broomball. 'nuff said? no. never. broomball is huge i mean elvis huge, almost as huge as volleyball which is justin beiber huge.  i could never say enough about broomball.

top) philip, biggest hockey fan ever.

bottom) trisha and savanha, both really enjoy cupcake and jello day at the school.

these are from september, but had to get them developed.

top) frying potatoes.

2nd from top) a puppy that was really hard to not bring home.

2nd from bottom) jeffery and duck

bottom) marcus, felix and duck

down river about 40 miles, i caught a couple this day, and had a nice dinner at camp.  we were mostly looking for moose, but unluckily did not see any, this brookie made/took a little of the pain away.

top) here is my nice 5lb brookie. the only fish i ever want to catch anymore. they fight hard, use the current to their advantage, but also just have the nicest colors.  deep red, and bright pink dots.

bottom) the story behind this one is... i went down to the lodge after school one friday and met some guys who paid thousands of dollars to fish up here.  i chatted with them about how they had been doing, what they had been catching, 2-2.5 lb brookies, pike and lakers. they asked me how i had been doing and replied i "pretty good." talking some friendly trash i walked away and told them i'd show them. in about five minutes i returned with this, they shat themselves, and proceeded to ask a every question in the book about how i did it.  the next morning i was on my way out down river and saw them exactly where i had been standing using exactly what i had been using. 

it feels good to feel better.

these are from traditional week:

top) the girls with a laker each + one pike. a good 1/2 hour of fishing.  

middle) the girls with a nice pike later that day. good eating, but of course i had to clean and de-bone all of them.

bottom) i think whoever took this pic purposefully had the focus off.  i remember the girls being pissed i caught the big one and suspect that the lack of focus is sly revenge. moral of the story, trust nobody with pictures of your trophy fish.  

top) philip with squirrel

bottom) justin with prairie chicken

here is our new friend, the bear.  we (philip, river, justin, clifford and i) were moose hunting on shore, and i guess we spooked him. at first we thought he was a moose, but either way he took to the water, and we followed in our boats. pretty great. i had never seen a black bear swimming. 
at this point i am literally two feet away from him, but driving a boat and focusing the camera was a challenge. he was pretty calm about the whole thing.
philip and clifford almost hit it.philip apologized.
he made it safely to the other side of the river.

above) i took a picture of the blue runway markers, because i liked the way the blue runway markers looked

top) magnum with my birds, but i will admit he does look better. so g.

bottom) me with some birds i got out on the islands. i roasted these with bacon, carrots, mushrooms, turnips, stuffed with onion and garlic.  these birds are super tasty, they have a fresh/spruce-like flavor.  when you are cleaning them there is a little pouch on top of their breasts that holds a bunch of whole spruce needles.  people tell me they used to dry that spruce pouch out and make rattles.  

top) outside/out front of my house: the back of the school and computer lab. this must have been morning, but can't remember which day.

middle) god's lake.

bottom) god's river.

top) my first prairie chicken in fish lake.

middle) we stopped on shore to make tea and i shot three more. they are hard to see in this pic, but they are there.  to me, it looks like i have joined a northern chapter of the taliban here.

bottom) wayne with his one of the day that he got with his shot gun while taking a leak.  notice how it's leg is blown to bits.  note to self don't use a shot gun for prairie chicken. 

top) god's river from the river.

middle) the lodge's "free to use" cabin on fish lake, and award for best use of a hudson bay blanket.

bottom) cabins at 20 mile.  

top) photo is taken fishing in wasekuscusik bay, where I camped during traditional week.

middle) cold morning at camp on fish river.

bottom) fog on fish river, heading into fish lake. 

so there i was kinda trolling, kinda drinking beer, and kinda peeing out of the side of the boat (hence the undone belt), and this monster hit my blue and orange rapala. biggest bass i have caught in ontario to date, guessing 5-6lbs.  

earlier in the evening we (don hutton and i), aslo spotted an eastern soft shelled turtle, two moose, and a fawn.  shortly after releasing the bass wolves howled and we did shots of whiskey. 

Happy Banjo, Dark Mean