Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Eagle's eye view of the camp

Docks are clustered here. Pipestone Bay visible top right.

Lodge is partly obscured by trees.

Cabins 10 and 9 can be seen clearly

Looking west beyond Cabin 10   

Even further west. Trout Bay is at upper left.
We're often asked if we pull out our docks for the winter. As the first photo taken from Mike's mountain shows, we just pull them over to the boathouse-Cabin 3 area. The ice in this area just melts in place come spring compared to moving in a sheet the way it does from the lodge to Cabin 10.
The photos start at the north end of camp and sweep southwest.

Monday, October 19, 2015

His timing was just a bit off

Pat, the amorous partridge, thought he had done everything right. He couldn't have looked better and was strutting his stuff for a fine-looking chick here in the yard. But all she did was give him the cold shoulder. What was wrong?
Just one thing. Mating season is in the spring and this picture was taken yesterday. He was six months early.
It would seem the male ruffed grouse's mating instinct is triggered just by the photo period. The length of daylight in the fall is the same as in the spring. Not only do the males put on their courting display in the fall but some actually drum as well, all for naught.
And what about the females?  They're more complicated.
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Sunday, October 18, 2015

Panorama of camp from hill top

Click on photos to see in panorama view
We're putting camp to bed for the winter now. I climbed up Mike's Mountain, across from camp, today to see if I could get all of camp in one photo.
Second view

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Four-year roofing project completed

Cabin 3 was the second-largest roof
There were times when I didn't think I would ever say this, but our massive re-roofing project is done! We have now stripped the roofs of every building in camp and installed new 25 year shingles.
I wish I had kept track of the number of shingle bundles over the four years we worked on this project but judging by the 90 that we did this season, the total was probably 360 to 400.
The second-largest roof and the oldest was Cabin 3, completed in late August. A portion of this building was built by original Bow Narrows owner Bill Stupack in the 1930s.
The largest roof, of course, was the lodge, which I believe we completed two years ago.
Other than Cabin 3, buildings done this season were Cabins 4 and 6, the generator building, the fish house, the water plant, the recycling building and the water plant. And oh yeah, we also re-roofed the porch on Cabin 9 which had been damaged by a falling tree.
The total weight of the shingles we laid over those four years would have been 25,000 pounds!
That sounds like a lot but we also removed probably three or four times that much weight in old rolled roofing.
Whew! I'm glad we're finished.
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Saturday, October 3, 2015

It was the summer of the big pike

Charles Howard, 41-inch
Terry Leonard, 37-inch
Sue Nosko 39-inch
There will be a lot more pictures to come, once I get home and can transfer some of the photos our anglers e-mailed me to my computer, but here are the first few showing the extraordinary season it was this past year for big, big northern pike.
Many long-time anglers landed their personal bests this year. I must have heard a dozen people say "Today was the best fishing day of my life." It was truly spectacular. Not only were there a lot of long pike hooked, but they were extra thick as well. Thirty-plus-inch fish liked to warp your rod. Pike anglers had a blast.
Early-on in the season we did very well on bigger lures, and by bigger I mean up to six-inch plugs like the Spro and Suick. But as summer came on the big lures faded in popularity and the regular two-inch spoons and spinners like Mepps #4 and #5 seemed to produce the best.
Throughout the year, anybody who tried top-water baits like the six-inch Zara Spook and the Live Target Walking Frog, were thrilled to find that northern pike won't hesitate to take to the air. Lots of them become completely airborne. In one case, the very first pike a dyed-in-the-wool walleye angler caught when he tentatively tried the Walking Frog was a 36-inch fish that came completely out of the water and inhaled the frog when it came back down.
Later in the summer and in the fall, buzz baits along with spoons and again, the topwater lures, provided great action.
I'll let Pete, one of our last fishermen who just had a fantastic afternoon on pike after spending days coaxing reluctant walleye to bite, sum it up: "I drove hundreds of miles and spent a thousand dollars. I don't want to sit in the boat and just do this all day (here he pretends to hold a rod in his hand and gently jig it up and down. I want action!"
He and his group tried buzz baits and spoons and soon had giant pike somersaulting through the air and doing back flips. And get this, they also caught two muskies.
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2016 availability now on-line

If you click on the 2016 Reservation Availability button on the right side of the page, you should now be able to see what's currently available for cabins next year.

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