May 3, 2004: I was at Bolton and Aswap Lake yesterday bringing in more supplies and checking on ice conditions. May 15th is when I expect to have enough open water to take off with a float plane and get into the outpost camps to start setting up. There were lakes only 70 miles south of Bolton Lake that were completely free of ice, but the ice at Bolton and Aswap was only open in the rivers and narrows. It was a beautiful day and before we left and the sun was already doing damage to the ice. The guys say that the auger cuts through the ice with it's own weight and that the ice is rotting through.

Here is a picture of the plane on the ice at Aswap and a shot of the work that's getting done at Aswap. The interior will be finished today we plan to be finished with everything by Tuesday.

May 11th, 2004: Things are looking a bit grim for opening the camp early this year. We have guests arriving on Sunday and they may be ice fishing! It's snowing like crazy today and we have very little open ice at the lodge. If things continue like this it will be difficult to open on time. I believe we are only a week away from having enough open water once we get some nice weather. I will keep you posted on ice and weather conditions and I'm planning to be at the lodge on Friday. Most of the staff will be going up this weekend followed by the guests on May 24th. I'm very confident that it will not be a problem for the guests on the 24th, but for the earlier guests it's not looking good. Check out this picture I took earlier today in St. Andrews:

The weather at the lodge is actually a lot nicer today. It's clear and should get to about 45 degrees today. There is a link below for the current weather close to Bolton Lake.

We are happy to welcome back the majority of our staff including our 8 year veteran guides; Yvon and Winston along with our 7 year vets; Marcel, Willie, and Doc. Other staff including Churchill, Regi, Cedrick, Robin, Glenda, Deanne, Harley and Justin will all be returning for at least their second season but for most their 5th season. It's a very nice testament to how we treat our staff when they almost all come back!

May 16th, 2004: We were suppose to be welcoming our first guests this morning, but instead we got snow. The lake is still good and frozen, but there's still hope for good weather and a quick break up. Everybody thinks that when it starts to go, it's going to go in a hurry.

Here's a picture taken near the end of the day....it would have been too discouraging to show one of the snow flying this morning.

Try not to notice the big snowbank that has not melted yet.

If you look close enough you can see a few feet of open water along the shore that was not there yesterday. I think the sun followed by the rain yesterday did most of the damage.

Thankfully some of the best fishing at this time of year is in the back bay which should be wide open before the end of this week.

I'll update as often as possible.

May18th, 2004: The fishing is improving for my hardy group of anglers who have a two week fishing trip and arrived here on Monday because it's nicer here than in Winnipeg! We tried to access the back bay and we gained access by towing a boat to hole number one. Most of our June guests know #1 as a great Pike and Walleye spot, this is what it looks like today:

We were able to travel a long distance on the open water and we could have broken through about 100 yards of ice to get into Mink Creek. One of the three brave fishermen who fished from the edge of the ice caught 3 Pike and 1 nice Walleye in about an hour. The other two guys lost count as they fished from dry land in the shallows with fly rods.

By tomorrow there should be double the amount of open water back there since we're having a beautiful day on Bolton Lake. The weather is suppose to stay nice until the weekend, and after that it's anybody's guess.

Here's another great shot of our adventures from today before we decided to drive down to hole #1. The fish are definitely not in spots like this, we didn't even get a bite. They're all back in #1, the Mink and any other open water that we can find.

Tomorrow should be even better!

May 20th, 2004: Yesterday was pretty good, between the 9 anglers they managed 4 trophy Pike, a trophy Walleye and 20 or so other Pike of 36 inches. Unfortunately they did not take any digital pictures for me to upload, so we'll have to wait until they get home and get them developed.

It has turned cold again! The water pump and water lines all froze last night, but the hardy anglers from Missouri are back at it. The sun is out, but we have a cold Northwest wind that is keeping things from thawing. Click on the weather link below for a long range forecast....it doesn't look good.

May 23rd, 2004: The weather and the fishing has been exceptional lately, but the lake is still frozen. We've been hauling groups by snowmobile across the lake to open water at hole #1. From there we have at least 4 miles of open water all the way into Mink Creek where the fishing has been great. In a day and a half of fishing the Schenkel group has caught 5 trophies, mostly Pike. The Walleye are right in the middle of spawning and the Pike are moving into the shallows where there's no ice to get ready to spawn. If the weather continues this current trend we should be going to the outposts by the end of the week.

Here's a great picture taken at 8 a.m. this morning:

The ice is getting a bit soft so we hope to stop running on it today and access the boats through the back bay behind the lodge. We've just about cut a path with the boats from Mink to the back bay, and we should be done today.

May 30, 2004: We have a full camp and all three outposts are open, but the ice is still not all gone. We've broken the record for latest ice out in our 16 year history on Bolton Lake. I believe the old record was set in 1996 when we were finally able to reach all areas of the lake on May 27th. We're still only fishing Mink, #1, Woods Bay, Winter Road Bay, and the Old Lodge. We expect any day we'll be able to get across to #2, West River, the North Channel etc, but I feel like I've been saying that for 10 days.

Even though we're only fishing 15% of the lake we're still landing a ton of trophy fish, mostly Pike and Walleye. The biggest are a 46 inch Pike and a 29 inch Walleye and we're averaging over 6 trophies per day.

Here's a picture of a trophy Pike caught in #1 on Friday:

Here's another sent up by my ice fishing group from last week, they made a fantastic shore lunch of fresh Walleye: