Another great ‘staycation’

This past week was our summer vacation.
Marnie and I had a “staycation” at our cottage on Rainy Lake. My eldest son, Brendan, arrived from Calgary on the Friday prior to Labour Day and joined us at the cottage with his cousin and new bride and aunt and uncle.
Jeff and his bride, Abby, returned to their home in Chicago on Wednesday morning. Then towards the end of the week, my brother-in-law and his son, both from Waterloo, joined us for a full three days of fishing.
Brendan enjoys fishing and was not disappointed fishing for multiple species around the cottage.
Bass, walleye, northern, and even a crappie were landed. I played guide Thursday, Friday, and Sunday while my brother was the guide on Saturday.
I don’t pretend to really know where the fish are, but I have been lucky finding them this year. Rainy Lake has been listed in several fishing and outdoor publications as a great multi-species fishery.
At one time, there were many more resorts on Rainy Lake than today.
The fishing weekend has been on going for at least six years.
Each year, my brothers-in-law and my nephews created and photographed great memories of trophy fish from the waters of Rainy Lake.
In the first visit on the last week of September, they netted more than a dozen great northern pike measuring over 36 inches in length.
On a different year, they photographed a 26-inch, 28-inch, and 30-inch walleye pulled from the depths of the north arm of Rainy Lake.
This year when we targeted smallmouth bass, the cameras became active again as the trophies nailed the Mepps’ white-tailed spinners with great frequency until a northern stripped the last lure from a line.
Rainy Lake does not have an abundance of resorts on Canadian waters.
Often when you are fishing, you will seldom see another boat.
For me, I’ve often wondered if I was fishing the wrong waters.
But I’ve recently discovered a couple of deep-water humps nearby our island and fished them for walleye for the first time this past week. We were surprised by our success.
Perhaps the best part of fishing with my wife, son, brother-in-law, and nephew are the shared memories we have. A lure 40 feet up in a pine tree perhaps tops the list.
A dropped bait caster into Rainy, to be later retrieved by my son that same afternoon, comes up quickly, along with the fisherman who managed to lose the largest number of lures in an afternoon.
The stories end up becoming embellished every year. The lure probably wasn’t 40 feet up but this past weekend no one disputed the recollection.
Every year the fishing seems phenomenal in September and we are never disappointed.
The Northern Lights even entertained on Monday and Thursday nights.
The night sky was lit up with millions of tiny lights.
As we sat around the fire Saturday night cooking up s’mores, the weekend and week was perfect with wonderful visits with family.