12/10/2018
HAPPY “FISH” YEAR
FROM STORMER LAKE LODGE
We have just finished our 18th year of being in the lodge business and our fourth year at Stormer Lake Lodge. If you have ever heard the saying, “time passes very quickly if you are doing something you love”, we are here to tell you that the saying is very true. We get so excited in the Spring for the fishing season to start and before we know it, the season is over. The good news is that there are always stories to be told, memories that have been made and friendships that are created.
We always want to start out by thanking our guests who have fished with us this past summer. We have said maybe thousands of times that a lodge is not a lodge without guests. We are very thankful to own Stormer and it is all because of our wonderful guests and friends.
When we look back on this past summer, it was very evident that our guests caught a lot of fish right from the start of the fishing season and it continued through September. This theme of catching fish did not change throughout the summer even if the weather changed, or the Mayflies hatched, or even if you were a new angler to Stormer Lake Lodge. We started the season by posting fishing reports on our website blog only to realize that each post in the future would sound the same. “Fishing was fantastic and people are catching a lot of fish. Repeat”. Hence, our blog posts were not as frequent for the summer.
We are always trying to maintain our premier status as one of best World Class fishing lodges in Northwest Ontario. This means that each summer we select projects that will improve the experience for our guests, or fix maintenance issues that crop up from time to time. This past year was no exception. We purchased a completely new G3 boat and Yamaha outboard rig along with two new Yamaha 50hp outboards. We will be purchasing one more new Yamaha 50hp outboard to replace the last of our older 40hp Honda’s. That should complete the changeover from our older boat & motor rigs to all newer equipment.
Prior to the 2016 season, we rebuilt the entire shore lunch log ramps on Kirkness Lake in hopes of making it easier for our boats to come up on the ramps and also to allow guests to get out of the boats more safely. This past summer we added extra logs to further improve the ramp, however, very low water level somewhat counteracted the effect of the extra logs. We did have some difficulty getting our boats up on to the logs and were forced to float and anchor some boats just off of shore at the shore lunch spot. We sure hope the water levels come up this coming summer. We also added a couple more picnic tables, sitting benches and a new table at the shore lunch area. There is nothing better than a shore lunch on the lake with fish caught only minutes or hours before. Now that is fresh.
As all of you know that visited our lodge this past summer, there was a fair amount of contractor activity all up and down Nungesser Rd which consisted of a new electrical power grid supplying power to the Native Reserve North of our lodge. That meant that a lot of trees were downed to allow the power poles and wire to be run. We took advantage of a couple of stacks of logs that were close to our lodge which meant some of the easiest firewood we would probably ever have a chance to acquire. We did find out after we hauled off the second load of logs that were not supposed to pilfer the logs after all. Oh well, I guess it was a case for the old saying “better to ask forgiveness than permission”. Want to thank Kenny & Mike for all of the cutting, splitting and stacking of the logs.
Over the past few years, we have slowly been replacing older water heaters with new ones. This past summer, we were informed that we would have a propane inspection from the government to check our equipment and propane lines. We actually came away after the inspection with flying colors but the inspector told us that we could improve our system and make it more efficient if we did some changes. We took their recommendations to the full extent by replacing all of the older equipment or system with all new. This meant 4 new water heaters, all new copper propane lines, all new valves & water separators and two new propane tanks. The inspector came back in September and told us we have one of the best propane systems he has seen in some time. We cannot thank Kenny enough for digging all of the trenches for the new lines. If you are wondering what I was doing, I was supervising of course. Somebody has to lean on the shovel and eat a sandwich.
When we arrived to the lodge in the spring, we noticed that ice had twisted the first section of our boat dock to the point that we decide to rebuild that first section. This meant taking the metal dock bracket to town and having a machine shop bend it back in to the correct shape. We then rebuilt the section with all new treated lumber. Hopefully, our lake water level will come up and early season winds will be low, to avoid an ice shove against our dock.
Linda always likes to mention that new clothing items were available this past summer and will also be available in the lodge to purchase in 2019. We hope that our guests will promote Stormer Lake Lodge via a new hat or t-shirt or a guide shirt.
If you are still reading this letter, you must be thinking “when are they going to start talking about the fishing this past summer”. Well, you have waited long enough.
