An Outdoorsman’s Journal

By: Mark Walters

Canada/The Best Week of the Year

Hello friends, Last week and this one as well, I am writing to you about a 7-day fly in fishing trip to Shultz Lake in Ontario, Canada where we fly out of Red Lake with Chimo Lodge and Outposts and have been for 42 years. We are a tight knit group of guys and gals that share the same deer and duck camp as well as our annual Shultz Lake adventure. For 7 days the only people we see are the ones in our group.

Wednesday, June 19 High 63, low 50

Today would be a typical day of this 7-day adventure for myself, except there is no typical day when you fish hard for at least 12-hours a day and then stay up until at least 2 a.m. (but generally later). There are 7 of us and we trade partners each day so that we have a good chance of fishing with each person in the group.

Today, Steve Mellone who is from the Pewaukee area and new to the gang would be my partner. My plan was to travel by boat for 7 miles and then portage our gear to another lake where there is a boat and motor. On the ride down we had a beautiful bull moose swim very close to our boat before it noticed us and that absolutely made me think that I need to save some money and go on a moose hunt.

Yesterday, Steve was fishing with Jeff Moll and caught a 34-inch lake trout. We catch very few of them and after it appeared it would not survive, Steve decided to have it mounted. So far Steve has the biggest gator “40 inches,” has seen a bear, would see another today, saw the moose and today we had a crazy day in the boat. Each year I try a new bait and this year I went with a deep diving “up to 28 feet” blue chrome Reef Runner. I had purchased a 3 pack and picked this color because I am very fond of the blue chrome Rippn’ Rap which works either trolling or casting. What happened today was that despite gale force winds which made fighting and landing fish a challenge, the Reef Runner was on fire. Earlier in the week, my brother Mike had caught a 37-inch gator while bringing in a small northern pike. In other words, what happened was the big fish grabbed onto the little fish and would not let it go. Today I honestly had the gator of the week do this same thing and fought it for 10 minutes in crazy winds and prayed it would not let go until it was caught, measured and released. As luck would have it, the gator let go of the smaller gator which was now “gatorburger” and the entire day, the Reef Runner, which I named The Demon, was insanely on fire.

I wrote last week that the weather was cold and windy and there was no tanning as it was long pants, sweatshirts and knee boots. One very popular activity for the gang is shore lunches. It may just be two guys in a boat filleting and feasting at some point in the day or the whole gang meeting up, relaxing, laughing and gorging, we ate fish all 7-days and life was good.

This year by Friday, which was our last full day, I was exhausted by 6:00 p.m. I had been on the go in a powerful way since mid-March and it hit me hard. On the other hand, what we have here is 7 men that all went to the same high school in Poynette with age differences of up to 42-years that are family and friends. We are at every wedding, graduation, funeral and most importantly fish and hunting camps and have been since my dad, the late Robert Walters, brought us together in the early 70s. If there is ever a disagreement, it does not get ugly and it is over about as soon as it starts. Dad’s rule of no whiners, slackers or tightwads is non negotiable and we are pros at laughing together and just being ourselves.

P.S. The day we flew out our good friend Pete Hagedorn, who is 86 was fishing by himself on Red Lake. Pete is the founder of Chimo and ran it and was a bush pilot until the age of 80. The day we left, Pete caught a 28-inch walleye while fishing by himself in a brand-new pontoon boat that he bought so he could take his 93-year-old wife Elizabeth fishing.

Sunset

This bull moose did not see our boat until it was 40-yards away.

The gang enjoying a shore lunch together.

Northern pike are cannibals!