Algonquin Park Brook Trout, May 2008

We went to Algonquin park for our annual spring fishing trip. Ice was out, snow was gone (we hoped) and the day off work was booked. The only issue was the weather which promised rain, cold, more rain and other nastiness. We decided to go anyhow.

We left Thursday night around 6 pm. Late departure but putting up a tent in the dark is easy and of course we're pretty wild guys so off we go. We stopped as the grocery store (as usual) ... dinner was on the road... subway... everything else in middle of nowhere was closed (well, except burger king which we passed on despite the opportunity to eat with royalty). The young lady at Subway made us nice sandwiches and recommended the apple pie to go with. Yes indeed, we also had pie and our overeating accomplished on day one, in the very first hours of the trip. Later we pulled up in the dark and set up tent in our secret backwoods location, drank some scotch and went to bed, it was going to be -2 so was pretty chilly.

We had an early start on Friday and got permits and were onto the lake in no time. The weather held, no rain but it was windy out on the big lake, many big waves rolling in. I'm not a big fan of waves in canoes, and even less so in freezing water, luckily, only a couple came over the top of canoe (and thats only cause I'm a big fat guy). In that cold water and would be kind of nasty if tipped but we did ok. set up tent, set up tarps... rain potential but it held off.. no rain !!! despite weather mans predictions. some trolling (no fish) and then dinner ... we had rice with potatoes, onions and carrots in foil and chicken kabobs... was delish... and then desert.. cookies, single bite brownies and butter tarts... oh, then scotch and we also has some port with dinner... was very very good.

Next morning, yep, we were up early (ha!) - actually we slept in till 8:30. So I stumble out of bed, head to shore and by 9 am I have my first brook trout. Nice! Not even 50 ft from the tent. Easy as that, so we decide on a lazy two hour brekkie to celebrate. We were just lazing around, had coffee, bacon, eggs, english muffins and peanut butter and jam. Overeating accomplished again. Of course, we had use the tried and true bacon and egg calorie delivery system developed in previous trips.

Pete did his magic and got the big one for the weekend. Nice brookie, also from shore right at camp. I got another one too from the exact same spot. Some people would have just stayed on shore and spent all day catching trout, but not us. We decided that we'd also explore the lake.

We headed out on the lake, slowing drifting the shoreline and casting for trout. We picked up a couple here and there, on some points and then we found a small spot that had a group of feeding fish and picked up a few more in a couple minutes. We decided to explore and headed down to the end of the lake and the drift fish back with the wind. This strategy failed so and just about when we got hungry, it started to rain so we headed in to camp.

My afternoon was spent under the tarp keeping dry. After a simple lunch, the weather was warm enough to take a nap under that tarp so that's what I did.

At 10 pm the stars came out and we had ourselves some saki and scotch and some other silly thing and we got lucky. Clear skies with beautiful stars out until bed.

The last morning we slept in, did our clean up, packed up and started heading out. There was lots of wind, no rain but we had to push across the big lake and there were some big waves over the front a couple times but once we made it into the lee we fished out our way out. Pete picked up a trout as a bonus. and yes, just when we were leaving, the sun came out, it was wonderful, sunny and nice and warm.