Recently, I took a camping and fishing trip with some friends into Black Lake, in the Nopiming Provincial Park. We spent 3 days fishing, had a beautiful campsite, and perfect weather.
A Rocky Start
Our first day had a rocky start, at least for me. Colin and myself drove out early in the morning, with Brendon and Riley to meet up with us in the afternoon. I had a brand new life jacket for my dog and decided to bring her with us. It seemed like a good idea at the time, since she likes water, likes the kayak on the ground, and likes camping. I figured that she should like all 3 together.
She even liked wearing her life jacket
When Colin and I got to the campsite, however, it only took about 10 minutes on the water to realize that this wasn’t going to work out. She would not stay still, and kept trying to climb up on my lap and lean out over the side. Having 50lbs of weight moving back and forth constantly on the kayak is not a fun time, so I made the decision to take her back home.
The campsite is about a 2 hour drive from home, and since I drove there, then home to drop off the dog, then back, I wasted the first 6 hours of the day (plus lot’s of gas!). By the time I finally got back to the campsite it was time to meet up with Brendon and Riley and I hadn’t done any fishing yet.
Black Lake makes up for it
After everyone was set up in camp, we headed out for an evening fish.
Black Lake is long and narrow, and not too deep generally. It has many fantastic rocky shorelines, channels, and structure that make for good fishing. We caught some walleye and bass, no one got skunked, and overall just had a nice time on the water for the evening.
Unfortunately we didn’t catch anything big enough to keep for dinner, so we headed back and fried up some burgers instead. Sunset brought on swarms of mosquitoes, and since we were all tired from all the fresh air and sun anyways, we turned in early.
Our campsite was great and had tons of space
Second day, Tooth Lake delivers!
Morning saw us up nice and early and quickly on our way to Tooth Lake. Tooth Lake is one of my all time favorite lakes to fish for smallmouth bass. It was a quick portage from the parking area to the lake, and we were on the water in no time. I had recently gotten my monthly subscription box full of lures from Simple Fishing, and decided to take this opportunity to test out my goodies.
As a group, we did well. Bites were plentiful, even if hooking them was giving us trouble. Testing out a handful of specific lures made catching fish a bit harder for me than for the others, but once I completed that challenge things picked up quickly.
It’s no monster, but it counts!
The weather was perfect, the water a good temperature for swimming, and it ended up being a great day all around.
We took a few breaks here and then to fish off shore.
Once again, no one was skunked which always makes for a great day fishing. We spent a full day on the water before heading back to the campsite.
Camp meals are the best meals
Evening brought a wonderful fish fry and another early bedtime. We woke up on day 3 and spent the morning cooking up a fabulous breakfast.
One of the absolute best parts of camping, at least for me, is the incredible meals. When I go camping or take anyone with me, there is no skimping on the food. Our fish fry included fresh bass, caesar salad, beans, and potato salad. Breakfast was skillet potatoes, sausages, bacon, and scrambled eggs. There was more food than we could eat, and that’s never a bad thing.
Wrapping it up
We didn’t have another full day’s worth of time to spend on the water, so after breakfast we packed things up and headed out of the park. While the others went home, Colin and I stopped at the Whitemouth river on the way back and put the kayaks in for a few hours.
Always a relaxing paddle
The Whitemouth river is always a nice relaxing paddle, which is what we wanted after 2 days of going hard. We got a few bites but didn’t actually catch anything.
A few hours later we drifted back to the launch and loaded up the kayaks again. With everything secure, we made our way home.
All in all, it was another successful trip. The campsite was amazing, the fishing was good, and as always it was great to hang around with friends for a few days. Both Black and Tooth lakes are ones that I have visited multiple times, and I never get tired of fishing them. I will be back to each of them as often as I possibly can!
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