Some people don't get to take the trip they've always dreamed of––death snatches them before they get a chance, or illness cripples them, or life's everyday busyness burdens them until the dream just slips them by. I didn't want that to happen to my dad.
So last week I took him on the Canadian fly-in fishing adventure that, for his entire life, he's dreamed of going on "someday." Fact is, there's not a fishing lodge in Ontario my dad hasn't read about; for decades he's pored over brochures, preparing for the day he would climb into a rickety old floatplane and fly away into the Canadian wilderness.
Now, having just spent a week at KaBeeLo Lodge's Bear Paw Lake outpost camp, he can honestly say the dreams didn't do the experience justice … but not for the reasons you'd anticipate.
Sure, we caught tons of fish. Every day we'd have fishing streaks so hot you'd swear we were making it up––our jigs couldn't sink 10 feet to the bottom of the lake before a fish would gobble them up. I had a 20-inch walleye bite a plain hook I left dangling six inches in the water as I grabbed for a new minnow. There were such feeding frenzies, one time a walleye bit me off, so I tied on a new jig and caught the same walleye 60 seconds later––and recovered my original Northland Fire-Ball Jig in its mouth!
And sure we caught big fish. Walleyes over 8 pounds and pike pushing 45 inches––the biggest of both species we've ever landed.
But that, to a degree, was anticipated. I figured Dad had waited his whole life for this trip, so I better make sure I took him to the best dang fly-in I could afford. I asked around, and KaBeeLo came strongly recommended to me by two friends of mine who know a thing or two about world-class fishing: Ron Schara and Bill Sherck.
And so, we sort of expected fishing to be phenomenal, even in September. What we didn't expect, and simply couldn't have anticipated, was to feel so close to the heavens. The sky we fished under was breathtaking and bold. And incredibly close.