OK, let’s start off talking about Walleye fishing at Stormer. In the past, we have used the words INCREDIBLE, FANTASTIC and PHENOMENOL to describe the Walleye fishing at Stormer Lake Lodge. This year we are using the words HARD TO BELIEVE. We say the words “hard to believe” because most of the time when we tell anglers who have never fished out lake system how many fish we catch, they tend to think that is “hard to believe”. We know this appears as bragging or over the top, but we hope and believe that if you fished at Stormer these past few summers with us, you will agree with this assessment and know it is not hard to believe.
Ice out was fairly early again this year so most of the Walleyes were past spawning and were out in the main body of water in both Stormer and Kirkness Lakes. This meant that the “Tubes” right out in front of the lodge never produced long periods of quality Walleye catches. There were moments of glory but hitting the points and shorelines were a better choice. Water level was quite low for this early time of year so the water temps seemed to warm up slightly sooner than normal. Walleyes were being caught on points and w**d lines early in the season as normal but the better Walleye bite came when the Walleyes reached the reefs. Reef fishing was nothing short of incredible this past summer, or should we say “hard to believe”, with most days seeing catches of well over 100 Walleye per boat. One very interesting scenario that happened this summer was that almost all Walleyes over 30 inches were caught on Stormer Lake and not Kirkness Lake. We have always known from previous guests that fishing Stormer Lake has the best chance of catching a Walleye over 30 inches and it proved true this summer. It is important to note that all fish over 18 inches are released. We want to thank our guests for releasing these fish and getting replicas made of their trophy fish. It is a win-win for the fishery and the angler.
We had a fairly good Mayfly hatch in late June and into early July but we did not notice any change in the quality of the Walleye or Pike bite. On most lakes, a Mayfly hatch will shut down fishing for a few days but with our quantity and quality of fishing, we just keep catching fish.
As the summer progresses, we normally expect Walleyes to go deeper as the water temps warm up, and while this was true on Stormer and Kirkness lakes, we still caught Walleyes in shallow water in addition to deep reefs. It is not uncommon to catch high numbers of Walleyes in 4-8 feet of water at various locations on the lake system in August and September. We had a very fun bite for Walleyes in August and September near our channel between Stormer and Kirkness Lake.
Now that we have expounded on the quality of Walleye fishing at Stormer Lake Lodge, some of you may be wondering, “What was the best method for catching all of those fish”? We have never eliminated any of the popular methods for catching Walleyes such as slip sinker rigs, spinner rigs, drop shot rigs, back trolling a crawler harness, etc. However, any angler that has been to Stormer Lake Lodge will know that we prefer a simple method and that is a light jig tied directly to monofilament LIGHT test line and then tipped with a frozen minnow, leech or crawler. We have talked about our gold glitter jigs in the past for catching a lot of Walleyes and anyone who tried them this past summer found out they work extremely well. We stress light tackle and truly believe that this works the best in any situation for Walleyes.
Without sounding redundant about the quality of Walleye fishing at Stormer, we lastly wanted to mention that we had the owners of the All Canada Sport Show come up to our lodge and fish with us this past summer. They have been to a lot of lodges all across Canada over the past 20 plus years and their one main comment at the end of their week was; “This might be the best drive-to fishing lodge we have been to for Walleyes. It is definitely up for debate”. We thought this was a very powerful statement for the quality of our fishery. They have written an article for their All Canada Show Magazine about Stormer Lake Lodge so please come out to one of their shows and not only read the article but stop by our booth and let’s talk fishing. We will be in St Charles IL and Green Bay WI.
Now that we have mentioned how good the Walleye fishing was for the summer, we can say the same thing about Pike fishing. Because Pike spawn with colder water temps than most fresh water fish, Pike were definitely out on the main lake and biting often when the season first started. Stormer Lake is always a tremendous Pike location with days of catching 25-40 fish not being uncommon. Weeds came up about normal time frame so this w**d line pattern was good for most of the summer. Large Pike also came off of reefs but this is always a slightly tougher pattern to put up higher numbers of fish. The most productive lures were Rattle Traps, medium size stick baits and Spoons such as Cleo’s, Johnson Silver Minnows and 5 of Diamonds especially on sunny days. We had many Pike over the 40 inch length as we do every year, but this past summer we believe we had the most Pike caught in the 30-39 inch class of any other year. Our Pike fishery is very healthy and fish are definitely on the large size on average.
We have mentioned in the past that Fly Fishing for Pike has been growing in popularity and this year we can say without a shadow of a doubt that we had the most Fly Fishermen of any previous years. I personally have never tried fly fishing but can only imagine how exciting it would be to land a 40 plus inch monster Pike with a fast action fly rod.
