Away from it all — literally

ELK LAKE, Ont. —  There are things you don’t realize about being “way up north” when you live in West Virginia. However, you realize them pretty quickly when you spend a few days in the Canadian wilderness.  During the summer, daylight doesn’t disappear here until close to 11 p.m. and day break is around 4:30 a.m.

The rivers in this section of the continent all flow north.  This week we are fishing in the Arctic watershed. The waters of the four lakes in the Lost Lake chain eventually drain into the Hudson Bay and wind up at the north pole.  The constant water temperature here is about 65 degrees.

You also notice while you’re fishing in this territory, you are so far north airplanes don’t even fly overhead.  Hank and I left the cabin at 5:30 a.m. on an adventure.  We decided to fish Bloom Lake at the far north end of the chain.  The trip requires two portages. We took our assigned boat across Lost Lake, portaged our gear in a provided wheelbarrow to another boat on Wigwam Lake.  We traveled across Wigwam Lake then up a narrow creek for several hundred yards. The second portage was about twice as far and if you didn’t already feel isolated, it really began to set in when you boarded your Bloom Lake boat.

The Bloom Lake leg of the trip begins as the waters of Wigwam Lake dump into a pool out of a babbling stream. You gently idle up a narrow creek for about two miles. We wondered as we idled past dozens of submerged boulders, thick grass, and narrow channels if we would ever get there. You tend to have that creepy feeling in the back of your head an accident out here of any kind is an immediate disaster.  Nobody is coming to get you anytime soon.

But we finally arrived at the lake which opened into another wide natural body of water in the middle of nowhere. It’s packed with pike, walleye, and smallmouth bass.

Fishing this week has been tough, although we caught more today than Sunday. A cold front moved in and slowed the fishing considerably. However, at the remote Bloom Lake, Hank and I caught two northern pike more than 30 inches in length and a 16 inch smallmouth bass.

During Sunday’s entry I promised to let you know how the evening fishing went. Hank caught an 18 inch smallmouth and lost one at least the same size or bigger.

Tomorrow we plan to fish Everett Lake. It’s not on the Lost Lake chain. However, our gracious hosts will shuttle you to the lake just a few miles up the road.

Although we are extremely remote, we haven’t seen much wildlife. Loons are common, but not abundant. Today we spotted an otter in the water ahead of our boat.  We keep hoping to spot a moose or a black bear, but those seem to be elusive creatures. There’s plenty of room to hide in the Canadian bush and you don’t have to be far into the thick forest to be hidden.

I’ll report back tomorrow.  Meanwhile, enjoy the Canadian Wilderness 360 video taken today on Bloom Lake.







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