The End of an Era

There are a handful of places that have touched my heart like Pasha Lake does. Buckley Lodge, owned by our friends Mike and Mary Jo, Prairie Smoke Ranch owned by Dan and Jeanie who we visited last week, The Farm and our oasis in South Dakota. If I were to die today, these are the places I would like my ashes scattered. Places that are forever in my heart and hold special memories.

Our Pasha Lake adventures all started in 2005 when an employee of mine (Chad) came to me and said “I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news”. Preparing for the worst, I listened to what he had to say. “I am quitting, Michelle and I bought a hunting and fishing resort in Ontario.  “What’s the bad news?” I said.

That was 2005. Since then Barb and I have been up to Pasha Lake Cabins every year, sometimes 3 or 4 times a year (I guess we did miss 2016 when we went to Alaska). Our first year or two on the road we spent the entire summer up here fishing and just hanging out making memories that will last a lifetime.

We have become great friends with Chad and Michelle and have made other good friends. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Chad and Michelle sold Pasha Lake Cabins this past January. They did not want me to say anything at the time as they wanted the transition to go as smoothly as possible for the new owners. Enough time has now passed that I think it is safe to talk about it. As we drove up here this year, it broke my heart to drive past that familiar sign between kilometer 4 and 5 on the 801 knowing neither Chad nor Michelle were there. I could not help but think back on some of our fondest memories, here are a few pictures of those times. 

Mark, showing me where the fish are.

Daisy and I chill'in

Hiking into a remote lake

Two Bob's out on the water

Michelle and Chad at Fish Fry

And my favorite picture of all our Pasha adventures, Barb in her happy place....

Barb and I drove several kilometers further and took a right into the start of a new era. New memories. They will not replace those of the past 17 years at Pasha Lake but start new ones on Paint Lake as you see, Chad and Michelle kept several acres of heaven up here for their friends and family to enjoy. There is a cabin, totally off grid, complete with propane stove, fridge, head and even propane lanterns.

We are staying in our camper, no electricity, no water source and no place to dump our waste water. No guests to chat with, nothing to do but relax and fish. A totally new concept for us.  It should be an interesting few weeks.

But it got interesting even before we got here. Since leaving The Farm, Barb and I have been driving separately. Dakota and I in the truck, camper and trailer. Barb and Zoey in the Jeep. We really did not need to but, since Barb stayed home with Forrest and family before coming to the farm, we had two vehicles and there was just not a convenient place to leave the Jeep so she followed me through Minnesota, all the way up here. The border crossing was a breeze. I pulled up to the checkpoint expecting the worst. After all, I had the truck, the camper and a 16’ trailer in tow. Surely they would want to search me. Nope, after a few questions he handed me back my passport and said “Have a great day!”. Barb, right behind me was not as lucky. I pulled over a few hundred yards up the road and waited for her. And waited, and waited. I finally got out to see what was going on only to see her walking Zoey alongside the Customs building. Yup, she got pulled over for inspection. And inspect her they did. They probed her like a test subject getting lifted into an alien craft. Everything out of the jeep, looking under the seats, opening suitcases, under the hood, even scanning things for powder (or drug?) residue. When she finally met up with me 30 minutes later she said they did not like the storage containers on top of the luggage rack. To be fair, they are gun cases, so I do not blame them for searching her. Those containers were on the jeep when we bought it and have only contained fishing equipment but they wanted to search her nonetheless. She walked a little funny for the next couple of days but they did not find any contraband.

Those cases don't look suspicious at all, do they?

That night we stopped by an LCBO (liquor store) and Canadian Tire to stock up on supplies. We spent the night in Thunder Bay at the marina. The next morning we drove to our favorite Canadian destination, Tim Hortons! We had a breakfast of Tim Bits while I posted the last blog using their internet. Thank you Tim!

From there we headed to the city of Nipigon, through Beardmore and eventually past Pasha Lake Cabins to our new Ontario destination. Although we have been to this cabin before, we have never parked our rig there so we had no idea where to set up. Chad and Michelle were not going to be there for a few more days so we were on our own. With the help of a chainsaw, we found the perfect spot!

All set up on Paint!

Holy mosquitoes Batman, they were everywhere. I kid you not, every time we opened the door to go in or out anywhere from 20-50 mosquitos would enter the camper. This has to be in the top 2 or 3 worst mosquito years up here. Luckily, Barb has The Executioner with us. We have had that thing going on 7 years now and would be lost without it. Seriously, if you are going to travel in mosquito country, get an Executioner. There is not much more satisfying than the sound and smell of those nasty little buggers getting zap. Seriously, you can smell them when they go up in flames.

