Camping

Three students up north camping for four days. Fall colours just starting. New boat (Legend, a Canadian brand) and I didn’t have a trolling motor so it was a bit fast, and we didn’t catch a lot of fish as a result. But, as always, the food was awesome and the company was great. Lots of time spent gazing at the stars, looking at satellites, the Milky Way, and shooting stars. And some friendly folks from Sudbury gave us some fish so we ended up having a great meal of fish and chips.

Headed way up north again to Shining Tree for pickerel spring opener. Once again camping in the back-country crown land out of cell phone range. Had some fun shooting the SKS and caught a lot of fish!

Alex (Chickens), Tanishq, and Bella the dog way up north near Timmins for a four day weekend camping deep in crown land and catching some pickerel and perch! It was also warm enough to anchor the boat in the middle of the lake and get some swimming in.

I took 15 students camping near shining tree for the May long weekend. After a 9 hour drive north, we camped on crown land on the edge of Grassy Lake. 7 canoes plus my small fishing boat. Also along for the ride were my brother Brian (who’s a chef and did all the cooking) plus my friend Mark and his brother.

We caught a ton of fish. Pickerel, some large northern pike, and 2 small perch.

We ate like kings. Red river cereal for breakfast, Samosa’s, goat curry and a vegetarian stir fry. And best of all, we caught enough fish for a fish fry for 25 of us! (about 20 of us, plus 5 people who were camping beside us).

We also shot some .22’s and some SKS rifles in the bush, something the students always look forward to.

One of the students fishing in my boat started casting, and cast his lure into another boat operated by some local folks. So we got to hear some fancy French swear words.

And see the pic of the small mouth bass. That was the first fish ever caught by the student. They caught it right from shore right in front of camp - just grabbed a rod, walked 10m to the shore and cast out. They didn’t know how to land it, so they just grabbed the rod and ran backwards to bring the fish in.

I hate winter camping. I’m too old for this s****. But anyway, 15 of us headed up near Madawaska in February. We humped all of our gear on sleds a mile or two across a frozen lake onto some crown land that’s generally inaccessible in the summer. Did a lot of digging of snow to get the tents setup. Mostly just tried to stay warm. Had some good food, including my homemade Medu Vada (or as one fellow from India said “it’s good. It’s not Medu Vada, but whatever it is, it’s good’).

About 12 of us headed up to Grassy Lake between Sudbury and Timmins. Canoeing, a bit of fishing, and some campfire songs. We didn’t catch enough fish to feed everyone, so our camping neighbours came to the rescue and brought fish over to join us for a fish fry!

Our first winter camping trip. Frank, Nick, Sahil and I ventured up to Haliburton. I had to bail out early in the trip, run into town and get some new snow tires on because, well, see the pictures where we towed some Serbian folks out of the ditch. Did some shooting with the SKS’s, had some great wild game for supper and all around had a sunny weekend.