Up north to Wabigoon Lake

More and more Americans, particularly our young people, are simply losing touch with the outdoor experience, according to some surveys I have read. An average young person today spends six hours a day in front of a computer or T.V. and less than four minutes playing outdoors. We need parents and grandparents to help swing that percentage around.

As my own grandchildren arrived on the scene, it seemed like a good idea to start their introduction to camping and fishing at a young age. On a previous May trip this year to Crane Lake, Minn., the grandkids, ages 4, 5, and 7 years old, had a ball just fishing off the dock and catching anything that pulled the bobber down. But now it was August and the plan was to head north to one of our favorite destinations, Merkels Camp on Wabigoon Lake, about 12 miles east of Dryden, Ontario.

Wabigoon Lake is studded with many islands and stretches roughly 15 miles to the east from Dryden. A new twist this summer was the addition of son Steve, his wife Chris and their two boys, Ian, 5, and Luke, 4. The boys would be making their first trip to Canada. The youngsters handled the nine hour trip with no problems and the next hurdle would be how they would do in Grandpa's Ranger Reata fishing four to five hours at one time. Plus there would be seven of us fishing out of the boat, including my sister Maureen.

Many of you that have been reading my ramblings through the years are aware that I've been fishing Wabigoon and its chain of lakes since the early 1960s.

The last few years our family group arrives in early August because that fits our schedule better. In August, we often hit a transition period when the walleyes leave the weed beds and head out to the rock piles and reefs and tend to scatter out. Live bait includes leeches, crawlers, and minnows. Top lures are Northland's Thumper Jigs with a little flash blade on the belly to lure fish. Tip them with a brown and orange Power Bait, Gulp Minnow or artificial crawfish. Almost all of the gamefish at this time of year are full of crawfish and minnows.

The major problem that fishermen have on lakes with any size is the weather, especially the wind. Islands can give some relief to be able to fish. For me, it becomes a must to check out your resort's harbor and its protection from the wind before scheduling your vacation trip. It is important to be able to get out and fish from your dock or boat slip in inclement weather. That is one of the reasons we stay at Merkels Camp because it has a private boat launch, a protected harbor, docks with electrical plug ins, comfortable cabins and easy access to the smaller lakes on windy days.

The weather on this trip was perfect except for two days of wind. Our group usually headed out on the water about 10 a.m. Some of our best fishing was down in Olson and Larson Lakes where we caught good numbers of 16- to 20-inch walleye and northern up to 40-inches. Wabigoon produced many 13- to 15-inch walleyes on jigs and crawlers. On Olson Lake, we cast over the weeds with Northland Thumper Jigs with a 3-inch white power grub trailer and a piece of 15-pound Tyger leader to prevent pike biteoff. On Larson Lake, we trolled Northland's Bait Fish Image spinners tipped with live crawlers off the weed edges in 12-feet of water with Rock-Runner Bottom Bouncers. Spinning reels were spooled with 10# Fireline, and casting reels with 20#.

Our worry about the grandkids getting bored never happened. They loved to catch anything that grabbed the bait and if they got tired of catching fish, Grandma was there with games and food to keep their interest. Four to five hours of fishing seemed to be about right.

Once back to the dock they enjoyed swimming and trips out to the swimming raft in a paddle boat. Canoes and kayaks are available to guests. Our group had two big feasts of walleye plus a limit for everyone to take home. An added bonus was that the blueberries were plentiful. The boys and grandpa never seemed to get filled up on fresh walleye or blueberries.

Check out Merkle's website at www.merklescamp.com, call toll free 1 888-521-3872 or e-mail infoatmerklescamp.com.

Our only snag of the trip, if you could call it that, was an hour, 45-minute delay getting back to the United States through customs. One would think that our country could improve on that type of delay, especially when everyone is pulling a fishing rig. Going into Canada only took about 15 minutes. Passports are now mandatory on both sides of the border.

My 225 Evinrude E-TEC,and 9.9 kicker burned 37 gallons of fuel in six days of fishing, including doing a lot of running back and forth to camp. I was impressed with that as we had seven anglers and gear on most of those runs... so plan znow for a Canada vacation in 2011.