Algonquin Spring Fishing

May 9 - 13, 2005

Trip Reports

Algonquin Spring Fishing 2005

Trip Preparation
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
What worked well
Lessons Learned

Frontenac Provincial Park

Petawawa River

Day 1

Up at 4:45am today, I got to sleep in an hour this year since I was meeting the guys at Hwy 89 and the 400 instead of at Rick's place and we weren't meeting until 6:30am. It was a fairly small group of us this year with only 4 of us going in for the whole week and a couple of other guys joining us for 2 days in the middle.

As usual we stopped for the traditional breakfast in Huntsville on the way up, although we're still looking for a 'new' good breakfast restaurant in Huntsville. I can't remember the name of the old breakfast place but it closed down about 2 years ago now and we haven't found a good replacement yet. If you have any suggestions let me know.

We stopped in at the West Gate to get the permits since the Rock Lake campground wasn't opening up until the long weekend. Then it was on to the put-in at Rock Lake. We were probably on the water around 11am, and for once we had a tail wind blowing us all the way down Rock Lake to the portage to Pen. Quite a contrast from the first time I came on this trip 4 years ago and we paddled through a blizzard into a headwind and 2 foot waves.

We carried most of the stuff over the portage to Pen and then ate lunch on the other side. We were cutting back on the gear this year and I think we managed it in only 4 trips, even though we still had 2 meals worth of baking potatoes. I won't complain about how much gear we take, more than enough of it is mine to start with and even in the year of the blizzard we were comfortable in camp. (Oh, and the potatoes may be heavy, but the steak dinner with baked potatoes, fried mushrooms and Rick's Famous Chutney after a long daytrip up to Welcome comes pretty darn close to being heaven on earth!)

Eric and I fished on the way down Pen, still with a tailwind (this was getting freaky) while Rick and Murray went ahead to get the preferred site. Eric and I each had a Laker on the way down both in the 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb range. Big enough to keep if we needed to, but we didn't need them so we let them go. Made it down to camp in plenty of time to get set up and cook dinner, including a couple of cups of coffee with a splash of Baileys.

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