Some of you might be familiar already with our famous “Dock Bite” which runs from late May through June. Many large fish have been caught off our new dock (see newsletter item about the dock here : Léo’s Dock) during that time of the season. Rising temperature and yearly migration patterns tend to push the big ‘Eyes out of the Back Bay by late June. We then start sounding our lakeside structures for our trophy fishing.

Imagine our surprise when started hearing rumors that the guides were still pulling high 20″ slot fish of the docks in late July! Could it be that some of these beastly Walters never left? The area in question is our floating Guide Dock. After a good day on the lake, some of the boys just couldn’t resist throwing a line in after parking their Lunds. It’s now gotten to the point where the Guide Dock is a stop on the boys’ daily itinerary.

The Walleyes we’re catching seem to be hanging out in the cool shade provided by the boats and and the docks. Also a ready supply of forage (bugs, bait fish and bottoms of tubs of minnows) gives them no reason to leave. Impressive for water that is nearing the mid-seventies in the hot sun! Two trophy walleyes have already been angled by our guests and who knows how many times our resident fish will bite. Actually, the guides have named a few of the fish… One 27″ Walleye in particular has some distinguishing features that earned him the name “Henry” (he likes the slip where Tyler and Trevor park their boats) .

Although we’ve changed which dock we’re fishing, we are quite happy to report that not only can we find big fish on the lake, but that they also follow us back home at the end of the day!

For those that have followed along in past years, you are already familiar with our competitions here to crown a victor for the Aikens Lake Voyageur Games (Click here for the 2007/08 story1 - story2, the 2006/07 story1, and the 2005/06 story1). All staff members who are interested compete in 5 different events. Basically, the competition emulates the games that the “coureurs-de-bois” and voyageurs used to do back during the fur-trade era of the 1700-1800’s. Although primitive in nature, the games are a unique blend of brawn, skill, and wits to determine who is the ultimate voyageur.

This is the third year that we run these events here at Aikens. The purpose is not only to crown an Aikens Lake Ultimate Voyageur, but we use it as a qualifier for the main 64-man tournament held in Winnipeg every February. The winner and the first runner-up both get invited to compete under the Aikens Lake banner! In 2005, although we didn’t have an Aikens competition, we did sponsor Dave and Dan into the main tournament. In 2006 we held the inaugral Aikens Lake version of the games and Dave was deemed the Ultimate Voyageur, with Andre as first runner-up. They both competed that February. Last year, Turbo won the Aikens event but was in Phoenix in February so Ashton and Bruno competed during the Festival. This year, who would take the crown?

On the day of the competition, Bruno (who was an early favorite this year considering his 3rd place finish last summer) re-aggravated a shoulder injury. Unfortunately, this knocked him out of the competition before it ever began! This left 9 willing competitors to battle it out for the title (Kik, Points, Eric, Pat, Ashton, David, Julien, Andre, and Griffin). In the first event Griffin upset another one of the favorites, Ashton, in the first match! The finals in the leg wrestling saw Andre beat Pat. The 2nd event is the “lutte indienne”. Ashton beat out the upstart Julien in the finals. In fact, this would be the first of three straight events that Ashton would win! He defeated a hard-swinging David in the finals of the pillow fight, and then beat a wily Pat on the barrel tug-of-war. The final event, the log-sawing, was DQ’d after Andre snapped our only bow-saw while he was chewing through the 4″x4″! With the swarm of mosquitoes coming out to send us away, no one was too worried about finding a different solution to complete that final event! In the end, the final standings were already pretty decided. Congratulations Ashton on being crowned the 2008 Aikens Lake Ultimate Voyageur! The standings looked like this:

Ultimate Voyageur: Ashton (400 pts)

2nd place: Pat (325 pts)

3rd: Andre (275 pts)

4th-9th all had between 100-200 pts.

Pat has already decided to give Andre the honour of competing in the Games come February… so we look forward to cheering both Ashton and Andre this February. If you are going to be in Winnipeg at that time, please come out and cheer on our guys… it’s always a great night of fun!

Aikens Lake is proud to have hosted a large group of vendors and dealers from the Komatsu corporation. This well-known company, which specializes in mining and construction equipment of all sizes, chose Aikens as its destination to reward their top performers. On July 17th at 4:00pm., 20 guests stepped off the Otters onto our dock with smiles and high fives from the staff to greet them. Hailing from all parts of the USA, everyone arrived at the lake on schedule. As some might be aware, getting to the lodge consists of a 90 minute drive from Winnipeg and you arrive a short 35 minute float plane flight later. This means people can reach Aikens from any major commercial hub in North America in one day, better yet, can be fishing the day they travel! Same goes for larger groups.

