This year, we will be training some new blood in the guide ranks. We enjoyed many seasons with the crew that we had last year, but this winter some of them decided to move on to bigger and better things. Dave decided to start framing homes with his brother. Diesel is earning his ticket as a heavy duty mechanic (something he was born to do!). Colin will spend this summer traveling in Eastern and Western Canada to explore this great country of ours! Kik is pursuing a career in music, and is working hard on his guitar in order to accomplish this. Dan began working at Bockstael Construction last fall and is quickly working his way towards a career in carpentry!

With this said, we had an obvious need to fill our guide positions with promising avid fishermen. We have a returning crew of Pat, Turbo, Trevor, and Points. Today was the day they would get to see the new faces we’ve added the guide ranks. Of course, the newbies will be getting a crash course over the next couple of weeks on the lake, but today they started off with something a little less appealing… some manual labor which included turning over our compost pile on Compost Island! Pat and Turbo are in charge of making sure that our new recruits are ready for the new season… and the two of them have been looking forward to “Guide Boot Camp” for a long time! (Seniority definitely has its perks!).

We just welcomed a dozen more people at Aikens today, including chef Jimmy. That makes everyone very happy! The rest of our construction crew is now here, and we are going to start the big work tomorrow. Since the last update, we’ve had the chance to go fishing a second time (last night). We caught some supper at the falls, we released two walleye and a pike that were over slot. Once the stringer was sufficient, we went out to the main lake and tried to catch some lakers by the ice. We trolled our lures as close to the floating ice as we could, but without any success. It’s something we’ve heard about for years but have never had the opportunity to try! I really had a good feeling, but nothing came out of it… oh well! Anyway, things are buzzing at the camp now so stay tuned for more updates!

May 1st is the earliest that we’ve ever made the trek to Aikens Lake! However, with the great spring weather we were able to get a head start on our season! While our first guests won’t arrive until May 26th, we do have alot of projects on our plate once again this season so we want to try to get as much accomplished as possible before then! Here is the story of our first day at Aikens this year, as told by Pit!
Bissett, MB - 12:15 PM

The plane is loaded up with alot of gear. I am accompanied by our head guide Pat, Denis, Leo, Grant, and his son Beeker. We also have the dog… which is good because we had forgotten him at home and had to circle back and get him! Our first (and hopefully last) mistake of the day. We actually have so much stuff at the float base that we decide to make two trips instead of 1! The initial reaction as we fly in is excitement… especially when I see about 1 square mile of ice floating around the SE end of the lake. In all my years, I’ve only ever seen ice on the lake one other time. The Back Bay is wide open (it’s always the first thing to melt) and we are ready for landing. Our pilot Dave gives us a perfect 10 landing and we taxi up to the dock… the water is back to normal levels (even a bit on the high side!).
As we finish unloading the plane, the first order of business is to get the ATV’s up and running. This takes a bit of time as the John Deere sputters, but we finally have it going along with the Big Bear and the Kodiak. We start unloading gear and checking out cabins, nothing seems out of place. In fact, other than a fallen tree (no damage) and A LOT of moose sign, the place looks to be in great shape!

Next order of business, power and water. The power is a piece of cake, after topping up the fluids the genset fires up on the first try! Next to the water system, once again it’s a smooth operation! It’s only 1:30 and we have already accomplished alot! We decide that hot showers would be nice tonight, so we get the hot water tanks running. After a quick bite, we keep up the work and by 6:00 we have communications (email and phone), as well as two boats in the water to go fishing tonight!

That’s right, fishing tonight! Pat, Beeker, and I fill out our spanking new licenses (they are effective today May 1st until April 30th, 2008 and the season never closes in our zone!) and jump into a 30hp and head out to the point. We troll around for about and hour, but it takes only 30 seconds for Beeker to catch the first fish at Aikens this year… a 27″ (approx) pike that gets live released by Pat as he’s bringing it out of the water for a picture! We end up landing about a dozen more pike before trying to jig walleyes in the Honeyhole. As the sun sets, we decide that steaks are more important than finding the walleyes, so we head back for a fantastic BBQ. What a great first day at Aikens. Although my father Gerry has opened up the camp far more times than I have, it would be hard to imagine one that went smoother than today’s opening! Here’s to a great season at Aikens!