Sportshow Time Again

Tomorrow I head down to Minneapolis for a couple of sportshows. The All Canada Show starts on Friday Jan 4th in Minneapolis at the Convention Center. It is held in the lower part of the Convention Center. Then on to the St.Paul for the Annual Sportsman's Show held at the Rivercenter. This one starts on Wednesday Jan 10th. Hope to see some of you down there.

Trophy Night in Eriksdale

We have 30 members in our little club with 9 entries in the Head competition. I did not have an entry this year but I did win it last year. The bucks are way bigger this year over all. 5 scored over 150 and the winner scored 165. Nice to see. Everyone is practicing trophy management and it is starting to show. No more small bucks being taken.

A nice Elk taken in our area with a bow by an old friend Jodie.

My Brother Jamie with his buck.

The only non-typical entry.



Tis was the winner. He scored 154 typical. Nice deer.

My office on Lake Manitoba

This is my brother Jamie as we are just getting started for the day, temperature was minus 25 Celsius. No wind so it was quite warm out there. I will take some pictures and video on the Stormy days for you to see what it is like out there when Mother Nature decides to blow.
The first Walleye of the day. Prices for fish are not great right now but this is a 3 or 4 dollar fish. In the store it would be worth 10 or 12 dollars. Fishing is similar to the beef industry in that someone in the middle is making a lot of money.

This is a Walleye and a Sucker when we take it out of the net....
and this is how we send it to market. We haul the fish to town and they are packed in a ice/water mixture called a Slurry and are shipped to Winnipeg every other day and distributed from there all over the world.

My uncle Jack stopped by the other day and helped us for awhile. Here is a nice 27 inch Walleye. If you buy Walleye in the store, check the thickness of the flakes of meat. I think they take these fish and make more than one fillet out of them and slice them in half to sell as a smaller fish.
Looking west across the lake. Beautiful day, no hat when you are out of the wind. Freeze your ears when you go out in the wind.lol

Until next time.....

Deer season is over. Commercial fishing starts on Lake Manitoba.

Winter took a while to get to us, as it did in all of Canada and the Northern U.S. but it came hard and fast. Two weeks ago there was no ice around, but all of a sudden it was Minus 20 Celsius every day and snowing. It has snowed over a foot so far. We have made over a foot of ice in two weeks. This is unusually fast but it is not rough so it is nice to travel on. I am Commercial fishing for Walleyes on Lake Manitoba now and will be getting some pictures on here soon about that. Keep an eye on the Youtube for some Commercial fishing videos as well for two different Walleye Filleting styles of my brother and myself. I will put the links up on here when I get them done.

Whitetail season is over and I did not see a big enough buck that I wanted to shoot. Passed up 3 or 4 nice ones in the 120-130 class but was waiting for THE ONE. I did take a doe late in the season for some meat but had a great season being out in the bush. The weather was fairly warm and you could sit in your stand a long time before you got cold. The bigger bucks started moving fairly late here and are still going after the season is all done. I don't mind, spread those genes boys,LOL. Good for the herd. There was some pretty big deer shot around my local area this fall with my brother having a good one taken a half mile from the farm where I grew up. We have a small group of guys who get together and show off their heads in a couple of weeks so I will have my trusty camera to take a few pics of some Interlake Bucks.

Now I have to wait another year to have this view again. Pulled my last stand on Sunday. It was -30 celsius on the morning of the last day. BRRR! I sat for only 45 minutes before I pulled the plug.

Here is my brother Jamie's Buck. 22 inch spread with 22 in main beams. Scored 151. Very nice deer.

Hockey
Hockey season is well under way up here and even the rinks with Natural ice are up an running. I am playing senior hockey still and loving it. This is regular hockey with hitting, fights, and the works. Sometimes it can be a gong show out there. It can get pretty crazy since the towns around here have been rivals forever in every sport. But our true passion is hockey and we take it very seriously. Well seriously enough that we do not like to lose.