While we are not considered a World Class Smallmouth Bass fishery, we do catch large Bass in the 16-22 inch range each summer. To be honest however, we caught slightly less Bass this season than other summers but we also had less anglers fishing for them also. Most anglers fish for Walleye and Pike and then near the end of their week of fishing, they might try for Bass. To be fair, if an angler would concentrate on Bass for the week, they will catch many close to 20 inches but we tend to have a hard time pulling them away from the incredible Walleye and Pike fishing.
Normally, for this section of our newsletter, we talk about our Bear hunting success. However, we did not conduct a bear hunt this past Fall season based on the high level of electrical contractors working on Nungesser Rd for the new hydro power installation for the Native Reserve North of our lodge. We believe they will be finishing this project this winter but we have heard rumors that they now will be starting to build a new permanent road system for all of the fly-in communities to the North. This might cause another higher level of activity on our road which might affect our bear hunting quality. We will assess the situation once we arrive to the lodge in the Spring and then take reservations for bear hunters based on availability. Fortunately, it does not affect our fishing quality.
We are excited to mention that our 2 wild but “friendly pet” fox were back with us again at Stormer this past summer. And actually, at the end of the summer, a third fox showed up and jumped right in taking food from us. We think it is fair to say that not many people can state that they have fed a wild fox directly out of their hand. Our two fox will come right up and take a piece of meat or bread directly from your fingers. This will never get old having the fox around the lodge and we think it is just out right very cool to say the least. We have named our two fox Shy and Sly but did not get a chance to name the third. We hope they will survive the winter and be back with us this coming summer.
For anyone who has been to Stormer Lake Lodge in the past 3 years you would have met our tremendous full time staff, Kenny & Dawn, and our professional guide Mike. We want to thank them for all they do and know we could not operate Stormer Lake Lodge without them. They are great people and have become our very good friends. We are especially thankful for their help this past summer. Many of you may know that I was having health issues for most of the summer and Kenny, Dawn and Mike worked very hard while keeping a great attitude to keep everything running as smooth as possible. We are happy to report that I am doing great and feel fantastic.
In addition to Mike helping us out around the lodge, he is also our professional guide and is available throughout the summer to guide you to a great Walleye, Pike of Bass catching day. Mike will teach you technique, location, structure, boat control and maybe even tell you a few local native stories. He is always down at the dock in the evenings and cannot wait to talk with guests about fishing. We also want to thank Stacey and his dad Rob for coming all the way from Kenora and guiding for us this past summer. Stacey and Rob both guide on Lake of the Woods so we are thankful they make the long trek to Stormer for our guests. We truly believe we have the best guides in Canada.
Linda and I are very busy getting our marketing materials prepared to hit the road to Sport Shows starting in mid-January. We will be at the All Canada Shows in St. Charles IL on Jan. 10-13, then to Green Bay, WI Jan. 17-20. We also encourage you to visit our website at www.stormerlakelodge.com, where you can view our Trip Advisor page and our blog forum. We encourage you to write about your vacation on our Trip Advisor page or on our blog page. This helps other guests learn about Stormer and potentially book a trip to Stormer. It also may help us with Google placement on the web.
Our reservations for the 2019 fishing season are on an all-time record pace for bookings. We are always careful not to sound like a marketing promotional machine when discussing reservations but we also know that getting the correct week and right cabins for your group are important and we want to make sure all details are perfect. If you are currently reserved and we have received your deposit, you either should have or will be receiving a confirmation email from Linda. If you have not sent in your deposit as of yet, we may be holding your cabin but our waiting list is growing considerably. A deposit guarantees your cabin. If we have not received your deposit by December 20, we will be reviewing our waiting list to fill your cabin with another group. We apologize if this procedure sounds aggressive but our season is so short that we want to make sure we maximize our lodge vacancies.
Please make a personal check out to STORMER LAKE LODGE for $250.00 per person and mail to the following address (We do not accept credit cards for deposit payment):
DAVID BECKER
PO Box 564
Mercer, WI 54547
We thank everyone for what looks like to be a phenomenal upcoming season at Stormer Lake Lodge. We also would like to mention about our FALL SPECIAL in September where the first guest is regular price and the second guest is HALF PRICE. This might be a perfect chance to take that second fishing trip of the season to Stormer Lake Lodge.
