Fishing, Moose and Grouse Tales from the Canadian Bush

Each week I write a blog both as a personal journal and as a means of letting our friends and family know what we are up to. Each week anywhere from 800 – 1,000 people click on our blog, not sure if they all read it but at least that many stumble on it one way or another. Of those anywhere from 10-20 people leave comments on a regular basis. It is one of the few things that validate a blogger, that readers leave a comment. I see blogs with 50, 70, or even more than 100 comments and think to myself “how do they get that many?” Granted their blogs are much more thought provoking than ours so imagine my delight when I opened our email the other day and the entire page was filled with comments. Well…..There is trouble in paradise. All of these comments were from “Anonymous” and were all spam and they continue to come in daily. Each of them were very poorly written promoting a product or another website. I did not open any of these websites but based on the text several of them were for enhancement products of one form or another. Good thing I moderate/approve comments before they are posted! These certainly aren’t the comments I was looking for….oh well

Our second week in the Ontario bush consisted of more fishing, relaxing/reading and scouting for bears stands.

The mosquitoes don’t seem to be as bad. Either that or we are getting used to them. Now that I think of it we are just getting used to them because as I write this there are as many staring at me on the screen next to me as there was last week.

We are starting to get settled in and into a routine. As much as we like fishing if we get out 2-3 times a week that is plenty for us. Fishing at Pasha Lake Cabins is not like fishing at other resorts. This is more of an adventure resort where you travel to different remote lakes. Pasha Lake itself has some northern pike and lake trout in it but we rarely fish it. Instead we opt for one of the 30 or so remote lakes in the area to try.

This week we tried a lake we have never fished before. As a matter of fact this lake probably sees less that 3-4 boats a year.  There are several challenges related to fishing new lakes. The first is getting there. These lakes are not well mapped nor are they on blacktop roads. If you are the first one in there for the year you will often have to cut your way in as trees fall across the logging roads each winter. We found the road in without a problem and there was only one tree over the road which we were able to drag out of the way with a strap hooked to the front end of the jeep.

Once we got to the lake the landing was pretty wet but we figured we could make it without a problem. Well, we figured wrong. After we got the boat launched and started up the bank the jeep immediately sunk in the mud. There we sat with all 4 tires just a spinning 3 kilometers and millions of mosquitoes away from the main road. For 45 minutes we tried pushing in both directions, we tried laying a bed of rocks under each of the tires, we tried logs, sticks and branches under each of the tires, and nothing worked. Finally as a last resort I just went ape crazy on it and started putting it in forward and reverse as fast as I could rocking the bejesus out of it and after a few minutes it finally popped out of its holes…right down into the lake! Well we were out of the holes but on the wrong side of the mud hole. But I just gave it the gas and bounced over those holes as fast as I could and was up on dry land in no time.

Barb backing into the lake

The aftermath mud pit!

You would think after all of that we would be rewarded with some great fishing right? Nope, the lake was a bust. We boated around that entire lake looking at the sonar and could not find the fish. We did to pick up a handful of small perch but nothing big enough to keep. We were entertained by a pair of loons however……

We did really well on another fishing trip this week but only took one picture of this 23” blue walleye. It is really unknown why these fish are blue. The experts don’t know if it is a phase the fish go through, something to do with the mineral content in the lake or if the fish are born blue and stay that way all their lives.

During our bear scouting adventures we saw several forms of wildlife, (no bears yet…). First up was an attack grouse. We have run into these aggressive creatures in the past and find them quite entertaining. When you run across a mama grouse with babies they will often fluff up their feathers, open their wings and charge you to distract you while the babies run for cover. You have to be careful you might get an ankle pecked!

Attack of the killer grouse. Hard to take a picture when you are retreating!

Babies escaped but she is still keeping an eye on me!

A few other friends we made during the week.....

This snowshoe hare torments the dogs outside our window every day

Woodchuck peeking out of its den

We also saw a young bull moose wandering down the road. This time of year last year’s babies are kicked out of their home area by their mothers so she can focus on her new baby. As a result you will often see yearly moose wandering looking for a new home territory.

You can barely see the antlers on this guy

Well that’s it from week 2 here at Pasha Lake, tomorrow we get to go to our favorite fishing lake. I am charging up our video cameras in the hopes of getting some good footage to make a movie. If that does not work out perhaps I will spend some time looking up some of these mysterious websites from the anonymous comments!