake and that was like heaven to us.
Part Two next7
One advantage of growing older is the fact that you have experienced many different things. Many that post here can attest to that. Someone will post something and it will bring back a memory that had been long lost, like the one about trying to cut the deers throat. Dumb but many of the things I have done have been dumb. I have sorta blocked out most but it just takes a little reminder to bring them back.
I am gonna do something a little bit different. I am going to post this under one header but am going to stick with things that I have experienced on my many fishing trips. Most of them will be Canadian trips but maybe I will have others. I will just do them as they come to me. I will just add them under this post to save room. I will get a little long winded at times but that is just me.
I used to fish a lot. A lot like three or four times a week, from ice out till ice in. I used to ice fish but never took to it well.
What I thought I would do is post some of my memories of my Canadian fishing trips. I have mentioned them before but there have been so many and with so many people over the years that sometimes they get blurred a bit. It is somethimes hard to remember what lake or with who or what year something happened but as I think of them, I will just add them to this post.
I will tell them as best as I can remember but since I have made 20 trips into the bush and the first was in 1963 or 1964, some things get sorta confused like.
My first trip is pretty clear to me though. I am not saying that my brothers memory of it or my cousins memory of it might vary from mine but this is my story.
As a young boy I always dreamed of fishing in Canada. Canada was a magic place in Field and Stream and Outdoor Life where the lakes were full of huge Pike and Walleye. The problem was that these lakes were not as accessable back then as they are now. There was no I-75 running the length of my state, Michigan straight through the Soo and into that magic land of Canada. Land of many dreams.
I lived in Keego Harbor and we had two daughters, Sherry and Carolyn. We had a small cottage like dump of 800 sq ft and not much in the way of money. I worked at Fisher Body's in Pontiac on production and there was not much money to spare. I neve, figured I would ever fish those lakes that I dreamed of but what the dreams are what makes life worth living.
I had a neighbor across the street, Orie Ellenwood, who lived to fish. I was about 24 or so and he was about 45, which made him an old man to me. He was an ice fisherman too and actually seemed to enjoy it.
Orie also went to Canada every spring to fish the Walleye run, which is right after ice out. He also made a fall trip. I would pump him every time I could about these trips and I never really knew if he was pulling my leg or not. I rememeber him telling me that he would have to weight his bait pretty heavily to get it down to the bottom fast or the dang pike would tear it up. He wanted Walleye and wanted big ones.
The lake he went to was White Lake, which is right on highway 17, north of Lake Superior. It is about 20 miles north of the little village of White River Ontario. I got a Ontario map and studied it, I found White River, followed the road north and there was White Lake! Man it was a big lake too. It was over 10 miles long and maybe 5 wide in places.
I started thinking about making a trip up there but with who. I usually fished alone but my cousin Bruce, who I joined the Marines with and went through boot camp with was a fisherman. We used to fish together quite a bit. My brother Gary was not a fisherman but when I started talking about making a trip he joined in too. I asked Bruce and he was interested too.
We didn't have much in the way of equiptment though. I had a boat, a 14 ft Starcraft Explorer with a 5 1/2 hp Evenrude on it. Not much of a motor for that lake but what the heck, it is what we had.
We had no camping gear to speak of, no tent and not much else. We sure didn't have much money to buy any either.
We started making plans, like we really had a clue what it would take. Fishing gear I had. At least fishing gear for bass. None of us knew diddly about fishing Pike or Walleye though but if they were as thick as the books said and Orie said, we could just dip them out of the dang lake. Orie did tell us that we should get Rapallas though. They were fairly new back then and Monkey Wards had them on sale for 80 cents each!! For some reason I remember that. I liked Rapallas as I had had great success with them for pike on Van Etten Lake near Oscoda, in the past.
We all three stocked up on Rapallas, maybe 10 each and leaders. We were not gonna be using live bait because it was too hard to keep or even get up there. We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into really.
We really had plenty of time to plan this trip as we had started thinking about it in the winter and our time off was not until September. I borrowed a tent from a friend at work, not one of these modern tents but one made of heavy canvas and there was no screen for it either. Heck, was a screen really necessary? Black flys were only there in the spring anyway. Skeeters could not be all that bad, could they?
