A month in Temagami (part 1)
It's April, 2016. I've spent the last decade of my life studying and working in marketing. Each day I know more than the last that I have a calling, and that it is elsewhere.
I leave my job. My plan: to go back to school in September to pursue a career in natural resource management. My love for Ontario's wilderness is too strong to put it aside any longer. Quite intentionally, I leave with much time to spare.
I have May, June, July, and August at my disposal, and there is no mistake about how that time is to be spent. I am going to fulfill a dream to spend an entire summer camping and fishing around Ontario. Four months. Eighteen weeks with no schedule, no bills (save for my cell phone), and few possessions aside from my Grandpa's 1998 Ford Windstar---loaded with gear---and a handful of other noteworthy belongings that fit within my rented room in Lindsay, Ontario.
A journal is kept for the first month of the trip which will be spent exploring all around one of Ontario's paddling meccas, Temagami. But first, a warm-up trip to Killarney with my brother-in-law to kick things off.
Below are the unrefined journal entries for the first five days there in Killarney---the first of several posts riddled with sentence fragments, colloquialisms, melodramatics, and all. It was here on the north shore of Georgian Bay where the most relaxing, rejuvenating, taxing, pensive, beautiful, and most human months of my life would begin.
May 4, 2016
Day 1
Early start at 4:30am, with Lucas and I planning to meet at 8:30am in Killarney. We each spotted a moose on the way up.
Inhaled a huge plate of nachos before launching the canoe on the Chikanishing River. Spoke to a man from Maryland who told us to keep baits small and mimic the alewives. Heeding that advice landed me a 43", 13.5-lb pike---the largest of my life to date.
No fish after that, but set up camp on Racing Island at the southern end of Mill Lake, off of Collins Inlet. Great site, lots of firewood, lots of insects. Hit the hay after a long and exhausting paddle.
May 5, 2016
Day 2
Paddle all around Mill Lake only to yield two fish. A 4-pound pike in some shallows on a spinnerbait and a smallie on a jig near the waterfall. Hit the hay and decided to move camp the next morning in search of better fishing; back to the island near the start of the trip where I caught my big pike.
May 6, 2016
Day 3
A warm, sunny day, and with the barometer falling, we're full of hope to change our fishing fortune. We are not disappointed. Using the alewife-mimicking Storm Twitch Stick, Lucas hooks into his first ever muskie, and a 40", 11-lb beauty at that. Not long after, he gets another 9.5-lb muskie, again just while trolling. Finally I get one as well. 8-lb this time. Spirits are high.
100m from our second campsite, I hook into a perfect eating-size pike, just as we had hoped for so that we could have a shore lunch in the sunshine. Not many bones in the golden-brown pieces of fried pike, despite it being the first one I'd cleaned.
Score in fish is 7-2 for me at this point.
Amazing kettle popcorn beneath a starlit sky during the new moon.
May 7, 2016
Day 4
Light rain all morning so we hunker down after breakfast (pancakes), and call Dad on his birthday.
The rain subsides and we fish for the last six hours of the day to no avail. Skunked today.
We finish the last of Lucas' homemade Portuguese sausage and warm up by the fire under the stars.
May 8, 2016
Day 5
We pack up early so Lucas can get home for Mother's Day. We troll back to the launch in the cold and the sleet, but no fish finale. Still, we are delighted with the ones we caught. The trip is a success. Hope to meet up with Lucas again later in the summer.
I stop in to Sudbury for a few provisions, including a healthy serving at Harvey's, then proceed north on 144. Halfway Lake PP isn't open yet, so a shower will have to wait.
Arrive at the Muldrew Lake launch and nab a nice walleye and a couple of small pike at the small waterfall at the north end of the lake. Prepare the van for "RV" mode and relax.
Also saw a bear leaving Killarney, and popped in to the thundering Onaping Falls.
