by Tammy MacDonald | Jun 10, 2013 | 2013 Season
The battle to get Scott Lake Lodge fully ready for the 2013 season is over: the cavalry has arrived. With the entire Scott Lake team now on the island, the remaining clean up/fix up tasks don’t have a prayer.
There are only 24 hours to go before we greet the first guests of the season and the activity level around the island is intense, but the big jobs all got done and done well. There is no sign left of the devastation that angry black bear unleashed on Laker Lodge except for the claw marks on the ventilation fan chamber, a trophy of sorts. The many challenges of the spring work were all met. The biggest job was the rehabbing of all the guide boats. They now look factory fresh. Guests in Bear and Loon cabins will appreciate the expansion of those cabins. Everyone will like the new flooring in Laker Lodge and the new exterior siding on all of the lakeside guest cabins. The new spruce chips are now being spread around the trails. The place looks great. WE ARE READY!
by Tammy MacDonald | May 28, 2013 | 2013 Season
Here comes the sun! The work crew at Scott Lake Lodge is basking in brilliant sunshine these days. With temperatures in the 70s for over a week the mass of ice is now black and starting to retreat from the shoreline. The forecast shows more of the same for the next week. We will have open water and great fishing for our first group arriving on June 11.
The beautiful weather has facilitated the spring work over the past few weeks. The damage from last fall’s marauding black bear has been repaired: the main lodge has a new floor and new lighting (that was a bad bear). A new kitchen range is being dropped in by helicopter next week—it’s too large and heavy for a float plane. We will have pictures of that. The routine “get the place ready for customers” tasks are being checked off one by one. The fleet of lodge boats has new floors and new interior paint. Wood chips are being laid down for the island walkways. The place is looking great. Plane flights for the Scott staff have been made and everyone will be at the island by June 9th. It is a time of high energy and excitement. The 2013 season is so close the crew at Scott can taste it. It’s almost time for patient Scott customers to take a bite.
by Tammy MacDonald | Apr 21, 2013 | 2013 Season
Report from the North:
Bear Repair
The work has begun to repair the damage that one apparently angry black bear inflicted on Laker Lodge at Scott Lake. For three weeks Chester Porteous (you know him as The Poacher) and our new winter watchman, Tell Keiper, have been cleaning up after our not so friendly bruin friend. The more they looked the more they found. Somehow this determined critter clawed through the floor under our ovens and destroyed all the controls as well as ripping off the doors of an commercial oven that weighs probably a thousand pounds. A new stove is ordered and will be put in well before our June 11 opener. Since it’s too big for the Otter it will make the trip from Stony Rapids dangling from a helicopter, maybe a first for any commercial oven. The lodge floor did not survive the attack either with parts of it ripped out. A work crew will be landing on the ice in late April to tackle all the Laker Lodge tasks, complete the work on reflooring all the guide boats and do the normal annual chores of getting the infrastructure in perfect condition, including the cutting of several hundred trees to create the wonderful spruce chipped trails connecting the guest cabins to the main lodge (Laker Lodge) and the boat docks.They will be essentially be stuck there until lake opens allowing float planes to again take to the air and land on Scott Lake. The job is big but the plan is tight. We look forward to seeing the faces of our several hundred “regulars” when they see all the improvements around the island.
Winter Hanging On
The winters at Scott are always long and cold. This year is no exception. There is a lot of snow which bodes well for a continuation of the high water levels we had last season which allowed the guides to get back into some of their favorite shallow bays. Unlike last winter when the lake just crawled with caribou, they have been scarce this winter with the concentrations to the north and east of Scott. It’s been a relatively quiet winter with a lot less snowmobile traffic on Scott. The Native hunters and trappers are heading further north this winter for their rendezvous with the caribou herds that travel hundreds of miles from the far tundra in late fall to spent the winter near the treeline just above the 60th parallel.
Report from the South
Full House
As we head into the final month of our booking season we are confident that we will have a full house all season at Scott. The number of repeat customers from last season was well over 300 and a lot of new guests have signed on for 2013. We are headed for a record number of guests this season, keeping all of our guides on the water straight through from June 11th to September 3rd. We thank all of our dedicated repeat customers and the new guests for their support and trust. The entire team at Scott is counting down the days to the first day back on the island. It is a remarkable community that develops every season at Scott. We have nearly all of our staff returning for the 2013 season. There will be a lot of hugs on the dock when staff and customers meet again. It’s just that kind of place.
