Thursday, September 9, 2021

I Caught the Biggest Fish!

Guess who caught the biggest fish so far this week?!?!? Well, it happens so infrequently that I have to brag about it. I did! It was not a walleye, or even a northern pike, it was a lake trout! I have not caught one in years and for that matter do not fish for them as the ones around here are few, far between and hard to target.

Pasha Lake itself only has two game fish in it, northern pike and lake trout. And since this week was filled with rain almost every day we stayed close to camp and only went out when it looked like there was a little break in the rain. On one such break Barb and I went out on Pasha in the hopes of catching a lake trout. To catch just one is considered a successful day. So off we went with a few shiner minnows and our poles rigged with jigs. Since these fish are so few and far between in this lake we try to target them. Meaning you go slowly along the lake shore watching your sonar graph, when you see a fish you stop and try and catch it.

So round and round we go, looking for a fish. This is what they look like on the graph. Well, not exactly like this as this is an image of several walleyes in one of our honey holes. A single lake trout would be a single “arch-type” image whereas this picture has 6 or more fish on it.

We would find a fish, usually in 30-40’ of water, and try and drop a minnow near it and see what happens. We were out for over an hour when it finally happened, fish on! I cannot tell you the last time I caught a lake trout…. Oh wait, I can, it was in 2016 while in the Yukon, but anyway, I had one on now!

We finally get it to the boat as Barb is manning the net, she takes a swipe it and misses! If I did not know any better I would have thought she was trying to knock it off! But she got it on the 2nd try and heaved it into the boat. Then it started pouring again so we hustled back to shore and to our cabin. I had Barb take a picture of me with it, cleaned it and put it in the freezer. Later I looked at the picture, I was soaked, pale, had ½ of my shirt tucked in and ½ out, a dead pan expression on my face white pale face that looked like I should be on a table in a morgue instead of standing up holding a fish. So….. no picture for the blog. I will not torture you with that image but it really happened, trust me!

We had two days we barely left the cabin it rained so much and two days we snuck out between storms to fish and two days bear hunting. We caught another limit of walleye and had another fresh walleye dinner. So far we have had them pan fried, deep fried and grilled.

Nice stringer of 'eyes

Speaking of hunting there has been a blog post floating around in my mind for a couple months now that I did not know if I would ever write or not. For those of you who have read our blog for a while you know we tend to stay away from controversial topics like politics, religion, and more recently vaccines. I want our blog to be fun, informative and a record of our adventures, not controversial.

But the blog post started floating around in my head after I watched a Netflix documentary a few months ago called Stars in the Sky: A Hunting Story by Steve Rinella. (That link is a link to his trailer, this link will take you to the actual documentary on Netflix) I have been a fan of Steve’s shows for years as his philosophy on hunting closely resembles mine where it is almost more of a spiritual experience more than anything. For those of you how don’t hunt, I would strongly encourage you to watch it if for nothing else but to give you a perspective on the hunting culture. For those of you who do hunt, I think you would enjoy it as well. There is not a lot of blood and gore in it so I think it would be safe for hunters and non-hunters alike. Make sure you have some time, like maybe on a rainy day as it is a little over an hour long. I am not trying to change any opinions here, but for me it was very moving.

As long as I am writing about things I don’t usually write about……We don’t usually talk about our health and ailments on the blog either, (unlike other people we know who have to describe in excruciating detail every little thing that goes on with him, usually with pictures that no matter how hard you try you just cannot unsee!) but.... Barb also had a little health scare this week when she had a she started seeing “floaties” and flashes of light in her right eye. We had a friend recently who had a torn retina and we were afraid the same might be happening to Barb. What to do?! We are in Canada hours away from anyplace that takes our insurance. Barb called a couple of retina specialists in Duluth, MN (6 hours away) and they said it could be a retina in the early stages of tearing and she should get it looked at. Do we pack up everything and go down there to get it checked out? She thought about going by herself, getting it checked out, and then getting another covid test so she could come back. But the earliest appointment was not until late Sept. Then she thought; Why not go to Thunder Bay here in Ontario to an ophthalmologist and get it checked out there? We have a high deductible insurance policy so it would be out of pocket no matter where we went. So she called down there and got an appointment for a couple days later. So on the appointed day she was off to Thunder Bay. She did not want me to go because she did not want to leave the dogs alone that long.

When she got there she said they took 6-8 scans of both her eyes with this machine she had to stare into. After a bit a doctor came in and went over the scans with her. She does not have a torn retina. She has a tear of some word she cannot remember or pronounce but it nothing to be worried about. He said the floaties and flashing lights would go away in a few days.

Then it came time for the bill. Ugh! How much is this going to be?!?! My guess was $1,200. Chad’s guess was $1,500. Barb walked up to pay the bill….$75! In the states that would have easily been over a $1,000. Regardless of the cost, Barb is okay and we can continue our Canadian adventures!