Gary had to buy all new fishing gear, as I rememeber it. He was not married and could get away with that. We amassed a huge pile of gear on my garage floor, over the ensuing months, trying to think of everything.If we forgot anything, we were screwed. We had no idea where we would be camping, Orie suggested one of the many islands because Bear could be a problem. That was a real danger, but what did we know?
Bruce was a year older than I and Gary two years younger. Bruce was a computer tech and he started with IBM in 1960 when we got out of the Marines. He and I were about as much different as a dog and a popcycle stick. He was very bright and was the type of guy that enjoyed problems. He would dig into a problem and chew on that sucker until he bested it and he usually did. Then he lost his interest. Take golf as an example. He had a bad ticker and had his first heart attack at the age of about 26. The doc told him to take up golf for the exercise. He was a short little runt, legs about as long as a turtle and he walked like a bloody duck which our DI was quick to bring to his attention, but that is another story.
Bruce took up golf and studyed it like it was a problem to be solved. He practiced at the range and golfed. In those years I rarely saw him I had little interest in Pasture Pool. The little sucker played golf until he was a one handycap and quit. Lost his interest. He got into astronomy. This was many years ago. He wanted to photograph the planets and stars but to do this he had to have a tracking system because the planets are constantly moving and the photos were timelaps shots. Did he buy a system? No. The goofy sucker went to a junk electronics store and bought a bunch of servo's and other magic junk and designed his own. It took a while but it worked great.
He wanted a computer program to these photos but there was none at the time so he designed his own program and ended up selling a bunch on the web. He learned programming to do this. The guy was friggin nuts but he and I got g just fine. For some reason he always called me a "Rat Bastud" He did for years
I had two brothers Gary and Skip. None of us are much alike in any way. I never had much ot do with Skip as I did not believe in his life choices and Gary and I never had much in common either. He was into motorcycles, I think he has four but he has always been single, except for a couple marriges that lasted a year or so. He was always able to do as he chose. Gary always had a sensible way about him. He wants something he will study it and know all about it before he buys. Me? I buy it and then think about it. That is why I have a house full of THINGS! I never had any sense. Gary and I always got along, as adults but never did much together. Gary joined the Marines after I got out. Like me, he worked at GM as an electrician and is about to retire.
Well back to the story.
Like I said, none of us knew what to expect on a Canadian fishing trip other than lots of fish without having to work for them. Right? That is how Field and Stream discribed it but of course those guys flew into the great lakes like Great Slave Lake and we were going to White Lake. Now White Lake was not a great name for a Canadian lake like Lake Nimigosinda or Lake Gopukeyourgutsout or some exositic named lake like that but we did not care because Orie said there was great fishing in this lake! To a young kid like me Orie was a hero because he was "THE MAN" He had fished in Canada and I knew nobody else that had back then.
That summer the only thing I could think about was the great fishing we were gonna have in Canada. We slowly assembled our gear on my garage floor. Tent, cooler, Colman stove, fishing gear-enough for ten men, Boat and motor, extra gas cans as there we had to take plenty back on the lake because it would be a long way to get more. It would take time too and our time was gonna be used hauling in huge Pike and Walleye. I prefered the Pike because they were bigger. I heard of a 12 lb walleye coming out of White Lake though and the largest any of us caught-not our first year, was a 9 pounder my buddy Jay- of the Lorenze Lake story caught.
We read everything we could find about Pike and Walleye fishing. I drove Orie nuts about where to go and how to fish. He told us he only fished Walleye and did all his fishing in the Shabodic River, which flowed into the lake at the north end. That was a bloody long way from the launch site but we would check it out. He said a lot of people fish down there and I prefered to fish away from others. It is funny but I never saw the Shebodic river until my sixth trip to the lake.
Well the great day came and we had the boat loaded and all our gear was jammed in it, covered with canvas. That boat was loaded!! I didn't know where the heck we were gonna set but we would worry about that 620 miles north of where we were now.
That poor old Nash Rambler I had could hardly pull that load but it did. I always timmed my departure from my home at a time so that we would arrive at the Soo at dawn. I wanted to be able to see the country. And what beautiful country it is.
