Oh Canada!

It's pretty common for guys who live in Michigan to go on Canada fishing trips.  Some guys go several times a year, some go annually, and some just go once or twice in a lifetime to try it out.  I'm a try it out guy.  I've actually been up there to fish 3 times.  The success rates varied on these trips, but they were all interesting in their own right.

My first time up there was actually with Michelle and a bunch of couples.  They were all married and we were engaged at the time.  It was one of those deals where we knew one couple really well, but the rest of them were more their friends than ours.  I'm not great with people I kind of know.  I'm the epitome of social awkwardness, introvertedness, quiet, shy . . . whatever you want to call it.  If I'm in a social situation and the natural shuffling of the people leaves me alone in a room with some other poor sap, there always seems to be this jolting, silent vacuum that sucks the air out of our lungs when we both realize, "Oh crap, it's just me and this guy."  Most of Michelle's friends' husbands have given up on me.  Still, she tries valiantly to pull me into conversations with them.  "Really, you like Mountain Dew?  Oh my gosh, Matt likes Mountain Dew!  Tell him hon!"  "Yeah, Mountain Dew is pretty good."  I've noticed that sometimes when the "kind of know" people are women, they turn me into their social charity case.  They nod at me really big with their eyes all wide, laugh too loud, act way too interested, and basically treat me like I'm 3.  If whatever I do elicits responses like this, then I must be some kind of a social dolt.

So here we were, on a long weekend trip with a bunch of people that I really just wanted to get away from.  This sentiment was punctuated the first night when the conversation turned to everyone's pooping habits.  This is what married people talk about?  I felt like one lonely prude in that room, because I seemed to be the only one who wasn't giving up his/her proctological habits.  This even included this very pretty model who announced, "I have to poop every time we go to the mall, don't I hon?!"  "Yep, it's true.  Everytime we set foot in the mall, the first thing she has to do is go poop."  Everyone was delighted.  I wanted to be anywhere but there.  Bedtime finally rolled around, and our close friends actually slept in a bed between us to keep us pure.  I was starting to look for the cameras and Ashton Kutcher.  I agreed with sleeping separately from Michelle before we were married, but couldn't I sleep on a couch or something?

The payoff came the next morning when we headed out to fish for smallies in this beautiful clear lake with a rocky bottom.  My friend caught a huge bronzeback from the dock on his first cast.  I couldn't stay off of the lake after that.  The smallmouth were everywhere and they were aggressive.  I caught monster after monster, slipping around the edge of the lake in a small canoe.  Of course, I was supposed to be doing couples stuff, so I got myself into quite a bit of trouble.  Michelle was mad, the other wives were looking at me with disdain, and my good friend had to give me a "C'mon, dude . . . " speech.  Actually, I think this might have been the first time that Michelle realized that she was in trouble.  My obsession with fishing and avoidance of the pooping couples must have been pretty scary to witness for the first time.  She stayed with me for some reason, but she still fights me on it from time to time.

My other two trips were with my dad.  We went once with some guys from church and once with Tim and Jared.  There is a group of guys at the church where I grew up who went every year.  I think that they even had a waiting list of guys who wanted to go with them.  My dad has always been held in high regard by these guys, so we were extended a special invitation.  The trip started with a long drive up into Ontario in the middle of a foggy night on winding roads.  I offered to drive a couple of times, but I don't think they quite trusted the boy.  We made it to the outfitters, loaded our boats, and then took an hour or so boat ride in to our cabin.  The cabin was set on a small rocky point that was surrounded by extremely thick woods.  The only walking that we would be doing was up and down the short path between the cabin and the dock.  We weren't going to be getting much exercise.

The fishing up there was good.  We caught a lot of walleye between 12 and 17 inches.  We mostly trolled crawler harnesses.  I was put in a boat with this big, happy teddy bear of a guy who liked to sing "Coca Cabana" at the top of his lungs while we fished.  I was also with a guy who was simply fun to be around and a crafty fisherman.  The big guy snuck in a few cigars and they let the kid try one.  I remember the 3 of us pounding down peanuts to get rid of the cigar breath before we headed back to the cabin.  I commented that you know your breath is bad if you have to eat peanuts to improve it.  The kid made a joke!  They liked that.  In the end, I caught the fewest fish, but I did take home biggest fish honors.  We ate fried fish all week, got no exercise, and I found myself unable to perform in the outhouse-speaking of proctological habits.  When we got back, our women said that we looked fat.

The trip with Tim and Jared was the least productive fish-wise, but we had a lot of fun.  We knew that the fishing might not be too hot when the fishing guide that my dad hired got excited when he saw a frog by the lake.  "Amphibian, that's a good sign."  No, catching a huge bass on your first cast is a good sign.  Seeing a frog by a lake is supposed to be so normal that it doesn't get mentioned.  Old Eugene.  He was a piece of work.  Jared nicknamed him "Eu-weenie" and it stuck.  He came wandering up about 30 minutes late the morning that we first met him.  He was a greasy, sinewy, scraggly looking fellow with a thick accent and nose hair curling breath.  We were pretty sure that he hadn't slept at all the previous night but was just getting in from God knows where.  He took us out in a tub of a boat and we trolled all  morning.  As I recall, he had me using a big red leadhead jig with a whole crawler on it.  I picked up a rock bass and he again got way too excited.  He told me to keep it and he'd clean it for me.  Just as he was starting to blame our lack of success on high clouds and a blue sky, I announced that I had a snag.  He said, "Do you have a snag or do you have a fish?"  Turned out that it was a fish.  It was a nice walleye that he also cleaned and cooked for us.

The highlight of that trip for me was when the outfitter set us up in canoes on a lake that was supposed to hold pike.  The canoes were those red plastic kind that are riveted to a frame.  It felt like the shell could pull away from the frame at any time and it was incredibly unstable.  My dad worried about flipping the thing during the whole outing.  We stayed dry, but we did lose one rod and reel.  What made this the highlight started with the outfitter advising us to throw a live minnow just off of a rock face.  He said that there is a ledge under water just off of this face.  The idea was to land the minnow on top of the shelf and then pull it off and let it fall straight down off of the drop.  I did this and hooked into a 29-inch pike.  At that time in my life, this was a really big fish and I was pretty impressed that the guy's advice panned out for us.

When we got home from that trip, I took Jared to a local lake with a lot of bass.  I promised him that we'd catch more fish in one day than we caught all week in Canada.  I'd like to tell you that we killed them and made up for the slow week, but I honestly don't remember.  I'd like to do the Canada thing again sometime.  Maybe when I'm done paying for diapers and sippy cups I can get some guys together and fly in to one of those isolated lakes with the monster pike that are fabled to hit on empty beer cans.  Truthfully, it will probably be decades before I'm able to do something like that.  In the mean time, I'll keep it in the daydream vault.