Selina Walters with the northern pike that she caught while spending a week on Shultz Lake with the "Canada Gang."

 

Alls Well on Shultz Lake

Hello friends

Back in 1981, my father; the late Robert Walters, my brother Mike and a good friend of the family; Elmer Schlief, flew into Shultz Lake for the first time. Shultz Lake can only be reached by float-plane, is located 60- miles northwest of Red Lake, Ontario and only has one cabin on its entire system which is 7-miles from end to end.

On the first day of that adventure, Mike and I caught over 100 walleye including a ten-pounder that has lived on Mikes living room wall ever since.

Saturday, June 12th
High 67, low 50

Fast forward 29 years and “The Canada Gang”, as we have called ourselves for a few decades, is made up of family and long term friends. Our quest is to return to “our” cabin on Shultz Lake, which is owned and managed by our very good friends Peter and Elizabeth Hagedorn (www.chimolodgeandoutposts.com).

A low ceiling in the sky, kept us in Red Lake until mid-afternoon but none of the gang cared, as we knew we had seven awesome days in front of us.

This year, we were eight happy campers on board the Beech 18 as we made the flight to Shultz Lake. My 9-year-old daughter Selina would be on her first trip with the Canada Gang and her 7th fly in. Jeff Moll and his 11-year-old son Grant sat in the plane next to me.

Gregg Steinhauer has been a friend of the family for close to forty years and would be making his first journey to Shultz Lake. My nephews Trent and Riley Schuster who are 18 and 21 had every intention of pegging the fun meter and did. The crew was rounded out with Harold Moll who is the father of Jeff, father-in-law of Gregg and grandpa to Grant.

Since we had a late start today, our main goal was to catch enough fish for supper and Selina, Gregg and myself found that to be no problem as we teamed up and caught dinner while using night crawler harnesses and what would be the hot bait for the week, floating jigs, tipped with either a crawler or a leech.

Last night, we cooked chicken over a campfire and most of us were up for a solid 36-hours. Tonight, after an awesome fish fry we called it a day fairly early. Our fish fry was served just about midnight and we turned out the lights about an hour later.

Monday, June 14th
High 73, low 50

Last night we did not go to bed as early as we did Saturday night. There are some real livewires in this group and they like to play cards, dice and see if they can still be awake when the birds start chirping.

Selina and Grant have several new friends, four of them are young snowshoe rabbits that live in front of the cabin. Selina’s bunnies are maybe five-days-old and Selina loves watching them as they spend their first few days of life in a nest Selina also has four tadpoles that she is keeping in a glass.

Today, Jeff and Grant Moll and Selina and myself went to one of the two portage lakes on the Shultz chain of lakes. After a five-hundred-yard walk we came to Trout Lake, which has Lake trout, walleye and northern pike.

On this day, 3-pound walleye were very hungry and we had a blast. Our day ended with Trent Schuster leading in the northern pike division for biggest gator of the week and yours truly, winning the big walleye bet with a 24-inch walleye that I caught off the dock while casting a Shallow Raider.

Tuesday, June 15th
High 70, low 47

The temperatures are warm but it has been a rain gear kind of a week. Today I fished alone with Selina and we had a blast. Later in the day after having a shore lunch, the two of us resumed catching fish. Something very special happened and it came in the form of Selina landing a 34-inch northern pike, which almost pulled her in the lake and would have been a hoot to watch her catch on a video. The Schuster brothers were close by so we had them help with the measuring and photos. Selina’s gator was a half-inch longer than Trents, which would put her in the lead for big gator and her dad with top walleye.

Selina needed a confidence builder and the gator, which was released just like the walleye, gave her just that.
For one night a father and his daughter who were both living in paradise, were sharing the lead in the big fish contest and once again stayed up quite late!

Hooray for Canada!
Sunset