We would take I-75 north and it ends at the Soo. We would cross the bridge, which is the border and then head north on Highway 17, which follows the norther shore of Lake Superior. What a wonderful drive. The road sucked back then because it was before they rebuilt it. I think they started rebuilding, they rerouted it too, in about 1967 or 68, I am not sure but the original road really sucked. That had to be the crookedist dang road in existance because it twisted around and between every dang little pond and lake on the north shore! They were just beautiful though and we wanted to stop and fish ever dang one of them and there were at least 50 of the things. The country is extremely rough though, all what we would call mountains in Michigan and rock! I saw telephone poles that were set in holes drilled in the dang bedrock! After we got out of the Soo a ways there were not even any telephone poles and the next town was Wawa! That was a long way north of where we were!
There were places that we were high above Lake Superior and we could see probably a hundred miles out and there was not a boat to be seen. None! There were places that the bluffs came out of the lake an went up hundreds of feet. We were watching every dang little lake and pond for Moose and we saw some along the road north of Wawa. We were all in hog heaven and the excitement kept three tired guys awake. The new road was straightened quite a bit and some of the small ponds were just filled in. The old road just went around them. There are parts of the old road still in existance but not much. That road was rough too!! It was like taking a dang tow track through the Michigan northland. I remember telling Bruce that it looked like the road crew just took trucks of tar and dumped them on the hills and let it be road.
Some of the hills were really something too. There is one hill, south of Wawa and runs along the big lake that is 5 miles long! I was going up that thing with my Rambler, towing all our gear and kept going slower and slower. By the time we topped out my gas pedal was on the dang floor.
We stopped at Wawa for gas. Only place to get it. It was and is a small town on a beautiful lake, Wawa Lake. Wawa is the place I wrote about where my buddy was in a bar having a burger and a beer and an Indian got mouthy with a Mounty anthed the Mounty just shot him. Another time and another story.
We gased up and headed north toward the little town of White River and then on to White Lake. We were really getting fired up and seeing all the lakes stoked the fires.
I have to tell you that in the hundreds of miles we traveled north of the Soo we saw only a couple houses back then. There was nothing for miles and miles. Not a telephone pole or a gas station. It is a bit different now but not back then. There is not much now but at least if you got in trouble there would be a chance of help. Mary and I took the drive around Lake Superior a couple years ago and it is much more civilized now days.
We finally arrived at White River and it was not much. We had to stop to buy our fishing licensed and call home to let our familys know we had made it. I saw a pay phone and walked over to the booth. It was a dang Crank Phone!! In a phone booth. I didn't know how the hell to use a crank phone but figured I could not go wrong by cranking it! I picked up the reciever and stuck it to my ear and cranked the sucker. An operator came on and I gave her the phone number and she took care of the rest.
I can not remember what time we got to the lake, it must have been around eleven in the morning, maybe a little earlier, I am just guessing but there was gonna be plenty of time to find a camping site. It did not get dark until after 10pm up there.
We were not gonna camp at a campsite. There were none. We were gonna launch the boat and head north. That is what Orie said to do. We had a map of the lake and he said we could camp anywhere we wanted. There were absolutely no homes on the lake or roads anywhere near it other than highway 17 that we were on. We could camp anywhere at all. Heck that was easy enough.
We finally got to the lake and crossed the bridge at the narrows. The boat launch was just across the bridge and to the right. We pulled off the road and drove to the launch. There were maybe a dozen cars there, most from Michigan we noticed. I swung the car around and backed the boat to the water. We pulled the tarp off and loaded our fishing tackle, which was in the car. I backed the boat in and after it was floating and Gary had the rope I pulled the car and trailer out and parked it.
Man was I excited. I was a bit disappointed though because there was nothing exciting about the launch area. It was all flat land and grubby looking. Nothing like the wonderful lakes we were seeing along the highway but what the heck, we were there.
We three climbed in the boat and I took the motor, started it up and headed out to the chanel and north. Man was that a lot of water and we had no clue where we were going or where we were gonna camp. We had no clue what that lake was like or what we were getting ourselves into. Hell we never even listened to a weather forcast but we didn't care. We were on a northern Ontario lake and that was like heaven to us.
Part Two next7