It was nice to finally return to Northern Ontario after a several year hiatus due to Covid. It was particularly nice as I was with veteran fishermen and good friends Shu, Jim and Dwayne. We broke the ten hour drive north into two parts. The first leg had us spend the night at North Bay Ontario. Over the years we have found to terrific places to eat....Wacky Wings and The Crown and Beaver ....both have very eclectic menus and excellent food. Over the years we have taken pictures with the large black bear in Wacky Wings. A real gem we discovered this trip was Billy Bob's Bait & Tackle in North Bay. I have been in a LOT of tackle stores in my life and this is a great tackle shop. The had the best homemade Musky lures I have ever seen. They also have a separate display where local kids sell BIG metal bucktails that they made for a local fund raiser. We picked up a 1/2 flat (250) of night crawlers which were perfect for our trip.
The second leg is spent in Cochrane Ontario. We made two new discoveries in Cochrane. The 49th Parallel was a great sports bar restaurant. Owner Mike is a terrific and I hope we see him again. The staff was very personable and made for a nice time. Thanks to Mike's recommendation we discovered an awesome breakfast diner located in the train station called The Railway Cafe where the food was a perfect precursor to the upcoming 6 days eating in the bush.
Once at the Air Cochrane air base we found a packed parking lot. Apparently they were not able to fly the previous two days due to weather so they were backed up. I have been to Air Cochrane dating back to 2000 and have observed the many administration changes at the base. I have to say that Cory, Pilot John and the rest of their team are really on their game. The whole payment, weigh-in, and plane loading was the smoothest and most professional to date. I remember when there was no weigh-in, safety talk, life jackets, etc....very different this time around.
So Floodwood Lake....we spent 6 days here and it really is a tale of two entities, the lake and the cabin.
In terms of the lake, it is relatively small. You could troll the entire shoreline probably two-three times in a day. The topo map is not accurate....For example, I marked holes of 60' where the map said is was 20' deep. The walleye fishing was exceptional with lengths up to 30" being caught. In fact it was difficult to catch enough walleye under 18 inches to cook for a meal as they were all too big. Typical to other local lakes jigs and spoons worked well consistently on the walleye. I also found maribou jigs in any color worked well.
The pike we caught never surpassed the 30" mark which was very surprising to us. We fished hard for pike and we caught plenty, but nothing big. In fact we caught lots of big walleyes on huge spoons and spinnerbaits. Weird that the walleye were bigger then the pike! Consequently we probably will not return to this lake.
The second aspect of the Floodwood Lake experience was the cabin. Now Air Cochrane has always been about "roughing it" and it compliments the whole bush experience. This facility needed attention. One wall was detached from the floor. The door would not shut so we made interior/exterior levers. It got down into the 40's and we needed firewood for the fireplace. The wood provided were 20"-24" in diameter, loaded with knots, and took 30 swings with a shitty axe to split them. The outhouse is tilted, full and sinking. There is a deep sag in the floor immediately upon entering the camp which caused many a dance to avoid falling.
Two of the three motors did not work so fortunately we had rented a satellite phone to call in for help. Pilot John promptly came out and got them going. We rented the phone just to be precautious about medical type of incidents. If we had not rented the phone we would have been down to 1 boat with 4 guys for a week. Moral, always rent a sat phone.
One morning it was really blowing 20-30 mph winds. We were in the cabin laying in our bunks listening to music, I was reading a great book, when all of a sudden an ear-popping crash happened that sounded like a direct lighting hit on the cabin. A tree fell on the roof and smashed two of the ceiling joists. A large part of the tree fell where Shu had been standing just minutes earlier on the edge of Whizz Lake. After the crash there was lots of jokes around who would have/ have not pulled Shu out of this lake had he been hit.
Saw lots of beavers, loons and eagles. The lake bustles with wildlife. The weather varied from 80 degree blue-bird days to 40 degree driving wind and rain. Thankfully the mayflies had not hatched yet. The black flies and mosquitoes were as terrible as ever. Albeit we had great success using Thermocells to keep the bugs out of the cabin. They are so much better than the traditional coils.
Great trip with lots of laughs. Other than missing family, it was great being off the grid for a week.
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