Rice Lake, Canada 2013

This is our 5th year fishing on Rice Lake in Canada. The cottages at Willow Bay in Harwood are about 3 hours away but the traffic stretches it to at least double that. Before 9/11 we used to pause at the border and simply state our nationality, and intentions. Now the wait time to cross the border is usually at least an hour.

We enter Canada by crossing the Niagara River on one of three bridges. For us in Buffalo, the Peace Bridge in downtown or the Rainbow Bridge at the Falls are our best choices. From the Rainbow Bridge you get a view of the Falls and mist from the crashing water.

Arriving in Rice Lake is always a relief after the 190 mile trip, at least 100 miles of it is in very slow traffic. As soon as the car is parked Roy runs out to the dock with his pole. I have to reign him back in to help unload before he gets to work teasing the fish with a worm. The first day Jim likes to ‘Test the Equipment’.

We test the boat out, set up the fishing poles,

and get the bait together. Bait can be as expensive as $5/dozen worms or minnows, so Jim brings a giant box from a bait shop he found around home. This year we learned that 200 worms and 4 dozen minnows is the perfect amount of bait for the whole crew for the entire week.

Jim started it all for us here. In the 1970′s we came to these cottages as kids for our family’s late September vacation. After a few years it became a ‘men only fishing trip’. Six or so years ago Jim and I were trying to come up with a fun trip we could do together while the kids and I were visiting Buffalo. With Roy’s interest in fishing and Jim’s expertise, Rice Lake came to mind.

The camp is set up with seven two-bedroom cottages along one side, a cleaning house and docks in the middle, and then a row of six or seven apartments. Off at the end of the camp is a house that also rents out. We rent a pontoon boat that lives in a little boat house at the end of the dock. We like the space and stability of the pontoon boat and it can easily accommodate our family plus a guest or two.

Our first day out is always jam packed with riders. Soon the non-fishing people find things they would rather do than watch the fishermen squish worms on a hook and wait patiently or impatiently for a fish. Our pal, Nicholas comes with us occasionally. This year the boys rowed Nick’s Grandfather’s boat a hundred feet or so off the dock, anchored and fished by themselves for the day. One morning Marie and I eased the pontoon boat out there and delivered breakfast since these young fishermen sometimes forget to eat.

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Now the fun begins. We have a few locations on the lake where we’ve had luck before, but the results seem to change from year to year. Here Roy has his first bass of the week. This is a small mouth bass, it’s mouth does not extend behind the eye and has faint vertical stripes on it.

You can find places where you can pull sunfish (bluegill, sunfish, and pumpkin seed) out of the water all day long. They are a lot of fun to catch and quite delicious, although each fish provides only a small amount of meat. Most of these guys get tossed back, the biggest made it to the table.

Nothing is more rewarding that scooping up Roy’s bass in a net. This year he had a big struggle over whether he wanted to fish for sunfish one after another, or he wanted to seek out bass and have fewer fish on the line.

Marie was interested in fishing for a short time. After she gets one, she’s finished and wants to goof off with Genny. Genny, doesn’t even waste her time with fishing, she prefers to play around in and around the cottage and visit with neighbors.

This is Patryk’s second year with us. Being a working man, he can only get a few days off so mid week Jim and Ania take him out for Chinese food in Toronto and send Patryk off on a bus back to Buffalo.

It’s nice when everyone gets a big fish.

Jim has all the tackle. Different lures for different fish. The Erie Dearie is for catching Walleye, although we didn’t see any of these fish this year. The Rapala lures hope to attract a bass. They also used the Hula Popper which floats on the surface and makes a sound as you jerk it along, and various other arsenals. I stuck to the standard spinners and jigheads.

While I didn’t catch the most or the biggest fish, I did get a much talked about Crappie.

According the the buzz in the fish house, this guy is rarely seen any bigger than a sunfish, but my jumbo crappie was about three times that size.

The pontoon boat is equipped with a live well which keeps the fish alive and swimming with fresh water. When we return to the dock they are transferred to a basket in the water until Jim cleans them at the end of the day.

The basket is a nice reminder of how many fish we caught when we start complaining about them not biting.

Perch are another favorite from Rice Lake. Most of the time they are the size of my finger and no longer than my hand, but the keepers are beautiful.

This is such a great week to spend time with Jim, Ania and Patryk who we rarely see more than this one month a year. After a long day of fish, we like to play games in the evening. This year Apples to Apples, Pictionary, and Monopoly were our favorites. We also played a bit of badminton and lawn darts.

The cleaning house is always a source of afternoon entertainment. People in there are busily cleaning their catch and telling fish stories about the day. Last year Jim added an electric fillet knife which works great on the smaller pan fish.

It’s a messy operation with scales and fish parts everywhere, we’ve very lucky Jim doesn’t ask us to rotate this job around.

When we were kids I remember pulling the perch out one after another. In the last few years, we only bring in a few keepers, over 8 inches or so.

Here are a few photos from 1973 when I was Marie’s age and Jim was but a tot. We always went in late September when it was freezing out.

The lake and the cottages are the same, but not the fishing. Most of our neighbors at Willow bay have been coming here for decades and talked about how 20 years ago the lake was full of boats. Now not only are all the boats gone, but stringers of fish like my dad has here are gone too.

Roy got a bit upset this year thinking about his fishing future. Hopefully, with conservation minded regulations and fishermen, and the reduced number of people on the lake the fish will regain their populations. We also discussed how 40 years ago walleye and perch were the most common fish, and now it’s bass and sunfish, maybe there is a cycle. Roy says he wants to run a fish hatchery and be a conservationist when he grows up.

So with that in mind we try to make our week about more than harvesting fish from the lake. This beautiful area has more to offer than just fishing.

Rather than taking home coolers full of fish, we eat fish dinners every day. Jim, Ania, and Patryk are all great cooks. They prepare the most beautiful and tasty side dishes and fish recipes.

This year we also brought an inflatable kayak borrowed from Maria’s dad. I relaxed in the back while Marie paddled us around.

We also went on strolls. The town is little more than an intersection with a store, gas station, restaurant and fire house. The kids are always interested in a trip to the store for ice cream and candy.

About a half hour south of Harwood is Cobourg on Lake Ontario. This town can fulfill all of our needs with grocery stores, Home Depot, a Walmart, and many other services. Their downtown area is close to the beach and a small marina. Walking by the marina we immediately spotted a catamaran which reminded us that we are boaters. All of this time on land put boating on the back burner.

Victoria Park at the beach has a campground, fountains for the kids to play in, a playground, occasional events, and a beautiful beach.

The weather had been a bit cool and windy so we didn’t come prepared to get wet, but digging a hole is always a fun activity at the beach.

Cobourg also has a street with a handful of thrift shops. Every year the kids look forward to popping in to search for treasures. This year our hottest purchases included a few games and toys, a hand full of souvenir spoons to be used to eat treats like ice cream.

There were a few days too windy to go out on the water, so we brought out kites.

Friends are another attraction in Rice Lake. Nicholas and Evan are part of Roy’s posse. They run around shooting sling shots, fishing, searching out bugs and toads.

One of the many islands on the lake has a sand bar. This popular destination is a great swimming hole on a hot day. The kids climbed up one side of the pontoon boat, ran three steps across it and jumped off the other side.

The 14 or so abodes accommodate about five groups of friends or extended families. One of the families at the camp also offers tubing on one afternoon. They are kind enough to take our pre-teen crowd first and then their teen and young twenties kids next.

Everyone looks forward to the thrill of speed. There is also a big potluck fish fry hosted by one of the families, nightly bonfires the young people organize, and plenty of chit chatting about what’s happened over the last year.