Great fish stories can make memories for a lifetime

The weather has been great. I hope you were able to get out and enjoy some hiking, canoeing, hunting or fishing.

The start of muzzleloader season on Saturday (10/15) was a washout. You would have to keep your powder dry that day.

The weatherman kept saying it was going to rain at the end of the week, but all we got were a few showers and more sunshine.

I got all my Loon platforms pulled and saw a few Loons while doing it. The Loon with the fishing line is still swimming around the shores of Fourth Lake.

I’ve had several calls about this bird. We will try and catch it one more time.

It switches sides of the lake and if we don’t get on it before dark. It’s pretty hard to locate with a light. I’ll keep you posted on our results.

One day I went with Bob Zimmerman to Mitchell Ponds to try for Red Salmon. It had been nice for several days and that’s usually a good time to catch this tricky fish.

We trolled a lake clear wobbler and worm for a couple hours without any hits. We didn’t we see any jump, which wasn’t a good sign.

However I did catch a nice 19-inch Brown Trout.

The leaves around the lower pond were in beautiful color against the high ledge.

Maybe the salmon have finally bit the big one and not reproduced any more.

These fish hadn’t been stocked for several years but have reproduced in the pond on their own each fall.

The salmon were doing the same in Bug Lake, but this year’s netting did not produce any salmon either.

This was one of the nicest fish to catch and eat in the area, but purists would say it isn’t native so it has to go.

Brown and Rainbow Trout are not native either, so look out—they may be next on the purist’s hit list.

Whitefish seem to be all the rage as they have been stocked in many deeper ponds and lakes as forage fish.

They are also very good to eat, but just try catching one.

My friend Ellie George and her husband Cal have been fishing many ponds trying to get that big brooktrout. They have caught plenty of fish but have not scored “the big one” yet.

Ellie has photographed several of these fish including a nice 16-inch male.

She caught it at what she refers to as “mystery pond” in the pouring rain on the last day of the season.

She thinks the spawning colors on the males are some of the prettiest colors in nature, and I have to agree with her.

The most memorable fish for me was taken when I was just 12 years old.

It was back in 1956 and I was fishing with my grandfather, Doc Lee, on Lake Chibougamau in northern Quebec.

I had found this plug along the shoreline, which I still have.

We were trolling off Commissioner’s Island one morning and I hooked this nice fish on my casting rod using that lucky plug.

We got the fish to the boat and saw that it was a 24-inch brooktrout which weighed about five pounds.

My grandfather was using lead line, which was going deeper than my casting line so he put on this big cork with about 25 feet of line behind it.

This kept his lure higher in the water where I had caught my fish.

The cork bobbed on the surface way behind the boat and a big northern pike came up and tried to eat it. The pike got tangled in the line around its gills and we landed it. The fish was about 12 pounds.

I can still remember netting it, mostly because it was about as long as I was tall.

When we got to shore my dad told me that we’d have the brooktrout mounted. That made me happy.

However, the very next day he caught a 28-inch brooktrout and we ended up eating mine for supper.

Luckily, I have the picture of Grandpa and me and that big brookie. (In that neck of the woods they called it a red trout.)

We had released the big pike before we got a photo of it.

Catching the fish in the way that we did—not on the hook—was kind of neat for this little kid.

So make some memories and take a kid fishing or hunting. Get them hooked on the outdoors and not their i-Pods.

Go west young man. That’s where I’m headed, but that’s another story. See ya.