O, Canada

Damn, I sure need­ed that trip. Cana­da was excel­lent, the fish­ing was great, the food was wun­der­bar, the weath­er was per­fect. I caught the biggest North­ern Pike, the two largest wall­eye, and the largest perch [insert snick­er here].

and read on.

It had been sev­en years since I had last made the trek to Ear Falls, Ontario, the Bald Eagle Cap­i­tal [of what exact­ly, they do not spec­i­fy] for a fishin’ trip. Much was as I had remem­bered it. West­ern Ontario is des­o­late of civ­i­liza­tion [we bare­ly had recep­tion on the only radio sta­tion — an AM sta­tion], and ergo won­der­ful. God’s Coun­try ma’am. I saw moose, beaver, eagle, mink, bear, deer, loon, otter, and i should not neglect to men­tion the fish, north­ern pike, wall­eye, and perch.

The fish­ing was the best I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, my uncles con­curred. The Ontario con­ser­va­tion pro­gram has done a good job improv­ing the fish­ing in Canada’s lakes, they low­ered the bag lim­it to 3 fish and 1 tro­phy fish per species from its pre­vi­ous lim­it of 5 and 1 respec­tive­ly. For pike, they also made a pro­tect­ed slot for the fish size, between 27.5 and 35.5 inch­es. This con­tin­u­um is the prime breed­ing size for pike. The pike fish­ing was­n’t the best [although i did catch a 10 pounder that was 35 inch­es], but we caught many small ones [ham­mer-han­dles] which bodes well for com­ing years.

The wall­eye were enor­mous. In pre­vi­ous years we have been hard pressed to catch an 18 inch wall­eye, but this year, we glad­ly released wall­eye after wall­eye that were from 20–23 inch­es in length. These bug­gers were mon­sters. We found a spot where we would catch a fish almost every pass of the boat, and returned there for most of the week. 2 of my wall­eye were the best ones we caught, I had both a 5 pounder and a 6 pounder, filets of which I have brought home to cook for my friends. We go to Cana­da for the wall­eye, and the wall­eye sure as hell were there this year. [they are aliased as pick­er­el and sauger too].

The ride up was long but not over­ly so, we ate din­ner in Eveleth, Min­neso­ta [home of the US Hock­ey Hall of Fame] at the Sawmill, as unso­phis­ti­cat­ed as it sounds. How­ev­er, it was quite a large place, and chock-full of young beau­ti­ful women. I did­n’t pay much atten­tion to my food. Next door to Eveleth is Vir­ginia, MN, the Land of the Loon. When we crossed through Inter­na­tion­al Falls to Cana­da, it was quite late. The bor­der guard who let us through was quite nice for a lady in a flak jack­et.

Trav­el­ing with my uncles was good, and despite their con­stant send­ing me up, i main­tained my calm and shot right back at ’em. Corbin was a bit try­ing at times, telling me how to do every­thing, but that is just what hap­pens when a Berk­shire [him] clash­es with anoth­er Berk­shire [or half of one in my case]. Dean was quite patient and pilot­ed the boat for most of the trip.

We used the trip [us men] I think as a way to talk about things that nev­er get talked about oth­er­wise, we talked about my dad a bit, and they dis­cussed some of the things that trou­bled them as well. There was even some phi­los­o­phiz­ing.

While I was up there, I got some ideas for poems as well, which is good news for me.

After being on a boat for an entire day, I had ful­ly devel­oped my old sea-legs. The prob­lem is, once I’m back on land, every­thing has a nice reg­u­lar rock­ing motion to it. Dis­tinct­ly notice­able when you close your eyes.

The police in Ontario are called the O.P.P.

i’m sure there was more but i can’t think of it now. if you wan­na know some­thing just ask.