A trip this size doesn’t happen without some extensive planning. That being said, the trip planners arrived a bit earlier than the rest of the group to scout things out. Glenn Schindelar, part of the executive team at Komatsu North America, and his co-worker Mike toured the lodge and all of its facilities and quickly realized they had made the right choice. It didn’t take long for them to decide to tour the lake to see what it had in store for them as far as fishing was concerned. They headed out with our guide Patrick hoping to catch a few fish before the planes arrived. Straight to the Saddle. They immediately found fish and started hammering big walleyes until the bite suddenly came to halt. On the Lowrance screen they saw the tell-tale blimp mark of a big pike. They tried to entice a bite with minnows, crawlers and of course, the Whitefish Spoon. Fifteen minutes later, Glenn set hook into the beast. He expertly wrangled the fish into the net and they all cheered as he hoisted the beast for yet another Kodak moment.

4:00pm. Our guests arrive and get settled in. A group this sizes gets exclusive use of the lodge. We try to fit their schedule as best we can to maximize their experience. Happy-Hour preceded a fabulous supper, then out to the lake with the guides for a beautiful evening of fishing. In the three days that followed, hundreds of fish were caught and everyone succeeded in reeling up lunker walleyes and pike. Shorelunch was served daily and obviously wowed the crowd. This meal was matched only by the menu Chef Jimmy and Élise offered in the lodge for supper. The night life was hopping all week! Big Molly’s Bar greeted huge crowds (staff too, of course) for parties that lasted into the wee hours. Live music was provided by Lightning Fingers Ronnie on the keys and our own Julien on the guitar. They were even taking requests…

This trip was the end result of a huge incentive campaign geared to drive sales of Komatsu equipment. Masterminded by the Creative Group (a promotions company), Komatsu’s top producers were invited on a three day All-Inclusive fly-in fishing adventure to one of North America’s premiere lodges. Is it any surprise they ended up at Aikens? You be the judge. This type of trip (organized by a promotional house) was a first for us at Aikens. It was nice to see the trip organizers so relieved that we were able to take care of all the logistics involved in a winning experience. We hope to host more of these great groups in the future.

On behalf of everyone at Aikens Lake Lodge, we’d like to thank Komatsu and the Creative group for having chosen us to host you on such a memorable trip. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon!

Mike McGough has been coming to Aikens since early in the millenium. He originally started coming with his good friend Dan Welty (who passed away a few years ago). He’s been an invited guest and a group leader for his own groups, and on every occasion he has cherished his time at Aikens! This year, Mike was once again a group leader, and he brought up a collection of eight family and friends for another great Aikens excursion.

The trip helped to kick off the 2nd half of our season. They didn’t waste any time bringing in the trophy fish! By 9:30, they had already reeled in the largest walleye of the year thus far, a 31″ beauty from Brownie’s Island in Lost Lake. After a great shorelunch to recharge the batteries, they headed back out and landed a 28″ at South Shore and then another 30″ at Middle Sister! Not bad for one day of fishing!

Over the next few days, they managed another 28″ and dozens of 26-27″ walleyes and even more 23-25″! Mike claims that this is the best fishing he’s had in all his trips to Aikens! By the final day, the group was waiting to see if one more lunker walleye would show up. Already having two 30″+ fish in the record books, time was starting to run out. Mike had everyone in the group meet up at the Saddle at 3PM in order to honor the late Walleye Welty (for a story of the trophy they sunk at the Saddle in 2005, please see our news item here). Mike and his fishing partner for the day Mel decided that there was no better place to end the trip than right there. They spent the next few hours reeling in beautiful walleye. At 4:45, Mike looked up to the skies and made a plea for World Famous Walleye Welty to make his presence felt. No more than 5 minutes later, Mel’s rod keeled over and the fight was on. As another behemoth 30.5″ walleye was gliding into the net, Mike couldn’t contain himself. He quickly stripped down to the skivvies and jumped right into the lake in celebration and honor of the fish and of his friend. Who says that prayers are never answered?!?

Something rare happened last week:  It is an incredible feat that for the first time in 20 years, there was a time during our season that no one at Aikens had the last name of “Turenne”!  As the break ended and the staff returned to Aikens, Pit and Julie were packing up the family to head back to Winnipeg for a few days.  There was a big wedding that they were really looking forward to attending.  Gerry and Lorraine were also busy that weekend, meaning that our Marketing Manager and Head Guide Patrick now would get to add a new title to his business card!

