Fishing White Lake 6

Now like I said we were camped a the narrows where White Lake and Ravine Lake met. W were camped in an old lumber camp and there were a lot of junk around including old trash piles and such. I was not much interested in relics back then but sure wish I had paid more attention to what I saw.

As I have been thinking about it I remember that this year I was with my cousin Terry, who is a barber in Oscoda Michigan and his best friend Norm. They had done a bit of fishing but this was their first trip to Canada.

I remember one day in One Eye Bay. It was a great day and the weather was just perfect. The water was high and the woods were flooded. This lake was an impoundment and I honestly didn’t realize it until my last trip to the lake. In the spring the water would come up at least five feet or more and it would flood back into the Forest. This was great fishing but if a big old lunker grabbed on back in that brush it was tough to get them out. The weeds back in there were hard bark and nothing like lake weeds. A pike gets wrapped around something like that it is almost a guarantee of a lost bait. We only have so many lures so if a fish did bust our line we would watch for a while because they would usually jump and try to throw them. Since most of what we were using were floaters we usually eventually got them back.

I was standing up in the back and casting my Rapalla toward the emerging Lilly pads. I got a strike and that fish took off and I could hardly slow it down. I was up and a jumping and yelling, loving it. The fish fought like it was possessed and since the water was only about six ft deep it had no place to go but away. In my experience not many pike jump. I have seen it happen but not as a rule.

Terry was in the bow and I had him pull anchor and ran to the bow. The dang fish was slowly pulling us and I was scared that it was going to get in the brush. This big sucker was gone if he reached that stuff. Even if he didn’t get to the flooded Forest he had plenty of logs and cedar trees laying along the water line and you can bet they know where every one is.

I finally got it turned or at least he stopped his run and I started working him back my way. I had no idea what the heck I had on but I knew it was big! I have caught a lot of pike but this one was in a class of his own. At least that was the impression I had at the time. Still do

I yelled for one of them to get the dang net because I was sure not gonna be able to horse this sucker in. Terry grabbed the net and stood at the side while I worked it his way from the bow, man I was excited. We still could not see the dang fish as the water was stained with tannin and the back of a pike is dark anyway. All we had to go by is the angle of the line and it was straight down. It started coming up and all of a sudden Terry said Holy Shat! And stared. Then I saw it. That was the biggest dang pike I have ever seen! I yelled at Terry to net it but was worried that the net was not big enough. Terry slipped the net in the water, at the head end and the dang fish took off and headed down. I held on and all of a sudden the dang line snapped.

I just stood there and stared at the black water, still able to see the swirl where its monster tail left its mark. Terry just looked at me and said he was sorry but it was not his fault at all. The dang big fish are just big enough to get off some times.

I have not idea how big it was but it was the biggest I have ever had on and the one thing that sticks in my mind is that when I saw that sucker at the surface, right next to the boat, I thought, “It’s back looks like a loaf of bread” It was as wide as a loaf of bread! Now that sucker would have been on my wall right now if I had landed it.

I have caught some nice pike up there, mostly released but that was the biggest I have ever had on . I did see one bigger on Oswald Lake but that will be another story.

When we went up there camping we always had to take in a stock of ice. One year we took dry ice and it worked great. When we took ice of course we had coolers and the first thing we would do is bury them up to their lids in the sand. The ice would last a lot longer that way.

One day we were drifting in One Eye Bay and we had picked up a few pike along one area where the land climbed rather steeply from the water. We could not see it as the shore line was a solid mass of cedar and pine. Many cedar were hanging into the water, having their roots undercut by the waves over time. We had picked up a few fish and I looked down in the water and saw a lot of minnows there. I wondered why. I heard a noise and told my companions to listen.

It was water. Sounded like falling water. I looked at the shore line and the weeds on the bottom and could see there was a current coming out from the shore. Heck, there was a stream here and it attracted the minnows and the minnows, the pike.

I forced the nose of the boat up in the brush and we looked into the trees and could see a little brook, not more than a foot or two wide , that went up the hill, winding among the trees and moss. It was dark up there too. Sorta spooky.

I got out, always wanting to explore and walked a short distance up along the brook. I could see something white up ahead on the hillside but it was hard to see what the heck it was. The noise was coming from there I called to Terry and Norm to join me for a bit of exploring, which they did.

We worked our way up the hill and came to the white object I saw. It was a frozen waterfall! There was one heck of a lot of ice there too. Plenty for our camp and more. We went back to our boat and headed for camp where we picked up an empty cooler and headed back. We also grabbed the camp axe.

We went back to the waterfall and filled the cooler with ice. It was great. We never had to worry about ice again on all the rest of my trips. That ice fall is there today I bet because it was in June that we usually went.

Heck, more happened that trip but I will have to tell that next time, if you guys are not getting tired of this Canada fishing stuff I sorta like reliving these trips as I have not thought about them in many years