Hi folks and welcome to week 5 of Diaries of a Lodge Owner.  Hope you have been enjoying it so far!

A couple of weeks later Melissa picked up my mail and there was a letter from Fishn’ Canada in it. She called me right away at work and told me that I had been chosen to be one of the 50 contestants of the Last Cull! It was one of the most exciting moments in my life to that point. After getting off the phone with Mel I called Ray and told him the news. He for the first oh, five minutes didn’t believe me but with my persistence and excitement he came around. My Mom and Dad were over the moon for me too after all their little boy was going to be a movie star!!

That night I went over to Rays, Ev (Ray’s wife and Erik’s mom) was so proud and started to cry she always makes me feel awesome. Ray and I marveled over this piece of paper like it was magical and after reading it for the tenth time, we found in the fine print of the final 50 contract there was an invitation for volunteers for the week. Well there was only one thing we could do and that was call and get Ray booked for the week and that is just what we did.

The anticipation leading up to the show was almost unbearable; I researched it Ray lent me his boat to pre-fish Lake Nipissing and to use for the week. And what a week it was in short I made it about half way through didn’t win anything physical but what I took home with me from that week was priceless, I met friends there that I still keep in touch with today including the hosts of the Fishn’ Canada Show, Mike Miller was my tournament partner! The guy has won more fishing tournaments in Canada than anyone else! And I got to fish with him.

I am going to take the time to tell you a little about that day, it is worth the time. The names were drawn and the teams were set on the eve of the tournament phase of the show. I ended up being paired with Mike Miller and at the time didn’t really know how successful he had become as a Canadian tournament angler. I was standing beside a guy by the name of Steve Bates and he was the first to tell me that I had just drawn one of the best anglers in the in Canada and that if he could pick anyone it would be Mike. Well, now my excitement was almost uncontrollable and back at the compound (the college campus were we were staying) we had some time to spend with our partners to discuss strategy. Knowing who I was fishing with I asked Mike to look at my gear and suggest what I should use and what technique that he felt would work inside our game plan. At this point I expected to get some of the secrets that the greats have had locked up for centuries and he looked at my gear dug through the thousands of dollars of stuff and pulled out a bag of hot pink Gambler Flappin Shads, suggested that I rig weed less and I should through it out the back of the boat all day. He suggested that I get some rest because we had a run in the morning. I agreed and as I fell asleep I wondered if he was messing around Pink Eh?

The next morning we woke to find that the weather was crazy, Reno and Angelo talked about pushing the tournament back a day but decided to blast off out of a different location on the south side of the lake, it was more sheltered over there. Mike did not like this change at all and I realized why when we blasted off, our long run turned into literally a 200 yard run we were blasting off on top of our spot! We towed the boats for 45 minutes away from North Bay just to blast off right on top of our first spot. That didn’t stop us though we went right to it a point at the mouth of a small creek and began to fish. Mike had us in less than 6” of water at the bow of the boat and was flippin into cattails and I had the most beautiful field of lily pads out the back of the boat you ever did see and yes, I through a hot pink gambler!

For the first couple of hours things were very slow I noticed that Mike was focused on one log in 4 to 5 feet of water tight to the cattails but it was shallow all around it. I am not going to say he was cursing, but he was defiantly wondering loudly and frequently, about where the fish that lived under this stick were and why are they not hitting! In my eyes the stick wasn’t much, I would have not even given it a second though but we beat the hell out it for 2 hours and carried on into the creek. Time was marching on and tension was building and at what seemed like the worst time possible, the camera boat pulled up and put a camera and crew member on board with us. Well like someone turn on a light when that camera came on Mike in his first cast hammered a 2 ½ pound largemouth and on his second consecutive cast caught another largemouth the same size brought it in smiled at the camera, the crew told us that we were awesome and left, unfortunately so did the fish. We didn’t catch another fish for at least an hour or so.

Throughout the day we stopped at that stick an easy 3 to 4 times, we go from one spot to another and back we went to one spot got stuck and through a rooster tail of mud of absolute magnanimous proportions caught a limit, small but a limit and left to go back to the stick. With an hour left we got there and Angie Douthit and Andre Bertrand were fishing our stick. We hung around the perimeter hoping that they would move off it but they were stuck like honey to a blanket. We hit another couple of spots quick but that was our day. We weighed in and got our total weight but weren’t allowed to tell anyone because “this is reality T.V you know” and went back to the compound. Knowing that we were on the bubble, the anxiety was huge I wanted to make it to the next round and so did Mike. At the banquet hall that night the standings were announced and we made it! I was going on to the next round along with Mike. The best part of this story, the winning team didn’t have a fish in the boat at noon the tournament ended at 3:00 the majority of their big fish were caught in the last hour of the day and you know who won……. Yes you guessed it Angie and Andre on Mike’s stick………….. 

Written by:

Steve Niedzwiecki

Chaudiere Lodge.

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Ontario Fishing Lodge