But we are here to fish, not complain about the bugs. Not having access to the boats Pasha has on several of the area lakes did pose a little wrinkle in our plans but we are full of ingenuity and soon had a canoe strapped to the top of the side by side and were off! Off to a remote 60 acre lake that we knew were packed with tasty walleyes just waiting for a minnow to be dangled in front of them.

Who would catch the first fish of our 2023 Canadian fishing adventure and bestow upon themselves bragging rights for the year? Who will catch the biggest fish of the day? Will I once again out-fish Barb in an embarrassing way? So many questions yet to be answered. For those of you who have canoed, you know it is all about balance and coordination. Barb and I are like a well-oiled machine when it comes anticipating each other’s moves. Even with our insyncness (yup, another new word), it was a little challenging fishing out of a canoe so there are only a couple of pictures.

It was not long before Barb stated the two words I had been dreading. No, not “I’m pregnant”, it was worse, much worse…. “Fish on!” she exclaimed. Landing a plump 18”er. Dang, there goes first fish bragging rights. Soon after, she said those words again. Another 18”er for the stringer. Enough of this, I maneuvered my end of the canoe along the weedline putting her and the front end of the canoe out in no man’s land (or no fishland). I caught the next 3 bringing our total to 5. She then caught another one which got off as I was trying to land it for her. “Really Honey, it was an accident, it just slipped off the hook.”

By the end of the day, we had 7 on the stringer and a few released. She may have bragging rights with the first fish (or two), but so far, I have bragging rights with the most and biggest at 23”. We were off to a good start on Day 1 of our adventure!

The next day, we drove over to Pasha Lake to buy some minnows and meet the new owners. A nice young couple with two small children. Victoria and Kenny kind of reminded me of Chad and Michelle 17 years ago. Young and eager to start their new business. Chad arrived later that day, he is staying in his trailer at Pasha Lake as he is helping them the first week or two of the season to help them get off to a good start. That day and the next, it was rainy and we did not get out. What did get out was more mosquitoes! We could not keep them out of the camper. Even with the doors and windows closed we could not keep them out.

Barb had had enough and was ready to pack it in. Seriously, I don’t think we would have made it another day. We went over to Pasha to visit with Chad. It is more open over here and with a breeze the mosquitoes were not as bad. We were telling Chad that we were probably leaving in the morning when Victoria said “We can make room for you over here”. And just like that, our summer vacation was saved. We have everything moved over in an hour or so.

Our new spot

Our next fishing adventure was on Northwind Lake using one of Pasha’s boats, probably our favorite lake. We drove directly to our honey hole and fished it for about an hour. Of course, no sooner had we put our jigs in the water and Barb  says “fish on” again picking up the first fish of the day but I followed suit rather quickly adding another one to the stringer. We went back and forth on the fish count until it happened. I got cold, and she got hot. I could not catch a fish to save my life, and she kept saying “Fish on” “Fish on”. Those words were really getting on my nerves. It was not fast and furious but she was catching one every 20 minutes or so.

We moved over to fish the side of a little island when…. “Fish on”, she hooked into a nice one. 23 ½”er, the biggest fish so far now belongs to her. We released it and started fishing again. Not 5 minutes later she hooks into another one. And this time the rod does not move, line is just slowly spooling off the reel. She finally gets it alongside the boat and I don’t think it will fit into the net. It did, but just barely. A hefty 28 ¼”er! I can pretty much kiss the biggest fish of the trip goodbye, that one will be hard to beat! I had had enough and switched jigs to the same color she was using. Now, I will start catching fish again!

We move to another spot, those two word kept rolling off her lips. She sounded like a damn parrot “Fish on”, “Fish on”. Meanwhile, my rod continued to be cold. While netting one of her fish, the jig got tangled up in the net so I handed her my rod asking her to hold it while I got the net untangled. You guessed it, “Fish on”. On my frick’in rod! I dropped the net, stood up and pushed her right out of the boat into the water. Well, that is what I did in my head. In actuality, I dutifully netted her fish and deposited on the bottom of the boat next to the other one I did not have time to put on the stringer yet. I think I caught 3 fish to her dozen or so. A totally humbling day.

So there ends our first week up here. A lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same as Barb is still out fishing me. I think I would have rather heard her say “I’m pregnant” instead of dealing with all this humiliation!