By Jake Bussolini
I have been traveling north to Canada for more than 25 years to take advantage of the availability of big fish that the Canadian lakes offer. Wilderness fishing, as I define it here, is being flown by plane to some remote lake, dropped off at a small cabin only to be picked up six days later. Until the recent process of taking along a satellite telephone came into play, those six days put the angler entirely on his or her own with no communications with the outside world.
If you forgot something you simply did without it. The trip always requires a fair amount of planning to avoid leaving a critical item behind. I recall one trip when we forgot to take our portable sonar unit out of the car. Since I depend heavily on sonar to show me the bottom structure and availability of fish, having no sonar was like losing my right arm. But with wilderness fishing, you simply learn to do without it.
Wilderness fishing also teaches you some important rules like making sure you have toilet paper in the boat in case of the need for an emergency stop. First aid kits should always be at hand. Drinking water often requires boiling lake water and planning a shore lunch of freshly caught Walleye really requires that you catch some Walleye of you might be eating perch or Northern Pike.
On a recent wilderness trip, we were wrapping up the week and had a few leftover food parcels from the preceding days. Things like bread, beans, vegetables and even a small amount of cooked meat. Before we hit the water for our last day of fishing, one of our younger anglers put those parcel on some boulders outside the cabin. I asked him why he was doing that and he indicated that he was leaving the food to feed the seagulls that had been hanging around the cabin all week.
When we returned to the cabin that evening, we learned a new rule for wilderness fishing. DON’T FEED THE BIRDS.
The huge female black bear and her two cubs were having a great time with that leftover food. The cubs seemed to be bothered by our sudden appearance but the big female just kept on eating.
Jake Bussolini is a freelance writer who has written several books about freshwater fishing. His books can be viewed and purchased at www,booksbyjake.com.