The carpenters have laid down their hammers, the painters have cleaned their brushes and the new residents have moved in. The roster of impressive new buildings here on the peninsula now has two new additions. A brand-new welding shop (Léo’s private playhouse) called “The Timber wolf” and the aptly named “Rod Lockers” are the newest additions to our infrastructure. The Timber wolf houses all forms of tools and welding equipment needed for repairs to any machine at the lodge. The Rod Lockers are situated near the Guide Dock and boast 22 spacious lockers for the guides and staff members. This includes a large storage locker for all of the gear our valued guests like to leave here year after year (After all - with all these clamp downs with the airlines, it is really nice to not have to worry about your gear every trip!). The lockers surround a large communal space where the boys can shoot the breeze about the day’s catch (similar to a dressing room in an arena).
Both buildings were completed earlier this month, but each has already earned its keep and has been extremely practical. The Timber wolf has serviced all of our quads and golf carts, while the lockers are now cozy homes for the staff’s gear and other stuff. In fact, the Rod Lockers even played host to a great evening when the staff put on a music concert in a western theme known as the Ho-Down party! The functionality of both establishments has everyone pleased to see that their construction efforts are paying off. With our commitment to providing our staff and our guests with the utmost experience, who knows whats next? Inevitably, Aikens will be even more well equipped to further secure its place among the elite lodges in the industry!
For the past 13 years, we have hosted our own version of the Olympics here at Aikens. We call them the “Little Hammered Olympics”, as it is not uncommon for a beer or two to be consumed during this event! We split the staff up into four teams of four. They get very creative with the team names and costumes. This year, we had the following entries:
Club Med (Janelle, Trevor, Elise, David) Bissett Air Rescue (Marcel, Pat, Michelle, Eric)
Walleye Wranglers (Aisha, Points, Mitch, Ashton)
Ro Heff & the Bunnies (Rochelle, Bruno, Tyler, Griffin)
We had a special guest MC for this year’s event. Andrina, hot off a successful show in Ohio opening for Smokey Robinson, was able to fly in that very afternoon for our annual tradition! She led the crowd through a great bilingual rendition of our national anthem, then the games were on! This year, our olympics featured 4 events… of which only one was a returning event from 2007! We replaced our volleyball tournament with a soccer tournament. It was very spirited and hotly contested! The Bunnies faced off against the Bissett Air Rescue in the finals, and it came down to a shootout to determine the winner. After having 7 shooters per side come and go without deciding a winner, Tyler finally squeaked one by Marcel and the Bunnies took the first event.
The second event was also new… a canoe race carried from shore down the dock into the water, then all the way around Compost Island and back to the dock! All four teams had great times which were all within 13 seconds of each other! The fastest time was from Bissett Air Rescue which finished the race in 2:39. The funniest moment came when the Bunnies barreled into the dock at full speed, the impact of which shocked them and quickly flipped the canoe upside down! So much for staying dry…
The third event was called the Rainsuit Relay. Participants would pair up, get geared up in a rainsuit, and wheelbarrow each other across the volleyball yard. Once that was complete, the other two from the same team would do the same. Times varied wildly in this event, as a few of our competitors (we’re looking at you Bunnies!) misunderstood the rules and actually changed rainsuits midway through the race! First place was won by the Walleye Wranglers with a time of 1:15.
The final event was the waterballoon toss. Teams had two players on each side of the volleyball net. Everyone lined up and threw a water balloon over the net to their partner. After each successful toss, the whole line would take a step backwards. Every team started with one spare balloon to break. However, there was a twist! All night contestants had been making sure that our judges (Lorraine, Leo, Denis, Pit, Julie, Andrina, and special guest scorekeeper Rachelle) always had a full drink, a seat to relax in, or even some foot massages. Although they didn’t know it, their efforts were rewarded with extra balloons! The Walleye Wranglers received 4 spare balloons, Bissett Air Rescue 3 spares, Club Med received 2 spares, and the Bunnies only got the one! Club Med’s pairing of Trevor and David kept their single balloon alive to the end to win the event!
So, as you’ve been reading, you’ve probably noticed that each team won one event. It would all come down to 2nd place finishes! The winner turned out to be the Bissett Air Rescue team! For Marcel, it’s his 2nd gold medal in only his 2nd year (editor’s note: Although Pit no longer competes, he failed to win the gold every single time he competed… at least 7 in all!). Thanks to all the staff who showed great spirit, creativity, and camaraderie yet again to make this another great success in the long tradition of the Aikens Lake “Little Hammered Olympics”!
For the last few years, our partners at The Aviary Group have been organizing a buddies trip at the lodge. Looking forward to some well-deserved R&R, our guests thoroughly enjoy the simply beautiful life here at Aikens. Upon arrival, it was evident that Big Molly’s would be hopping. Turbo, our former guide turned real estate agent, came in with the boys from Arizona. Just like old times, he and Julien jammed out with the guitars putting quite the show! Their set list went all the way from “I Fish Walleye” to a country-flavored “Gin & Juice” (we’d like to thank Jon Hesse for the great harmonies).
