We took-off for Achray camp grounds at about 4pm on Friday and arrived before dark... It was nice to have a full camper trailer for a home-base, with heat. The winds were out of this world. Grand lake looked more white than blue... But we stuffed dinner into us and got some sleep.
The next morning we started, into the wind, a 3km paddle towards the portage for Rowan lake... Into the wind... the blowing cold wind... did I mention it was into the wind? it took about 1hr to make that canoe ride... did I mention that I drive a desk for a living so I'm not the poster-boy for Paddlers Weekly. I was feeling the pain by the time we got to shore, but little did I know how bad the portage would be...
For those who have not done the portage, it's 2155 Meters, or roughly equivalent to 700miles. The first 1km is not bad at all. Flat ground, simple trail, mostly down-hill, no problems really.. the last 1.155km was hell... 78lb plastic canoe, 50lbs of gear, some wheel-things for the canoe that made us have to lift the canoe higher by a good 15inches to get over the multitude of rocks, boulders, roots, fallen trees... It was hell... Up hill hell.. of horribleness...
Just shy of 3 full hours from the time we left the windy, yet sandy beach of our site, we arrived to look out on the glorious Rowan Lake, home of the reported Splake, courtesy of the stocking list 2008.
After about 3 hours we'd managed to boat 5 fish, lost 3 others. I'm pretty sure they were all splake but there is a debate about one of them being a laker... I'm not up enough to know what's what, so i'll go with it for now... bagging my first laker and my first splake, ever.. and on the fly!
I was using my fly rod, and caught all the fish on a small black bugger... It was fantastic... Hard fighting... 15-16inch fish, maybe a bit more...
Then the hail and rain starts... oh, wut?... hail and rain.. yeah thats right.. 5 km from home and it decides to blow-up a storm of ice rain.... Which, luckly stopped within 30min but was enuf of a sign that 3 hrs was all the time we would get on that lake... we started the horrible trek through boulder-pass towards the water and a measly 2.5hrs later were frozen, and back at camp... swore and aching... downing the beer and advil until i passed out at about 8pm... (from exhaustion, not beer)
We each thought the other guy was bringing the camera... so no photos were taken.... but you all know what 15" splake look like... so imagine that with my happy grin'n face in the photo too...
The guy I was with, took two of the 5, on a blue broken-back rapala with spinning gear.. one on the surface when we were changing directions in the canoe and the floating minnow was just sitting there... aggressive little buggers...
Fun times. I'll go back next spring, with a lighter canoe and rain gear, some heart-attack med's and maybe a Sherpa, or two.
PS: black-flies were out today, not bad, but they were out enuf to be a pain.