For anyone still thinking about a trip to Scott this summer now is the time to make a move. Their are still some spots scattered through the season and we do get the occasional cancellation. Our Sales Manager, Jon Wimpney, is always close to his phone and laptop, even on the recent Guide Retreat in the jungles of Nicaragua. Give him a call at 306/209-7150- or drop him an email at j5@scottlakelodge.com for the latest availability. Or just call to talk fishing: it’s in his blood.
by Tammy MacDonald | Apr 21, 2013 | Guides
On the second of April, the Scott Lake Lodge guide team met in Managua, Nicaragua en route to a remote tarpon camp on the San Juan River near the border with Costa Rica. The Guide Retreat is a grand tradition, spanning a over a dozen years and diverse geography: Ascension Bay in Mexico, the bone fishing meccas of the Bahamas, the backcountry of south Florida, the sailfish infested waters of Golfo Duce in Costa Rica as well as closer to home places like the Frasier River in British Columbia where sturgeon measured in feet not inches are found and caught. This year the group wanted two things–hot weather and tarpon. The trip to the San Juan was planned and a dozen of Scott’s finest showed up in Managua.
After a couple of days of sampling the urban delights of Managua and seriously depleting the beer supply of the capital city, the group, led by General Manager John Gariepy, headed south by van to San Carlos at the bottom of massive Lake Nicaragua, then by boat for two hours down the San Juan River to the Monte Cristo Lodge near the small village of Sabalos. Set high above the river the lodge was a naturalist’s delight with an eco-theme featuring daily 4:00 AM wake up calls by a troop of howler monkeys who were right on time every morning. There were regular sightings of three species of monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, otters and birds beyond descriptions. And the fishing? Well, you can’t have everything. Let’s just say the some of the guides were missing the predictable action of Scott Lake.
The trip started with a bang: fifteen minutes into Day 1 owner Tom Klein hooked and landed a twenty pound snook which provided ample fillets for the first of many great dinners. Many other snook and lots of smaller but meaner fish, like the machaca, followed in decent numbers. But the tarpon quest was tough. They are moody fish and remarkably difficult to both hook and land. Bottom line: three tarpon landed and a dozen jumped (a nice way of saying they got off). A potential tarpon shutout was avoided when on Day 4, to use Scott Lake Lodge lingo, Steve “School Zone” Yanish drove his hooks into a heavy tarpon. For an hour and a half he battled the fish before declaring victory. It was dicey several times but Steve brought it to a shoreline for beaching. He then jumped on the muddy looking shoreline only to sink up to his waist in the mud and fall backwards on his right shoulder. But he held on with his left arm high and with the help of the Nicaraguan guide, Jan Phoenix and Tom Klein he literally wrestled (look at the picture) the well over one hundred pound fish to submission. For Steve it was a moment of profound satisfaction. He had dreamed of catching a tarpon since he was fifteen. Nearly twenty years later he held his prize. For others it will have to be a dream delayed until a future trip, except for Jan Phoenix who was not interested in dreams, but he will be dreaming for years about his experience on the very last day of the trip.
No one in the group had fished harder than Jan. At 5:00 AM on Day 7 Jan was out on the water while everyone else was still in bed. His faith and determination were rewarded. That morning he hooked three tarpon and landed two–the picture tell the rest of the story. They were both 100 pound plus tarpon. One required an hour and twenty minutes to land. This was a storybook ending to an exciting and rewarding trip. While this was not the tarpon bonanza the guys had hoped for it was for all a memorable trip. Fishing after all is fishing and results rarely meet expectations. (Well maybe at some places… maybe Scott Lake.)
But we were fishing for more than something at the end of a line. We were looking to reinforce and enhance the remarkable teamwork that defines the Scott Lake Lodge guide team. On that score it was a remarkably successful trip. John Gariepy summed it up best: “The fishing was tough and it was rewarding to see this group of guys work together to create opportunities to make the best of it. While the tarpon were “off their feed”, other fish were available and our guides knew how to make the best of a tough situation.” Head Guide Cory Craig put the real benefit of the trip into a perfect metaphor: “Being on the ‘other side’ of the boat really helps all of us better understand our jobs. We see what we like and what we don’t like in a guided fishing day. That makes us more aware of what Scott customers expect.” This was a week well spent that will pay dividends for all of Scott Lake Lodge’s customers, this year and many years ahead. Memories of fish, big and small, jungle hikes and kayaking will fade but the bonds built here in the jungles of Nicaragua will endure.
