Canada Trip 2013 - Blog #2

My blog is primarily a fishing blog.  But there is so much more to our Canada trips than just the fishing.  Enough to warrant a 2nd blog entry, methinks!

Every year on our way to Red Lake, Ontario (final destination: Nungesser Lake), we "oooh" and "ahhhh" when we drive by Waubigoon Falls.  This year we finally stopped and captured some pictures.

Here's a picture of the fellas in front of the Falls (from l-r:  Chris, Jeff, Jay)  At 6'2", I'm the SHORTEST guy on the trip:

The wildlife was fantastic on this trip!  Our group saw 6 Moose, 4-5 Black Bears, 1 Woodland Caribou, Loons, Mergansers, Osprey, Beaver, Fox, Seagulls, what seemed like HUNDREDS of Canadian Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, a Luna Moth, and countless Bald Eagles.  We even got to watch one pair of Eagles lock talons and perform a mid-air courtship spiral.  THAT was cool!

Here's a sign you just never see in Iowa:

An then not 5 minutes later, we saw our first Moose of the trip, which looked to be a yearling?

We also saw a solitary adult Moose at the lake, and also a mother Moose with at calf.  On our way home, we saw THIS mother and calf:

We saw a mother Black Bear and a couple of cubs run across the road in front of us.  That would have been a great picture, but it happened so fast we weren't prepared for it.
But here's a bear that came out of the woods while the guys were fishing from a boat (photo taken by Jay Ohm):

This Loon swam underwater next to the boat, popped up, and didn't seem the slightest worried that we were  right next to him!

I saw this Luna Moth on the ramp to the Lodge one morning.  Oddly enough it (or another one) was back near the same spot the following morning!

We saw a LOT of these Canadian Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies on this trip.  They would find us even way out in the middle of the lake!

Here's a photo (courtesy of Jay Ohm) taken on the deck in front of our cabin.  That's me in the background stringing up my spinning rod and fly rod.

This looks like I'm really frying up some dinner!  Its not true...Chris handled all the frying quite expertly!

Here's a view from our deck:

This is a sunrise shot of the boat docks (photo by Jay Ohm).  There was  a low-lying fog that morning, which totally obscured the islands which aren't too far away.

The weather was pretty nice.  We had about 1.5 days of some intermittent rain.  We had some beautiful rainbows in front of us for about 3 hours solid one afternoon!

We even managed to relax while tossing some horseshoes in camp one evening.

A HUGE thanks to Jay for organizing the trip once again!

Canada Trip 2013 - Blog #1

Jay, Jeff, Chris and I have been heading to Nungesser Lake, Ontario every-other-year since 2001.  So, this was trip #7.

We had another great trip!  We had some great rainbows (the light-refraction-on-water kind, not the trout kind), very decent weather, and caught some good Northern Pike, Walleyes, and Yellow Perch.

Our group managed 3 Northern Pike over 40".  We caught plenty of walleyes over 20", with the biggest being a 26-incher that I landed.  We also caught a few Yellow Perch up to almost 11".  We saw and caught a few more Horsehair Worms once again, as well as some big leeches.  Both of those are just a little creepy!

The fishing had its ups and downs.  Typically fishing was good either in the morning or in the afternoon...but not both.  The water was warming up fast, and the fish were transitioning from shallows to deeper waters, and seemed confused on just where exactly they should be...which caused us to do a lot of fruitless searching trying to find fish willing to eat.  A hot spot one day would often produce almost no fish just one day later.  That's all part of fishing.

First, the Fish Pics:

34" Northern Pike, my largest of the trip.

26" Walleye, THE largest of the trip. :)

This nice Yellow Perch may have been one of the several I caught on my fly rod.

I caught a bigger pike on my fly rod during the trip, but this was the first  one.  I was actually targeting perch when it hit.

This Walleye on the fly rod completed the "Nungesser Lake Grand Slam"!

I would say most of our walleyes on this trip hit 3" and 4" swimbaits.  This one munched a 4" Big Hammer swimbait.

This Walleye had a partially digested 5" Yellow Perch sticking out of its mouth when  I landed it.  It still hit an artificial!

The Walleye in the picture above this one shook its head and dislodged the 5" Perch in its mouth.

I've got quite a few fish pics of the other guys...I'll just try to show the highlights...they caught some nice fish!

Jeff with one of his many Walleyes.

Jay with THE biggest Northern Pike of the trip...at 41.5"!

And another dandy Pike!

Right off the dock!!  A fellow in the cabin next to us caught a 29" Walleye off the dock the first  day we arrived in camp!

Chris with a beauty 41" Northern Pike! 

Chris with ANOTHER 40"-class pike!

Chris flat out caught a LOT of nice fish on this trip.  Check out these  Walleyes!

I just realized the fish above and below...ARE THE SAME FISH,  caught on different days!

This chunky Yellow Perch was just shy of 11"!