Larder Lake is near Kirkland, Ontario. Back in the day, the 1920s, there was pickerel in Larder Lake. There were different reasons, most likely over fishing, that the pickerel died out. So one of the local boat clubs made up coupons, and you would buy a $10 coupon to win a boat and motor. With that money, they bought a pond, and they got pickerel and get their eggs and hatch them right in the pond. I was sitting and having breakfast with them, and all their cellphones went off. It was an emergency – the temperature of the pond had risen, and you can’t have that. You have to have climate control for the birth of the pickerel. Since then, that’s been about 20 years now, they’ve actually restored pickerel back into that lake.

I fish there. There are lakes that we go to where there are no cottages and no people. The bridges are all handmade from logs. Fishermen have taken the time to build these bridges so that we can go into interior lakes where there is absolutely nothing. That is near Larder Lake. You’d have to talk to the miners and the people who cut the wood up there to tell you the trails to get back. You have to know where you’re going. I was up there in summer 2016. When you get to the first lake, you portaged that one, go right across it, and get to a river. We had to climb over four beaver dams to get into the lake that we’re actually going to fish. So we send half the guys to the island to set up our camp, where we’ve left our frying pans, and our grits, so that we don’t have to carry them in every year. The other half go out and catch the pickerel that we’re going to eat. Within half an hour, we have enough food to feed everybody. Every cast, there’s a fish. It’s amazing. That’s the way the world should be. To be able to go into a lake that’s totally clean. We bring in garbage bags, some of the boaters and fishermen who have left a mess, we go in and pick it up.