As soon as school let out for the summer, I packed up my stuff and headed north on I-35 with a big smile on my face. Not only did I get to have my usual visit with my family this summer, but I got to spend a week fishing in Canada with my dad and both of my brothers. With four schedules to coordinate, this does not happen often. In fact, we’ve been going to Canada in pairs and threes for a lot of years now, but the last time all four of us were up there was at least a decade ago.

The camp that we stay at is called Marie’s Bay Outpost. It’s located on Sturgeon Lake in Ontario, Canada. My dad has been going to Marie’s Bay for the opening week of fishing every year for over 35 years. When we were kids, the family vacationed there. As my brothers and I got older, my dad helped us organize a trip to Marie’s Bay for our Boy Scout troop. As adults, each of my brothers and I have accompanied Dad to camp on hunting and fishing expeditions. You could say this place is in the family. Interestingly, that’s not just a metaphor. The owner of the camp, Forrest “Twig” Metz, is a distant relative. I’ve never been able to pin down the exact relationship, but Twig’s grandmother was a cousin to my dad’s grandfather, or something like that.

This is Twig Metz, the owner of Marie's Bay Outpost.

Sturgeon lake itself is a gigantic body of water, 54 miles long and about 6 miles wide. It’s over 300 feet deep in some places, and it’s filled huge rocks, literally the size of a house, that rise up from the depths to just a few inches below the surface of the water. Only those who know the lake exceptionally well dare to drive their boats at top speeds. The landing we use is located outside the town of Savant Lake at an inlet called Angler’s Cove. There is no overland access to Marie’s Bay, so we have to load the week’s provisions in the boat and travel about seven miles across the lake to get to camp. It’s quite far removed from the “civilized” world.

Upon arriving in camp, the first thing I always look at is a cabin called Marie’s. It is this small building and its former owner who give the camp its name and its colorful history.

Marie's is the oldest building in camp, dating back to the early 1900s.

This building could tell some tales. Before World War I, Saint Anthony Gold Mine, one of Canada’s largest gold mines, operated just a few miles from this location. Marie ran a brothel out of this cabin which served the miners who worked at St. Anthony’s. When World War I began, Canada sent large numbers of men into combat, including many of the miners. With so many men absent, the mine was forced to shut down. This, of course, dried up Marie’s cash flow, and she left the location. Her cabin remains, though, as a testament to the camp’s origins. Marie’s is used for a storage shed, these days. Although a more useful and economical building could surely be constructed, I don’t think Twig will ever tear it down. As an interesting side note, the abandoned mine stood within hiking distance of camp for many years, and I walked through it with my dad on a couple of occasions. Unfortunately, it has now been demolished for liability reasons.

Life in camp is not like the usual posh fishing vacation. Marie’s Bay Outpost does not have electricity, but each of the six or so cabins has a propane-fueled stove, refrigerator, and lights. Cabins are heated by wood stoves and cooled by opening the windows. There’s no running water, but there’s a hand pump in the center of camp. Restroom facilities consist of clean, well-maintained outhouses. Taking a shower means walking down the beach to the sauna house and building a fire in the wood-fired boiler to heat up the sauna. Imagine sitting in a 150+ degree sauna until you work up a good sweat, then lathering yourself up with soap and shampoo. Now, you have a choice to make. If you’re bold, you can bolt out of the sauna, across about fifteen feet of beach, and splash into the lake. If not, there are buckets of water inside for rinsing. This decision is complicated, however, by the fact that the springtime water temperature in Sturgeon Lake tends to be right around 50 degrees. It’s invigorating, to say the least.

We stayed the week in a cabin simply called “The Yellow Cabin.” It was painted yellow when I was a kid, but it’s white, these days. Nevertheless, the name has stuck. It’s got a front patio, a main room with a sofa, table and chairs, kitchen, and wood stove. Behind that are two bedrooms, each featuring a set of bunk beds. I’d estimate that it’s about 20′x30′.

Here's the Yellow Cabin, with all our provisions stacked on the porch. Notice the many cases of beer. Cameron is striking a pose while dad arranges groceries in the refrigerator. That's Marie's to the left.

It would be difficult to describe all the fishing we did, but I’ll sum it up by saying we kicked ass. The lake offers northern pike, walleyes, and lake trout, and we caught all three. The fun thing about this selection of fish is the variety of ways in which they’re caught. In the early summer, lake trout, which tend to be deep-water fish, are spread around all over the lake, lying near the bottom in as many as 80 feet of water. Although we occasionally catch one while casting, trolling in the very early morning (about 5:00), when they rise up into shallower water to feed, is the best way to catch lake trout. It mostly involves drinking a bottle of beer while driving very slowly around the lake dragging lures. This is a good way to wake up slowly.

Here's me with a smallish-to-average sized lake trout, caught while casting. They get much bigger. What a beautiful fish!

The second species of fish, walleyes, are fished entirely differently. In the spring and very early summer, they’re up in twelve to eighteen feet of water, looking for gravely places to spawn. The spawn is exhausting, and these fish are moving very slowly. As a result, we fish them with bare jigheads and minnows. This is finesse fishing. After casting, we let the bait settle to the bottom, where walleyes feed, and then retrieve it very slowly, adding subtle bounces as we go. Done correctly, this method of fishing literally allows the fisherman to feel each rock the jig touches. Sometimes, the bite of a walleye is a barely perceptible tap, and it’s easy to miss it when it happens. Walleye fishing is tremendously fun and sometimes very challenging. As a side note, walleyes are my favorite fish on the entire earth to eat.

Here's Chissom with a pretty good walleye. Notice the milky color in the eye, from which the species draws its name.

The third species of fish we look for in Big Sturgeon lake is northern pike. These fish require very little finesse to catch. Frankly, they’re eating machines. If your lure crosses in front of a pike, odds are about 9 out of 10 that the fish will take a swipe at it. Fishing pike is fast and exciting. One afternoon, we caught six pike out of the same 20 yards of shoreline over the course of about 15 mintues, ending with the fish pictured below.

Cameron holding a 37.5 inch pike. This fish weighed 12.5 pounds. Not huge, but not too shabby.

Other activities of the week included:

Picking Wild Mushrooms,

Chissom, with an afternoon's crop of wild morels, which he and I picked.

Having Shore Lunch,

Here's Dad, frying walleyes that we caught just half an hour earlier.

Hanging Out With Wildlife,

This is Twig's stepfather, Bob, feeding the resident woodchuck. The little guy eats right from Bob's hand.

Eating Fantastic Meals,

Chissom and Cameron munch on steak and veggie kebabs while Dad sips a whiskey old-fashioned.

And Fixing Twig’s Tractor.

Cameron and Dad try to straighten out the electrical problems in the tractor while Twig supervises and Chissom helps by drinking a beer.

On the whole, it was a hell of a trip. We caught a ton of fish. We saw many wild animals, including two moose and eight bears. We drank eight cases of beer (Old Vienna, or “OV,” which is like mother’s milk, but isn’t available in the U.S.) and four bottles of Canadian whiskey. Most importantly, though, the four of us got to spend a week together. I don’t think that’s happened since my college graduation, and I’m not sure when it will happen again. I hope it’s not too long.

Sure signs of a week well spent...