I am also coaching two teams. I coach my youngest daughter Maija on a mixed boys and girls team and coach both Taina and Maija on an all girls PeeWee team who plays against boys teams all season but enter Provincials in the girls Division. That is a little different coaching an all girls team, a first for me. They are both winning this season which is nice to see as the girls had never won a game in their previous 4 years. I have a bunch of girls who have played hockey all their lives and it shows.

I played in Fisher River this past weekend and scored two goals in a 8 to 5 losing affair. It was 6 to 5 until late in the game.

Our problem as you can see from the picture below, is we only had 6 skaters!
We had 2 defenceman and 4 forwards. All the guys on my team work and it just happened that most guys were away up north of out west this weekend. I played at least 55 minutes of hockey on Sunday which is way too much when you are getting hit, hooked, and making hits. Can't fight when you have six skaters, although some idiot on the other team tried to goad one of our guys into a fight. One of our defenceman Jamie, who went to Green Bay with me never came off the ice for 60 minutes of hockey!!!! His brother Gordie who I played my minor hockey with was the other defenceman but he had 4 penalties so he had a rest a few times. We were down 4 to 0 after the first but it was 4 to 2 after the second and in the third we tied it up at one point but slowly ran out of gas. We did hit 2 goal posts in the las 5 minutes though, we could have won if the bounces went our way. Later in the season we would have been able to pull it out.

Packers 34 Vikings 0

I was fortunate enough this past weekend to acquire 4 tickets to the Packers and Vikings. IT WAS AWESOME!!! It is deer season here, and I am pretty busy hunting but will elaborate soon Hear are a few pics.

The Otter

The Otter is out of the water for the winter. I took it to Sioux Lookout yesterday and put her to bed for awhile. That is where our Maintenance is done during the winter. She is quite a sight when it comes out of the water. I plan on putting a video on Youtube this week showing the whole process. Also I am putting another one on there showing some of the sights from this past fall. Keep an eye out for those. There is a link on the side bar of this blog to my videos. Just a reminder to everyone that if you have any videos or pictures, please send them along, we appreciate them and will put them up on our site for you to see.

We are almost ready to head back to Manitoba soon. Our girls went home this past weekend and have started hockey already. Almost time to start draining water and closing the last buildings. I have serviced the motors and have been planning ahead to the spring for purchases and improvements to the camps. Watch for our newsletter coming by email in Mid-November, as we will letting you know of all the purchases we plan for next season for your convenience. You can sign up on our website if you have not recieved our e-newsletter before.

The next time I write I hope to be back in Manitoba hunting whitetails, coaching and playing hockey.

No More People but Lots to do.

Another season has passed and we are done once again. Overall we had a great season and would like to thank everyone who joined us for a memorable trip this summer. We will be sending a end of season newsletter next month so a reminder that if we do not have yur email address you can sign up on our website. canadianflyinfishing.com

Closing camps was pretty uneventful. Had some good and bad weather but quite a bit of rain. In fact it is still raining today. It is better to have high water come fall anyways and then you have a good balance in the spring as the water drains away over the winter. As long as we don't get more snow than normal. Mother nature is in charge of that I am afraid. I had good help for the camp closing and got alot of extra work done at the camps as well. This helps big time next spring when we open up. If the weather plays along we can get even more done.

Rena and I are still pretty busy with things around the base for another couple of weeks but are getting ready to head back to Manitoba soon. Hockey and Deer season both start when we get back so the next pictures will be from the Rink or hopefully of a Big Buck.

I am servicing all of the motors now and going through all of my lists to ensure we are ready for spring and next season. We will be replacing grills, stoves, boat ramps etc. at the some of the camps in the spring where needed.

I have not taken the Otter out of the water yet but plan on taking pictures and video so that everyone can see how big that old girl actually is. It is quite a sight when on dry land. Keep an eye out for that.

Here is the New outhouse at the Cobham River. The view is Magnificant.
We have had a ton of rain lately and actually almost saw the Sun after getting to Findlay to shut it down.
The next morning we saw Fog. But eventually did see the sun and had perfect weather for our last day in the North.
Quite a broad collection of magazines left after the summer is over.
The Mighty Moose. Still haunting me.