An Outdoorsman’s Journal
By: Mark Walters
Canada or Bust
Hello friends: Even though “The Canada Gang” changed their date five times in the last two years to fly into Shultz Lake, COVID-19 beat us every time and so a few of us settled for a 6-day fishing trip on the Mississippi River. We camped at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Blackhawk Park Campground, which is about seven miles south of Genoa and receives a top rating from me as a great place to spend time.
Thursday, July 22 High 86, low 67
Dan Gorman, who is a groundskeeper for the Poynette School District, Gary Gray, a semi-retired roofer and bartender at Harmony Bar in Poynette, and my brother Mike Walters, who works in production at Research Products, would make up our group and toward the end we would be joined by my brother-in-law Dick Schuster, who owns Schuster Home Improvement.
My golden retriever Ruby, who should be dropping pups any day, was our camp pet.
So, I used to camp here back in the 1980s and we picked a campsite that did not have electricity but had a shoreline to fish and keep your boat and most importantly plenty of shade with no neighbors.
We are all Poynette kids from the 1960s and the 1970s and we just want to have fun and fish. We fished about 7-11 hours a day and were sucked in by the campfire until very late each night.
More reality: my 90-hp E-tec is still being fixed and today is day 60. The computer literally melted in it and there are very few computers out there for E-tecs. So, I am going to be a passenger in a boat that Dan Gorman borrowed from his brother Scott. I milked a cow or two back in the day on the Gorman farms and we are all like family. Scott’s boat had motor issues and a serious leak, and since Scott just purchased this boat, we would be the bearer of the bad news. We really hoped to troll for walleye and northern pike but that was not to be as the engine alarm was constant when idling. The one time we did troll, Danny caught a 19-inch walleye within five minutes. The leak was in rivets under the floor and without a bilge pump we would have had a problem. We focused on panfish in the deadfalls and did very well. On the second day, I filleted all of our fish and we gluttoned out on a fish fry under very steamy weather. It was so hot that every day we had to purchase 80 pounds of ice just to keep our beer cold. I mean, our food.
On the third day, we created a contest called The Catfish Jubilee. The CJ started at 8 p.m. and lasted until 2 a.m. It was shore fishing only from camp and each person could only use one pole. Everyone tossed in $5 and whoever had the biggest cat at 2:00 was the winner. Mike, Dan, and Gary fished from their boats that were pulled up on shore and I had my pole about 50 yards downshore with a live bluegill on it.
Long story short, we fished hard and had a lot of laughs. When the contest ended, we had not had a bite.
The following morning Dick Schuster showed up and we made the 5-mile boat ride down to Big Lake near Lansing, Iowa, for perch. We would do this two days in a row and had so much fun that we decided to stay an extra day.
The perch fishing was slow, but we were also catching some very large bluegill, mooneye and sheephead. The perch we caught were dandies with the largest one being over 13 inches. Dick knows how to fish this area because every October when our gang is duck hunting here Dick is perch fishing, which has me thinking I need to come a day early and chase perch.
So, I have now been home a week, Ruby has not had her pups, and it is not looking like a large litter.
We had all hoped to do our annual Canadian fly-in fishing trip, but the whole world knows why life is not as simple as it used to be. A few members of our gang said one way or another we are going on an adventure, and we certainly did.
Go for it until you can’t! Sunset
Our camp at Black Hawk Park!
(L-R) Mike Walters, Dick Schuster and Gary Gray enjoying the perch fishing on Big Lake near Lansing, Iowa.
(L-R) Dan Gorman, Gary Gray and Mike Walters early in the evening of the Catfish Jubilee.
