May Long Weekend Adventures

May Two-Four is the unofficial start to summer in Canada. The first long weekend of the year without snow and ice (hopefully), is the perfect chance to head lakeside and get back to enjoying the outdoors. Of course, that tends to mean packed campgrounds, busy roads, and lots of boats on main lakes.

It’s not often that we go away for the long weekend. Between the crowds, the bugs, and all the work that needs to be done at home, it’s easier to stay home and do short fishing trips. This weekend was no exception.

Friday was an early day for both of us, and a perfect chance to get the tractor out and plow an extension for the vegetable garden. Our veggie garden has undergone so many transformations over the years. From a small existing plot when we moved in, to an additional plot the next year, to over half an acre when I ran the farm business, and now down to a single large plot that will hopefully be the final version.

The chickens sure enjoyed racing over the broken ground to find all the bugs and worms.

With rain Friday night and into Saturday, things were dreary. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do for the day, so Darrell suggested we go for a drive. I don’t know about anyone else, but Darrell takes it as a personal mission to turn down every No Winter Maintenance and unmaintained road he can find. Having our Ford Ranger Tremor truck just encourages him to do it even more.

I thought we’d explored the area near home pretty well for fun spots to drive along, but we found several “roads” we’d never been down before. Narrow, bumpy, muddy sections that appear as roads on all GPS apps but are nothing more than a rough trail frequented by 4x4s, ATVs, and tractors. They’re such fun to travel along, even when they end at a swamp. I marked a few on the Gaia app so we can return.

On Sunday we decided it was time to search for toothy critters and headed to a local lake for some pike fishing. It’s the time of year when pike are usually hanging out of the edges of drop-offs, making it a little tricky to target them, because the bass are just moving into the shallows to spawn. Cast in the wrong spot and you’ll have a big bass torpedoing your bait, and their season isn’t open for another month.

As we worked around the top of the lake, Darrell suddenly turned the boat in a different direction and started muttering to himself. Turns out, he saw a big pike resting not far from where we were heading. He turned so we’d get a chance to cast to her, instead of spooking her.

We both took a few casts and didn’t make her move at all. It was so still that I doubted it was actually a fish. I honestly thought it was a shadow from a large boulder, because I’d never seen a pike in that lake even close to that size. She would be a trophy catch for any of our local lakes. After admitting defeat, Darrell drove the boat a little closer to the shadow, and sure enough, it turned and swam off. Definitely a trophy.

Eventually, we made it to a small bay that doesn’t get a lot of traffic and always yields some pike. Luckily, the toothy critters were there and we each caught a few on our spinnerbaits. We’d cast towards the shallows, and after passing the drop-off, we’d often feel the lure move ever so slightly. The pike would follow our lures for a bit and most were committing to the bite at boat side. You’d think the cast was over and WHAM! What a rush! The boat smelled fishy in no time.

That outing also made us love our Minn-Kota Terrova trolling motor even more. We upgraded to this motor over the winter, and having functions like spot lock and cruise control makes a day on the water even more enjoyable. Cruise control came in clutch with the ever-changing wind conditions. We didn’t have to worry about adjusting the speed and could just cast as the boat moved along.

On Monday, we decided to take a chance on the forecast and head to Meaford for some lake trout fishing, my favourite way to spend a day on the water. Unfortunately, the wind wasn’t kind to us and after watching the waves for a bit, we decided to head to Owen Sound instead, since it should be fairly sheltered based on the way the wind was blowing.

Spoiler alert: It was not.

The wind was somehow coming from a different direction in Owen Sound and creating a good chop with some white caps. After watching some of the other boats, we knew it would be a little rough, but we decided to launch anyway. It wasn’t long before we started questioning how badly we wanted to deal with the swells and the chop. My head started swimming pretty quickly and I knew I was going to be nauseous in no time.

Instead of continuing to head out, we turned around and headed closer to the harbour, figuring we could at least salvage the day by casting around for pike in the shallower water, more protected by the breakwall. Unfortunately, my head didn’t agree, and before long we decided to head back to the launch.

Despite the rainy start to the weekend, we ended up with plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and enough fish to keep us happy. Long weekends really are the best.