For four days, Pat held the fort admirably.  Although he didn’t hit the water during that stretch, he certainly had his hands full back in camp!  He greeted guests, unloaded planes, made trophy mugs & presentations, and assigned work to those who weren’t guiding.  He helped out with any problems that arose.  With Leo’s help, he was even able to get through a few little breakdowns on the sawmill and of a fuel pump.  The whole time, the staff worked hard for him, applauded him, and even came up with a new nickname… Mini-Boss!

Thanks Pat for allowing Julie and I the opportunity to fly out for a few days, and especially for giving us peace of mind while we were away.     From all accounts, you did a wonderful job and the guests and staff really appreciated your efforts.  Kudos to the “Mini-Boss”!

-Pit

Well rested and eager to please, the Aikens staff returned to the lodge yesterday after a well-deserved respite back in town. Many took advantage of their break to spend time with loved ones, sleep in late and some took in a round of golf or two. This year was the Third Annual Aikens Invitational. Pat&Turbo started this tradition as a twosome in ‘06. The year after Cedar and Julien joined in. This year the tourney grew to 13 people! It was a great time and most of all, everyone made it home in the same state (somewhat) as they had arrived. The winning team consisted of Julien, D.G. (Dan), Fonzy (Andre),Ashton and Points. Pizza, barley pops, laughs and the rest of the Aikens crew congregated together to form a wonderful July 6th evening!

Meanwhile, back at the lodge…July ushers in the second leg of our May to September season. We spent the day getting camp ready: the lawn mowed, the boats bailed and cleaned up, the lodge and cabins were all gussied-up to welcome our guests. The guides having had the chance to re-stock their tackle boxes, are chomping at the bit to go find the bite.

With the rising mercury, the thermocline (stratification of water temperature) is set-up and the baitfish (and Walleyes) are relating to it. This being said, this is the time in the season when we start seeing trophy fish on our lake structure! Spots such as The Saddle, Red Rock, South Shore Reef, Bear Island to name but a few will be definite Hot-Spots for our anglers.

High winds and constant rain delayed flights and kept most people on land. But that didn’t dissuade two of our guides (Trevor and Tyler AKA. Team Ontario) from braving the waves and trying their luck on the Saddle. Reports of 30+ fish hooked and the presence of slot Walleyes bodes well for the days to come.

Stay posted for more news about this summer’s events!

Hello everyone, Sorry about not updating the newsletter for the past week. We are officially in our mid-season break. We annually black out about 7-10 days in early July in order to send everyone home for a much-deserved break (July 2-11 this season). This year, the break was doubly deserved because we had one of the busiest Junes on record! We have already had over 100 flights into Aikens in less than 2 months. This is a great testament that the “Aikens Experience” is something very unique and cherished. A lot of our friends in the industry have been affected by the downturn of the economy in the USA. Although we have felt the pinch as well, our very loyal and strong customer base is still coming up in droves and for that we thank you. People don’t want to miss even one year of coming up to Aikens Lake. We also want to thank our ever-growing Canadian customers who continue to make Aikens Lake their favorite lodge destination. It’s very cool to see our neighbours from the East and West join our neighbours in the South in making the Aikens and the “Aikens Experience” so special. We look forward to a very strong 2nd half to our season!

An update on camp happenings in the past week: When our break started on July 2nd, we had several flights come in to fly out all of our staff. Julie’s family (parents and sister’s family) flew in on those flights to come and spend the break with Pit, Julie & the kids. The most excited one of the bunch was definitely Annika, who was counting down the days until her favorite cousins Jude (6) and Joel (3) stepped off the plane! So far, they have spent a ton of time running around camp, on the beaches, in the trampoline, and in the lodge. We have all done some fishing, and last night Julie guided her sister to a great trophy walleye (28-1/4″) in the South Arm. Pit has yet to guide his father-in-law or brother-in-law to anything of substance… shaking off the rust I guess!

We spotted a young cow moose at the end of the peninsula yesterday. At some point last night, she wandered through camp and left a few droppings around. This morning Kody was very active in “re-marking” his territory and barking around the perimeter of the camp. Other than that we have just been cleaning up little projects and continuing the day-to-day maintenance of the camp. Our staff and guests start flying back in on Friday the 11th of July. We look forward to another several days of rest and relaxation until the floodgates open back up to kick off an outstanding 2nd half of the season!