On Thursday I flew from Medellin, Colombia to Miami and couldn’t make the connection to Minneapolis so I spent the night.  Friday I flew from Miami to Minneapolis then to Duluth and made it home to Hayward around 9 PM.  Yesterday morning I unpacked and cleaned the salt off all my Colombia gear.  I caught up on a few errands.  Then Granny got home from work at 5 and we had a nice steak dinner.  At 7 PM I hopped in my 1991 Explorer and drove till 10 PM, just south of the Canada border in Minnesota and I slept in the back of my rig.

This morning I crossed into Ontario and continued on to Nipigon where I met up with friend Jerry Darkes and his crew to start yet another fishing adventure.  This is the Bowman Island Lodge trip on Lake Superior, the same trip I did almost exactly a year ago.  I’m back because I absolutely loved the fishing here for coaster brook trout and lake trout.

Bowman Island is on the Ontario Canada side of Lake Superior and about as remote in the Great Lakes as you can get.  It’s exactly 25 miles by boat only from the mouth of the Nipigon Bay.  It’s part of the new Lake Superior Marine Conservation Area so I’m happy to say this region is safe from any type of development.  The area around the lodge is incredibly beautiful and they often see moose, bear and wolves along the shore.  Best of all, no bugs!  There is no standing water on the island for anything to hatch and Lake Superior is too cold for mosquitoes or black flies.

The lodge is clean, comfortable and solar powered.  There are several main bedrooms in the lodge and a couple separate cabins.  It has a traditional Finnish sauna which is really nice.  Boats are solid and seaworthy with dependable outboards.  Gary Lange, the owner, is a great character with plenty of interesting stories about the area.

Other than Jerry and lodge owner Gary, Joe Wolthuis is the only other person I know on this trip.  Jerry has seven other of his friends from the Ohio region along.  Everyone seems cool.  We boarded the Anica Lee and left the Nipigon Marina at 2:30 and started our 4 hour journey to the lodge.  It was beautiful out and I brought along and shared some New Glarus brews with my new friends.

We arrived at Bowman Island Lodge at 7 PM.  My friend Joe was waiting.  Everyone was so stoked that we put off dinner until 10 PM and went fishing.  I’ll be honest, I could have gone to bed for the night but you know damn well I wasn’t going to miss out on an evening on the lake.

And I’m glad I made it out with Joe, we caught about a half dozen lakers.  None of which were less than about 21” and several such as this one topped off at around 23”.  That’s all for now.  Its time for dinner and then I need to hit the sack.  This week has been moving a bit fast even for me!

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing