START DAY: Bissett, Manitoba – Northern Tier Base Camp

END DAY: Lake David

CAMP #1

We awoke, grabbed breakfast at the basecamp, then loaded up the scouts for our first portage from the Northern Tier camp over to Bluewater Aviation on the other side of town. This really was not too bad as Bissett is a very small town.

Our sister trek loaded onto the float plane first and then headed off into Atikaki Provincial Park. We would not see them again for another week when both treks would return to our starting point at Scout Lake for one last night in Atikaki to await our flights back to Bissett in the morning.

There was not much to do while we waited for the pilot to return after dropping off our first bunch of scouts. Matthew decided to rig his fishing pole and quickly caught the first fish of the trip (small northern pike) while casting from the dock at Bluewater Aviation.

Once the float plane returned from dropping off our sister trek, we loaded the plane and took our own flight from Bissett to Scout Lake where we were dropped off to start our trip. We proceeded to pick out our canoes, then loaded up and started paddling east through Scout Lake and then north into Noname Lake.

Midway up Noname Lake we stopped for a lunch break of summer sausage & cheese rolled into a wrap along with cheese-it crackers and gummy snacks. Joe worked his fishing rod from shore and caught the first walleye of the trip.

Joey enjoyed showing his canoe mates how to walk a canoe through some small rapids when he learned that the water depth dropped off quickly and he was suddenly swimming as the canoe was guiding him through the rapids rather than the other way around.

Along the route, Brian canoed over to a high cliff and showed us several Indian pictographs; these are rock paintings that are hundreds of years old.

We made our first camp on Lake David a couple of hours before sunset. After dinner, we spent the evening fishing and caught roughly 25 walleye and pike at a fast water narrows between Noname and Lake David. Kyle caught his personal best northern pike that went 4.5 lbs.

I picked up four nice pike between 6 and 8 lbs along with an 8.3 lbs walleye that went 29 ¼” caught on a Rapala FLR-16 “flat rap”. Brian and I fished together out of a canoe that evening when I quickly noticed that his “Northern Tier house rod” was total junk and barely worked. I gave Brian my back-up Shimano Stradic spinning combo and he quickly became proficient in catching walleye and pike; functional gear makes a huge difference in fishing success.