Читать книгу Memories of Magical Waters - Gord Deval - Страница 13
ОглавлениеSeveral wonderful fishing experiences in the Muskoka Lakes district immediately come to mind when I think of this region. Two in particular occurred at the mouth of the Muskoka River where it enters the huge Muskoka Lake, several miles downstream from Santas Village near Bracebridge, Ontario.
The first, I’ll refer to as “Good Friday” as it took place on Easter Weekend, traditionally one of the finest fishing weekends for my buddies and me over the years. The days preceding this particular weekend had been blessed with a rising barometer and beautiful weather, a combination that creates an itch under the skin of most fishermen after a winter of freezing weather and ice-fishing outings.
A couple of days earlier, my Uncle Bob, one of my favourite fishing compatriots, phoned to ask if I would like to join him for a couple of hours of fishing on Good Friday morning.
Responding without hesitation, I agreed, and, mentioning Muskoka Lake in particular, I reminded him that the smelts should be running in the river mouth. Often some of the lake’s bigger fish come right into the shallows for a feed while the water is still in the low forties. With most of the lake still ice-covered, the conditions should be just about perfect. He liked the suggestion, but he reminded me of having to be home by mid-afternoon to be with the family. I figured that if we could leave early, then fish till noon hour, we could get home well before three. By taking sandwiches with us, we would eliminate the need to stop anywhere for a bite of lunch.
At that time, I hadn’t done much fishing there before but had heard stories of thirty- and forty-pounders taken out of the big lake. People don’t really talk about it much, trying to keep the great fishing to themselves, I guess. Although I’d been up there a couple of times previously, I had only managed to catch a seven-pound whitefish, but the year before “Good Friday,” about the same time, I told him, I had hooked into the lake’s granddaddy lake trout. The thing just grabbed my plug and swam away rather leisurely, feeling like a Mack truck in low gear. About twenty-five seconds later it simply let go, never once giving me a chance to set the hook. After my speech, he was raring to go.
Good Friday arrived, still with the promise of great weather. We left at our appointed hour of five a.m. and after a three-hour drive to Bracebridge and its famous Santas Village, the car-top aluminum boat was lifted off its rack. We slid it across some remaining crusty snow and launched it into the chilly Muskoka River, littered with chunks of floating, honeycombed ice heading for their destiny downstream at the lake mouth. The frozen flotsam and jetsam, including the odd willow tree carved from the bank by the spring floods and ice floes would swirl around, also clogging the mouth of the river before piling up against the remaining ice canopy covering the lake.
