That Means Comfort: Fly-In Fishing

Considering that a fishing trip to Ontario has been a yearly tradition in my family for years, you'd think I'd have gone more than once in the last ten years. But nope. Leslie and I went in 2014, as posted here, but haven't made it back since. Well, until this year. My lovely wife was nice enough to let me go on a week-long vacation while leaving her to take care of Owen - I think I married a good one.

While the traditions of this trip haven't changed much since I started going, this year was a little different. We still made the same stops we usually make on the way there, but our final destination by car was different this year - Hawk Air. The train we used to take to camp has stopped running, so the only way to access the lake is to fly in. This has some pros and cons. First off, flying in is much more convenient. It was always a hassle to unload everything from the cars when we got to the train station, then load everything onto the train once it arrived, then unload the train at our stop, then carry everything down to the dock and load it onto a boat, then take the boat to camp and then unload on the beach there, then carry everything up to the cabin and finally start unpacking. And then we'd get to repeat that whole process in reverse on the way home. With the plane, we pulled our cars to the dock where the plane would be, unloaded and weighted everything, then they loaded it up in the plane, and we flew right to camp and just had to carry our stuff up to the cabin. So much easier! It was also faster - a 20 minute flight beats a 90 minute train ride for sure. But flying also makes things a little more complicated. There's only so much room on the planes and they can only handle so much weight. Typically bring a bunch of food, especially canned goods. See how these don't mix well? So we had to rethink our entire menu and packing strategy to accommodate the weight restriction. This meant a lot more "instant" food options like packaged mashed potatoes, quick rice, and things like jello and pudding. It was definitely a change from what we're used to doing, but it all worked out and we still had plenty to eat.

Past that, it was our usual trip with our usual stops. We... left from Fort Wayne, met up with the others in Angola, bought fishing gear at Jay's, stayed overnight at the Voyageurs' Lodge, explored the Canadian Carver, skipped rocks at the rock beach, resupplied at the General Store, and then caught our ride at Hawk Air from there. Now at camp, we got things organized and then worked on getting all our fishing gear ready. The flight got us in earlier than we used to arrive on the train, so we were able to get out that night and caught a good amount of fish. After just a few hours of fishing we had enough for the next day's meal and then some. The fishing remained consistently good for the remainder of the week. Yes, we had some days where we did better than others, but both the pike and walleye (the two species we fish for) were biting and I don't think anyone ever came back in without catching a few. By the end of the week we had our limit frozen to bring back with us and had eaten our fill everyday. And you really can't ask for more on a fishing trip than that.