We will be attending Sport shows starting in January. We hope you all can come out and hang with us at our booth and help us promote Stormer Lake Lodge. There is no doubt that a new potential guest will believe a current guest who has been to the lodge compared to a “bragging lodge owner”. Here is our schedule for Sport shows.
January 10-13 All Canada Show – St Charles IL. Pheasant Run Complex
January 17-20 All Canada Show – Green Bay WI Radisson Convention Center (Oneida Casino)
And finally, we wanted to thank everyone for making our fourthseason at Stormer Lake Lodge a success beyond imagine. Linda and I are very fortunate to live this life and to meet great people from all walks of life. The world seems to be in a great moment of transition but if more people fished, it would be a better place.
If you are talking to friends and family and they have not received this newsletter, then they are obviously not on our emailing list. Please have them go to our website and submit their email address on our CONTACT US link near left side of the homepage.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS.
Dave & Linda Becker
[email protected]
www.stormerlakelodge.com
920-810-2491
DID YOU KNOW…………
1. Sharks do not lay eggs but give birth to live pups?
2. The oldest known age for a fish was an Australian Lungfish? In 2003, it was still alive at 65 years old.
3. Saltwater fish need to drink more water than a freshwater fish? Since seawater is saltier than the liquids in a fish’s body, water inside the fish is constantly flowing out. If they didn’t drink to replace the lost water, saltwater fish would dry up like a prune.
4. That a Walleye gets its name from a special pigment in its eye that reflects light?
5. The oldest recorded age for a Walleye was 29 years?
6. That most of the world’s lakes are in Canada, Russia, Alaska, Sweden and Finland?
7. Kenny, our dock hand, can eat 10 candy bars and a bag of Nibs licorice during one two hour movie? VERY TRUE! And that is even after eating a full dinner.
8. That Camp X was a spy school to train Allie spies during the Second World War? It was located between Whitby and Oshawa Ontario Canada. The official name of the school was Special Training School 103. Famous students included James Bond creator Ian Fleming and British author Ronald Dahl.
9. Wayne Gretzky, also known as “The Great One”, inspired a coffee beverage with 9 creams and 9 sugars based on his playing jersey number 99?
10. Stormer Lake Lodge is one of the farthest drive-to Lodges in NW Ontario?
11. The earliest visual evidence we have of what might be considered a “modern” fishing reel was found in a Chinese painting from 1195. The earliest written description of a fishing reel also comes from China but is even earlier, dating back from the 3rd century.
12. Wisconsin had 2.94 million licensed hunters in 2013 more than any other state in the United States?
13. That it is 3961 kilometers or 2461 miles from Stormer Lake Lodge to Key West Florida, the most southern city in the United States?
14. That the farthest point in Eastern Canada is Cape Spear Newfoundland and the farthest point in Western Canada is Boundary Peak 187, Yukon. The distance between Cape Spear NF and the closest town nearest Boundary Peak 187, Inuvik NT, is 9316 km or 5785 miles.
15. If you took an average size Walleye of 24 inches caught at Stormer Lake Lodge and lined them up nose to tail from Cape Spear NF to Inuvik NT It would take 15,272,400 Walleyes. No problem, our guests must have caught that many in our previous 4 years, correct?
16. That you are more likely to have a higher degree of injury by straining a muscle getting out of a boat compared to being hooked in your hand or ear by your fishing partner. This is true. So the real question is: Is it your partners fault or your own for not doing more stretches and exercises?
17. In 1812 an American ship named The Nanina, commanded by Captain Charles Barnard, attempted the rescue of a British ship named The Isabella and its crew stranded on Eagle Island in the Falklands. When the Americans went out to search for food for the extra crew, the British took over the ship and left the Americans stranded on the island. The moral of the story is to not leave your floating marker buoy on a Walleye reef and go look for another good fishing spot. When you get back, there will be 5 other boats fishing your marker buoy.
18. One of the most expensive yachts in the world is owned by Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the sheik of Dubai. It was built in 2006 for $627 million dollars. It is 590 ft. long and has a submarine. Definitely not our next upgrade boats.
19. Stormer Lake Lodge only has a few cabins left for the 2019 fishing season so if you are still contemplating a trip, please contact us so we can arrange for all details for your trip.
Stormer Lake Lodge is a drive-to lodge located 1 hour north of Red Lake Ontario on famous Stormer and Kirkness Lakes. We are the ONLY LODGE on both lakes and can boast WORLD CLASS Trophy Walleye, Northern Pike and Smallmouth Bass fishing. We are confident that you will not find better fishing in all...
