Here in Ontario, Canada, we are fortunate enough to have a wide selection of places for summer paddling and fishing. There are several provincial parks with "car camping" on beautiful lakes. Algonquin park is a very popular backcountry summer destination with a great trout fishery for those willing to put in the effort to portage their canoes several lakes away from the day trippers and weekend campers. Through conservation efforts over the last century, they've managed to minimize the footprint of bass, pike and other "invasive species" on the trout lakes and it's a sought-after park relatively close to Toronto with thousands of lakes and canoe routes to explore.
This year, the EGL hammock campers decided to go after some spring bass for the opener. The destination chosen was Noganosh Lake Provincial Park near Port Loring, Ontario. Noganosh is a "non-operating provincial park", meaning it has no fees or services or, in this case, access roads into the park. It's a little over 3 hours from Toronto and is accessed by paddling on the Pickerel River to Smoky Creek, then taking a series of portages around rapids and beaver dams to reach the park interior. Once there, you'll find a beautiful series of lakes, bays, and primitive campsites which, compared to Algonquin are a lot less traveled. 7 people made the trek this year and the plan was to have the first group go in on Thursday, paddle like hell to get the campsite designated on our map as "Campsite Deluxe" before the season opened on Saturday which would bring a flurry of people from the city to try their luck for the
largemouth and pike which patrol the waters there. "Deluxe" in this case meant the campsite was on an island and had a privy, or as we call them here... a thunder box. Others would meet us there on Friday and Saturday.
Thursday
I arrived at Flemings Landing around 9am and found Keewaykeno and Highboy 76 waiting for me at the boat launch. After a few minutes of organizing my gear, the 3 of us were off on our way down the Pickerel River keeping an eye out for the first portage into smoky creek. The portage, while not long, was muddy and just clouded over with mosquitoes and black flies. The late and wet spring this year has made water levels high and the bugs worse than they've been in a while. Once onto Smoky Creek, you wind through a marshy area for a few kilometers until you come to a beaver dam with about a 5 foot height. Some slide their canoes over loaded but we chose to empty ours and portage around the obstacle. A short paddle later and you come across the last portage before the park interior lakes. It's an easy, flat 400ish meter path that leads to the last section of smoky creek before opening up on to Smoky Lake. There is a fly-in resort on this lake which was completely deserted when we paddled by. After an hour or so paddling down the lake, we navigated the narrows between Smoky and Noganosh Lake. "Deluxe" was another few kilometers down the north south channel of the lake.
Once we landed, we realized that it was perfectly situated for minimizing bugs because the channel funneled a constant breeze onto the northern point of the island where we set up our camp. I've been "going to ground" for a little while and decided just to sleep on an air mattress inside my Eureka No-Bug-Zone netted tarp. It's a great piece of gear to have if you enjoy getting out between spring and late july when the bugs can really put a damper on the trip. It has enough room inside to set up chairs and make it a communal hangout away from the swarm. Luckily, because of the breeze we didn't need to do that on this trip. The rest of the day was spent laughing, eating and (for me at least), relaxing. The day ended with a beautiful sunset.
Friday
On Friday, we slept in and woke up to another beautiful day. Today we were expecting Jiblets, Jimmay and BigGreenMoose to join us. I spent the morning fishing. With bass season still 24 hours away, I've heard tell of huge pike on noganosh and I started trolling and casting looking for them. I came up empty. So I started casting into weed beds and caught a few medium size large mouth bass which had to go back in the drink. Highboy and Keewaykeno had similar luck catching bass but the friday pike eluded us. Dehydrated lasagna would be my dinner on Friday. When I got back from my morning fishing, Jiblets had arrived and we checked out the reflector oven he made. He did a great job on it and being aluminum and folding flat, it's a great addition to any canoe trip. Jiblets planned to make some deep dish pizza in front of the fire. Having been on the receiving end of his cooking for a few years now, I was really looking forward to this and knew it would be delicious. However, his no-knead dough recipe needed a full 24 hours to rise properly so we wouldn't be eating any on Friday. Later in the afternoon, 2 more canoes rounded the point with Jimmay and BigGreenMoose paddling. The island, while nice, only had a relatively small area to set up camp. Usually, we spread out a little bit but it wasn't possible this time. So, the collective chorus of snoring rivaled the racket the bullfrogs were making all night. The night ended with a campfire and lots of laughs and food shared before we turned in to get ready for bass fishing in the morning.
Saturday
I spent the morning looking for bass for the evening's fish fry. After 2 hours of catching sunfish and some smallmouth I had to throw back, I returned to the campsite for lunch. Just after, Chard, the last of the group to join us came around the corner in "Lipstick", his red Chestnut Prospector. We greeted him with the obligatory "whoo buddy!!" and helped him get unloaded. We were now 7. I took off later in the afternoon fishing again and caught 2 nice size largemouth bass. I found a spot where I could pull one out with pretty much every other cast. Since, with a conservation fishing licence in ontario, you're only allowed 2 keepers per day, I headed back to camp and put the stringer in the water to wait for dinner - hoping that Chompy, our resident snapping turtle didn't find them before I returned to clean them. Jimmay was the hero of the day and brought back 6 really nice size bass. He had a monster pike in the boat but he jumped out after removing the hook (so we're told). If you see a pike swimming around Noganosh with a spreader in it's mouth, say hi to the one that got away. Highboy and I cleaned the catch and had a nice size bag of fillets ready for the pan.
I used my 5" Firebox stove on this trip and it did a great job on our fish fry. Highboy brought some Garam Masala powder and black pepper we added into the Fish Crisp for a really tasty batter. His hot sauce blend made the meal perfect. Nobody went hungry. To be honest I was counting on having fish for dinner and I was short a meal on this trip if we didn't catch anything.
Jiblets started a roaring fire and we finished off a perfect day (second longest of the year!!) cutting up and having laughs before people drifted off in their hammocks.
Sunday
Another perfect weather day. This time, no breeze at all. We got up a little earlier than usual and everyone started packing. With paddling / portaging / driving it was a 12 hour journey home for me. Jiblets pizza dough, finally ready, was put in a deep dish pan and into the reflector oven. I've stopped being surprised at how good everything he cooks tastes long ago. I can honestly say this was among the best pizza I've had anywhere. The location made it that much better. Jiblets planned to hang around a little while longer - cook another pizza and then make his way out. The rest of us loaded our boats and re-traced our path north and east again back to the boat launch. I think it took me about 3.5 hours to get back to the car. Once we loaded up and a few people had a swim, we shook hands and all parted ways until the next EGL hang later this summer.
Hopefully some others can chime in with pics of our alleged fish and that pizza... Never thought to take any.
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That pizza oven looked really interesting and the pizza looked delicious. Thanks for sharing 
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