The walleyes had a surprise in store for them. Chris Jensen, one of our partners, stopped at International Falls and picked up some special bait. The purchase of 8″ Ciscoes (the same bait fish we have here) tweaked the interest of all the guides. Rigged on a long-shanked jig with a stinger hook, these larger baits ween-out the smaller walleyes and target the bigger boys. Although the wait between bites was sometimes longer than regular minnows, the pay-off made it worth while. We are currently investigating ways to harvest some of Aikens’ own ciscoes for our clientèle’s use.
Day three was set as tournament day. This yearly tradition pits one fisherman against the other and has the guides jockeying for position as well. Each angler’s top three fish before & after lunch would determine the champion. At shorelunch, the leaders were Dale Jensen and Jeff Hahn (1.5″ separating the two!). The afternoon bite started off slowly. Many boats said that they were sitting on top of big marks that just wouldn’t go… 4:00pm rolled around and many competitors were scrambling to fill up their scoring fish quota. Dale and Chris Jensen talked strategy with their guide. They gambled and burned back to the dock. Not to park, but to fish. With the clock ticking, Dale cast towards the guide dock. At this point every bite counts! His first fish, a 23.5″ Walleye brought him one fish away from securing a shot at first place. 4:50pm… Fish on! The larger Walleye went for a minnow placed directly under Ashton’s parked Lund. With the fish landed, measured and released, the horn blasted the end of tournament play. Once the scores were tallied up, Dale won first place and Hahn held on to second place. Tyler upset the reigning three year champ (Patrick) to claim the guide title. Congratulations Dale and Tyler!
Well boys, we wish you all much success over the winter and we’ll see you again next summer!
There are great workers, then there are great workers! Kik is one of the latter. We’d like to formally thank Christian for his tireless efforts this season. Whether it’s working his butt off at the lodge, guiding countless days in a row, pitching in and helping the ladies in camp without ever being asked, or logging in 85 degree heat and bugs so thick you have them for lunch; he always does it with a smile!
Our unsung hero left yesterday for the season, but he is looking forward to another great summer at Aikens in 2009! Until then, he’s eastward bound (Québec City, in fact), looking forward to starting a new chapter in his education. No longer content with simply wowing his audience with total guitar control, his four year course load will turn him into a very skilled custom guitar builder!
Thank you Christian for yet another textbook season. Your devotion is what makes us proud to say that we have a first class staff here at Aikens. Good luck with your studies in “La Belle Province” and we’ll see you next spring!
Recently, the provinces of Manitoba and Ontario announced a joint agreement that will protect the pristine wilderness inside of our incredible park. We are located inside Atikaki Park, and Ontario has a mirror-image park on their side of the border called Woodland Caribou Park. These parks were formed to protect habitat for the protected Woodland Caribou. The whole area is being targeted as a possible UNESCO Heritage Area. This is a prestigious international designation that would further protect future development inside the park. We are very fortunate to have our own little slice of Eden right in the middle of it all! This announcement can only help us as we continue to find new ways to become “greener” inside the park. Below is the announcement in the Winnipeg Free Press from July 30, 2008.
Manitoba and Ontario joined forces today to protect a 9,400 square-kilometre wilderness area that straddles both provinces.
Manitoba’s Natural Resources Minister Stan Struthers said the move is a significant step towards nominating the area as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The protected area includes Woodland Caribou Provincial Park and the Eagle-Snowshoe Conservation Reserve in Ontario and Atikaki Provincial Park and parts of Nopiming Provincial Park in Manitoba.
Struthers and Ontario’s Natural Resources Minister Donna Cansfield also said the partnership is the first in Canada between two provinces to manage such a large area from logging, mining and other development.
Cansfield said a benefit of the partnership is that officials from both provinces now have a better means of studying and protecting woodland caribou.
“These little critters have four feet,” she said, explaining the caribou don’t recognize provincial boundaries.
Struthers also said the signing of an agreement between the two provinces coincided with Manitoba releasing its management plan for Atikaki Provincial Park and the Bloodvein Canadian Heritage River. That plan is another step required as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site nomination on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.
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”!
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has serviced all of our quads and golf carts, while the lockers are now cozy homes for the staff’s gear and other stuff. In fact, the Rod Lockers even played host to a great evening when the staff put on a music concert in a western theme known as the Ho-Down party! The functionality of both establishments has everyone pleased to see that their construction efforts are paying off. With our commitment to providing our staff and our guests with the utmost experience, who knows whats next? Inevitably, Aikens will be even more well equipped to further secure its place among the elite lodges in the industry!
