A few weeks ago I went on a fishing trip into Canada with my three brother-in-laws and our father-in-law, Don, as well as his brother, Roger, his son and son-in-laws and oldest grandson. The 10 of us adventured up into the wilderness to catch huge Northern Pike and Walleye. Don and Roger have been on these trips a few times before, they make it an annual thing, and thought it would be a good idea to have the extended family go together. It was a really great trip with 5 days of non-stop fishing. Thanks to Don and Roger for making this trip happen!

I caught a ton of fish. I grew up in North Dakota fishing on the shore. To me, fishing always meant getting up way too early, driving too far, sitting on the shore with way too much sun, and not catching any fish. Not exactly the best of times. We fished the Chipai Lake for five days and the only way you got downtime was if you weren’t fishing. If your line was in the water you were probably getting a fish. I didn’t keep really close count, but I know I caught over 10 fish a day. And the smallest of these fish rivaled the biggest of any other fish I had ever caught.

I really enjoyed this trip in part because it was something outside of my normal zone. I’ll admit to being a bit worried about handling these big northerns. I was a bit worried about my boat skills. But everything came together well and we had a really good time. It was fun to get to know my brother-in-laws better, especially the guys on the other side of the family. I have never been in that remote of a location before. We were completely off the grid. There was no cellular service. No phone service at all. Any electricity was provided by a couple of small solar panels and a generator that you could start as needed. The cabin did have a shower, and gas range and refrigerator. But being that far out of communication was new to me. That’s the longest I’ve ever been off of the Internet since college.

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Each day had a regular pattern to it. We got up around 6:00 am and were in the boats by 7am. We’d have a big breakfast at 10am, and a big dinner at 5pm. All the boats would be out on the water for three sessions a day: 7-9:30a, 11-4pm and 6-9pm. We rarely saw the night. The sun didn’t go down until around 11 and rose about 4am. We ate walleye every night. That was our only real job, each morning on the first session out each boat was to bring in a couple walleye to eat. They were freshly fileted, battered and fried up. Even after 4 nights of Walleye, it still tasted great.

I have over 800 pictures from the trip, but this collection of about 80 is a nice recap.