






After a night in a comfortable cabin at the base lodge, we are on the lakeshore dock at 7 a.m., ready for the fly-in to our outpost. There’s a loud roar, seemingly right in the treetops. A Cessna 206 banks over the lake, lands on its floats, and taxis to the dock. I mentally run a list of my gear as the pilot helps us load up. This is obviously not a good time to forget anything





Our outpost boat is a 16-foot Lund skiff with a 20-horse Mercury outboard. The live minnows we bought back at base camp are now in a bait bucket on board, along with all our tackle.






By virtue of our outpost-camp schedule–that is, no schedule at all–our noon break extends into midday naps. But by the middle of any afternoon, we are ready to fish again, and having beaten the walleyes into submission in the morning, it’s pike and muskie time. Even having caught many pike over many years from New England to northern Manitoba, at Lac Seul I get totally skunked. I try everything I can think of. I get a follow once in a while. But I cannot get a pike to eat.


