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| Bob Tucker caught two nice Salmon out of the Muskegon River. October, 2000. Bob is trying for steelhead trout in the Muskegon. Stay tuned. | Gina Barkalow (left) and Deidra Barkalow (right) both reeled in a nice salmon. Ludington, MI September, 1999. |
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Here are some photo's taken the past few trips.
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| Bob Tucker caught two nice Salmon out of the Muskegon River. October, 2000. Bob is trying for steelhead trout in the Muskegon. Stay tuned. | Gina Barkalow (left) and Deidra Barkalow (right) both reeled in a nice salmon. Ludington, MI September, 1999. |
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Travis Barkalow's fishing trip to the Sault Ste. Marie. On September 1, 2000, Travis headed up to the Sault Ste. Marie to meet Gary Twining (Doc) to do some Pink Salmon fishing. Doc lived about 20 minutes from the Sault, which is up in the northern part of the Upper Peninsula. The place where they fished is on the American side of the St. Mary's River off a canal where boats make daily trips to the Soo Locks. The water that they fished was about twenty-five feet or so deep. Once in while you would see a school of Pinks come to the surface to either feed or probably just passing by. At that point people would be franticly throwing their lures out in front of the salmon in hopes of getting one. The lures the Pink Salmon were taking were the pink spoons or pink Swedish pimples with black spots. From what Travis was told from the local people the Pink Salmon were not biting that good. Someone would pull up a Pink about every 45 minutes. That was considered slow. When they are biting you would have someone get a Pink about every 5 minutes. The Pink Salmon ranged from 20 to 28 inches and weighed from 4 to 6 pounds on average. Over all Travis thought it was successful and enjoyable. The two Pinks that Travis caught were roughly 5 to10 feet below the surface. Later the fillets were barbecued over oak coals using some Teriyaki sauce. Hard to beat that. |
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| Travis Barkalow, with the two Pink Salmon caught on September 3, 2000. | Doc Twining patiently waits for a Pink to bite his lure. |
| On February 10, 2001, Bruce, Mandy, and Travis Barkalow, went up
to Lac La Belle to do some fishing along with some snowshoe hare
hunting. We stayed at the Lac La
Belle Lodge recently purchased by our friends the Westcotts (Troy
and Kathy). The lodge has a great restaurant and several nice
cottages. This is an out of the way place about as far North as
you can go in Michigan. A great place to get away from it
all. There is a nearby new downhill ski resort with a 900 foot
vertical drop. Lac La Belle connects to Lake Superior into Bete
Gris.
The adventure begun with a nice breakfast at Seasons, the Lac La Belle Restaurant. It was Bruce and Travis Barkalow, with Zach Westcott all braved the elements in their plan to catch enough fish for everyone at the whole lodge for dinner. The ice on Lac La Belle was roughly 4 feet thick. Although we caught several fish they were small as indicated by the pictures below. In fact, Travis' perch was so small it was almost a larvae. We were out for several hours being entertained with an Aqua-Vu® underwater camera. With the underwater camera we could see the perch swimming around and some mysterious fish which we could not identify. From what information we did gather we think they were either Smelt or Whitefish coming from Lake Superior by the deepwater channel. Anyway, it was a great day and Zach wrote a report for his teacher on high tech ice fishing (that apparently does not work any better than low tech ice fishing). |
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| Lac La Belle Lodge behind the trees as seen from our shanty location. | Here is the portable ice shanty that kept us warm out of the freezing wind. | Zach doing his best to get through 4 feet of snow, slush, and ice. Put your mouse over little Zach to see him work. |
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| Although Bruce Barkalow did catch one small perch, his bobber basically stayed afloat all day. | Travis Barkalow, caught the very first fish. Note: It was also the smallest fish but he still claimed it was the first. | Zach Westcott, holding up his first perch. Zach was the king by catching the most fish but none were real eye poppers. | Underwater view of our quarry. This one is not a perch but might be a whitefish or smelt? |
Check Back in Late March 2001 for new pictures and stories.
Here are some good links that are related to fishing and camping: |
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| Lac La Belle Lodge | www.bettsguideservice.com |
