Now it was only two days before we departed for our second trip to Pinecrest Lodge, the scene of last year's annual outing with our friends...the scene of some immense pike and decent walleye fishing. I turned onto my street and saw it - the Eighth Wonder of the World - all 9 million kilometers of plumbing pipes and 432 million kilometers of guide lines. The 40 trillion square miles of tarp had yet to be draped over it, but already one of the neighbours was underneath the infrastructure and casting for dandelions. Some of our neighbours are crazy people. Many of these crazy neighbours mock Bobber and I. I don't understand these people who poke fun at us...
Left - Bobber's neighbour Roger tries his luck under the Bobber Dome infrastructure.

Finally the big day arrived. A few of us went to Pinecrest a day early to explore water that we hadn't been into on the previous trip. I admit to being jealous as Steve C flew up and down the river in Fish-Hawk One, my old 14 foot Sea Nymph. Steve is looking after her for the summer, and taking some time to overhaul her with new flooring and a bow-mounted trolling motor. But when I flew by Steve and Fish-Hawk One floating in the middle of the river, I had a bad feeling. The 1981 25 hp Johnson had finally decided to call it quits. The next morning, we towed her into Deep River to the nearest outboard handyman's house. His prognosis was that she was dead, at least for that week-end. Sorry Steve. I miss her too!
Right - Fish-Hawk One gets a tow behind Fish-Hawk Three

Despite Fish-Hawk One dying an untimely death, there was a bright note on that first day. Caroline had mentioned to me that there were currently three guests at Pinecrest that had made the trek from Ohio...all because of my personal recommendation. They were just finishing up a brutal week of angling - the cold weather had made for hardly any fish in the boat at all. Caroline added that one of them in particular wanted to meet me before they left the next day... Oh oh!

On their last evening (our first night), the Ohio trio finally caught some good pike, catfish and beautiful walleyes. I remember being in our favourite bay and looking over at this one boat that was not part of our group. Were these the guys who hadn't caught anything? I was very relieved when I heard these guys whooping it up across the water. I was very, very, very relieved when I could see the splashes of good-sized fish beside their boat.

When we got back to the lodge, we stopped into the cleaning station to watch them clean their catches. Mitch had obviously cleaned some fish before, and he did a bang-up job. Was he happy about the large filets of channel cat that he cut? He explained that back in Ohio, his catfish filets would make for great boasting. All I could think of was the Catfest in Arnprior at the end of June. Mitch would be in heaven if I set him up in a few spots that I know of. Yell at me via email if I don't get some of our catish pics up after this story is published. Mitch would also be impressed how a night of many catfish turned into a dog.
Huh?

So what did the Ottawa River have in store for us on this trip? For starters, there was a number of good northern pike that were caught - mostly by Salmon who caught three in the 3-foot range, his largest being 37 inches. Flying by Caroline, Pinecrest’s owner, we were just in time to see her nab a decent pike of her own while jigging a minnow for 'eyes (on her favourite spot to be never revealed on the Internet. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!).

Draven and his brother Lucannus , bringing a meal to the cleaning shed.

When you read this story, please consider how neat it was that 30 guys came together from all across Ontario to have a good time fishing. For the most part, we only knew each other from posting messages on the Hawk Talk message board. But some guys with boats, and guys without boats, got together and shared fishing, stories, and tips. It all resulted in great fireside chatting and new friends.

And that is what it should be all about, isn't it?