In late June, Sam Swisher went up to Manitoba, Canada, with some buddies for four days of fishing.
A fisherman’s dream kind of fishing. Sam fishes every year, in Florida for tarpon and Guatemala for sailfish, with one of the guys he has been making annual trips with for the past 14 years. This was something new and getting there was part of the adventure; it took four plane trips, the final one in a 1943 seaplane with Sam as the co-pilot. They stayed at a lodge on Lake Kississing built in 1961 with logs cut by the same crusty guide who took them out fishing. Sam describes Ernest as having a “wry, knowing smile” and Ernest knew where to go, all right. The lake is 50 miles across, but “Ernest and his son took us to the ‘secret spots’ where the fish were hangin' out.”
The guys were after Walleye and Northern Pike and they pulled in 620 of them, including many over 30”, with the biggest at 39”. Sam got the biggest haul, with 188 fish in four days. They released all but 10 that they ate for shore lunches. A couple of bears would have been happy to join them at “one of our intended lunch spots but we had to go elsewhere!”
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