So it is back to the bear blind we went! Barb and I have now spent so much time in the bear blind we are starting to go loopy. I don’t know how many books she has read, maybe like a dozen, I have read maybe 2-3. She reads them on her iPad while I read them from an actual book. She is like a speed reader and I cannot help but see her flick the pages out of my peripheral vision. I will be reading a page and she flicks like 8 pages to my one, it is actually very distracting and somewhat annoying. Who reads that fast!?!?

Then there are the times a start taking pictures and whisper “Give me a serious hunter pose”

Then “Give me a I wonder where the bears are pose”

Then, “Give me an “I am looking for a bear pose”

Then she starts cracking up and gets the giggles and I am whispering to be quiet, the more I whisper to be quiet the more she giggles! No wonder we are not seeing any bears!

This week at Pasha my good friend Bob, (Not Farmer Bob but Farmer Bob’s son-in-law’s dad and my high school buddy, Bob) came up with a groups of his customers, a total 6 guys. This is his 7th year coming up with his customers, some of them the same, some of them different and they are here to have a good time! One thing I noticed each night they were here is that the number of times I had to get up and go to the bathroom each night directly correlated to the number of beers I had the night before. 3 beers, 3 times getting up, 4 beers, 4 times. I wonder if I had 12 or even 17 beers in one night if I would have to get up that many times....... I will have to ask Dino! 

They fished everyday regardless of the rain, mostly all day and caught tons of fish. They have two favorite lakes; Onaman, which is the 1 ½ mile walk-in walleye lake and a northern pike lake that will remain nameless which is a 4 mile ATV ride into it. 

A trophy northern pike is anything 40” or better, if you hit that mark you know you really have something special. Not only did they hit that mark once but they hit it 4 times!




Now that I think about it, I did not catch the biggest fish after all! 

20 comments:

  1. I don't mean to be skeptical but if there is no picture, there's no proof. You might as well have said you've seen Sasquatch.

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  2. So glad Barb is OK, vision scares are horrible, especially for an avid reader. Too bad about the rain but at least you've caught plenty of fish.

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    1. A lot of fishermen go out in the rain as they are only here a week. We are here a lot longer and can wait the rain out so it is no too bad.

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  3. I don’t know Jim…no pics, no proof on that laker. We’ll have to wait and get confirmation from Barb. 🤣 Those guys are catching some real beauties. I too had those eye flashes 2 days before heading to Q in 2019 and can’t pronounce the diagnoses either. It went away after a week. Good luck and enjoy!

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    1. It is scary when you don't know what is going on with things like that but it has cleared up already and she is ready to catch more fish!

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  4. Wow that is a lot of big fish. Nice you finally caught a lake trout in your favourite place. Good luck on the bear front. We have had great weather and wish for rain. Maybe you could send it this way. lol

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    1. That is surprising as it seems like you guys are always getting rain. I am sure the patterns will change soon and the lake levels will start rising again!

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  5. Well it's about time you got the biggest fish!!! But I won't believe it until you post the picture!!! Glad Barb's eye is okay ... that's a scary thought. All those pictures of guys with fish are making me jealous. Haven't caught a fish in ages!! Sitting in a bear bind with no bear? I probably wouldn't last long at all. I'd go back for more fish!!

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    1. Even though the bears did not cooperate, it was actually very nice sitting out there with her watching all the nature.

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  6. So glad Barb was able to get an appointmnet there in Canada and everything is all right. Happy Fishing!! Hope the bear stay away!!

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    1. She thought about letting it go until we hit the states at the end of the month but are glad she didn't just for the peace of mind in knowing it is nothing serious.

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  7. We’ve had a big black bear wandering around the Leelanau peninsula the past couple of years...not far from our place. Maybe you can stop by someday and get yourself a new bear rug!

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    1. I bet you have more than one wandering around there, that certainly looks like bear country!

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  8. So glad her eye check went well! And $75?! Wow! I don’t know about your biggest fish claim. Maybe you should’ve got your eyes checked too? 😄 Nice fish in the other pics! We’re hoping to get some fishing in if we’re allowed in the burn areas.

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    1. We are going to head over to that pike lake in the next few days to try our luck!

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  9. Congrats on your 'biggest' fish to date. Those pike look great.

    We have come to the conclusion that pay as you go re medical issues as you travel is the way to handle it. Our insurance company kept saying that would not reimburse me for my knee surgery this past January. The gringo hospital in Mazatlan quoted me 20 - 25 thousand US. I was going to fly home but here in Canada there would have been a several month long wait to have the surgery done. Instead I went to a Mexican hospital with a great English speaking surgeon. Cost was something like 3K Canadian including one night in hospital and free use of a cryotherapy machine for over six weeks. Barb did very well with that 75.00CAD fee. Last week I paid $100.00 for my annual eye exam. Happy to hear that her eye will be fine.

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    1. We were ecstatic that it was nothing serious and the $75 bill was just a bonus on top of everything!

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