Friday, September 14, 2007

Lake Tagamung, Ontario







12 years ago
_____________
This weekend in 1995 my buddy Nick and I headed north to Cana-duh, about 100 miles north and east of Toronto was our goal. We were to hook up with some old friends from Van Wert, including my barber buddy the late Jerry "Skeeter" Fortney, and 5 other guys.

Havelock is a small town about 17 miles south of Lake Tagamung, which is about 100 miles north of Rice Lake...how we found the town, let alone the lake at 3 in the morning is still beyond me...but find them we did...and the next 4 days were enjoyable, the weather perfect(highs 70s lows 50s), even though the fishing was just so-so.

We did more than fish, drink Canadian beer, and smoke hand rolled cigars, including a couple of Cubans(good,but overrated)....one night Nick, Skeeter, and I headed into Havelock...2 bars in town...one with a large sign shouting "Americans Welcome"....the other one didn't have any such greeting...so we piled in to the one that wanted American's money, met a couple of locals and their wives/girlfriends and partied for about 5 hours....eating 100 chicken wings between the group, and gawd knows how many beers were consumed....wasn't much traffic, plenty of wildlife, as we weaved our way back to the cabins on the lake about 2 in the morning.

The next morning someone shouted "Moose", and pointed out to the lake...and there she was...a shemale swimming across the length of the lake...the 2 idiots(Nick and Me), jumped in our boat and headed out with camera in hand....we circled her and got several shots(I will dig them out...I have found some long distance photos, but can't seem to locate the good close-ups, damn it!)...the moosette was not happy with the two Americans, so we backed off and let her swim her way across.

On our final full day...Nick and I decided the fishing was not all that great, so we wanted to make a drive north...we ended up going another 120 miles north of Tagamung, getting some good photos of the far north country, then heading back down a different direction...ending back at the cabins before nightfall.

The Van Wert gang left the next morning....Nick and I stuck around smoked some cigars, did a little fishing, and finally headed back around dark(always like driving at night better)...and made it back to Celina around daybreak.

I have been back to Canada on several occasions since, but those have been RV delivery trips....and that perfect weather weekend has not been repeated.
[photos] Two views of beautiful Lake Tagamung, Ontario...and one view of me with a little Pike....great weekend, but we didn't really fish that much, and caught only a few.

prh

4 comments:

Buck said...

I used to go to Canada quite a bit when I lived in Detroit...just a hop, skip, and a jump across the river to Windsor. Never did any fishing there, but I DID manage to augment the cigar stash with contraband every so often... The tobacconists in Windsor do a land-office type of business with Detroiters...

One of the things I miss about Detroit is the fact my cable company carried Windsor's Channel Nine, and the CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." I rarely missed the game on Saturday nights. [sigh} These days it's a serious event when I get any hockey at ALL. Hockey isn't all that big in the wilds of New Mexico...

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

Sounds like the best of times to me! Wow!

I've heard that about Cuban cigars - must be like Coors used to me - can't get'em you want'em!

Oh well...I like what I have.

PRH said...

buck:

We still get the Red Wings games on Fox Sports Michigan, and the Blue Jackets on Fox Ohio....too bad for me I'm a Flyers fan....but still enjoy watching the rest. My favorite radio station when he high school was CKLW in Windsor...you could pick up that sucker hundres of miles away.

Mushy:

Back in 74 when I ran a bar in Celina(before heading off to use up my GI Bill Hocking and Ohio U in Athens, Ohio....we left the bar one night at closing(4 of us) and made the 700 mile trip to Kansas City, Kansas...we picked up 40 cases of Coors brought it back to the bar...and sold it for a dollar a can(we saved a few cases for ourselves)....regular beer was .50-.60 cents a bottle/can back then...so we paid for our trip and time...Illegal as Hell it was, but he, we were young and dumb.

FHB said...

Cool! Love it. Went up to Algonquin Park in the mid '90s and fished for pike. You can check out the pictures by clickin' on that FlickR tag on my blog.. Huge fun up there. Lately we go to Gananauqua (sp), just north of the St.. Lawrence.

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