The three of us were parked for lunch on a smooth shelf of pre-Cambrian rock in the supposedly virgin lake called Kabania.
Our mood was somber as we folded cheese into day-old bannock and salted thin slices of last night`s moose roast.
George Sakanee poured another round of tea from the sooty kettle, and his wizened face broke into a giggle.
”Poor Thaddeus,” wheezed George. ”He said we could borrow his boat and motor, as long as we didn`t hit anything.”
”Well, we didn`t just hit anything,” Jim Kayfes sighed. ”We hit everything.”
We wondered if Thaddeus would notice his 20-horse prop now had the thrust of maybe an electric trolling motor. We figured he would.
”Thaddeus will be mad,” George said in typical Ojibway understatement.
Well, of course, we can tell him he contributed to a good cause, the exploration of a lake that George and his brother, Morris, hoped to develop as an outpost fishing camp.
No one ever had looked it over hard with rods and reels. George had set nets and lines over the years for sucker and sturgeon. He ran trap lines in the winter.
In fact, the Sakanees keep four stout trapper`s cabins around the sinuous lake, which receives waters from Pelican Lake and the Pipestone River as they flow toward James Bay.
The Ojibway have used Kabania as a corridor for centuries, but fishing pressure was said to be minimal. We found out why.
”I just don`t think there`s any deep water here,” Kayfes observed after we`d hung our boat on a rock for the dozenth time.
”All it has is shallow, weedy bays. And the channel is full of rocks.”
Sure, we caught fish. Wherever there was fast water, walleye leaped for the boat. We caught hungry walleye on big spoons, fishing for northern pike. Crankbaits, spinner jigs-everything worked.
But we couldn`t find big ones, and we especially couldn`t find pike of any size.
In defense of the lake, the weather had turned rotten. Short-sleeve sunshine changed overnight to frosted breath. Whitecaps sprayed our faces as we plugged from the Landsdowne Indian settlement on broad Attawapiskat Lake toward the rapids that lead to Kabania.
I fortunately had remembered to bring wool cap and heavy gloves.
”George, what does `Kabania` mean in Ojibway, anyhow? Rockpile?” Kayfes teased. Searching for dropoffs beyond a broad, inviting bay, we had beached our craft in the middle of the lake. Our rocktop supported four inches of water.
I cruelly suggested George and his brother would have to get a bank loan to finance all the warning buoys they would need in this lake.
We caught more pike as the sun warmed the afternoon, but they were small. There were several delicious spots-hidden bays behind side rapids, classic stands of bullrush framed by beds of cabbage weeds and emerging coontail, an esker that crumbled into rocky humps where baitfish could be pounded by winds. The few holes we did find were without fish.
”Some lakes just don`t have any big fish,” Fishing Facts magazine editor Spence Petros shrugged when we got together the next day. ”If there isn`t the forage they need to grow, those 4- and 5-pounders you catch can be the older fish, the ones that are reproducing.”
Kayfes gave a derisive snort.
”Everyone thinks all you have to do is go to Canada and the fish jump into the boat,” he said. ”Well, that`s not so. There are good lakes and there are duds.
”It was a fair test, anyway. At least you know it wasn`t a setup.”
Indeed, the setup was where Spence had gone with fellow Chicagoans Mark Bortz and Jack Rezny. The Sakanees operate four lakes-Shouldice and Obashi, which opened last year, and Dearden and Justice, which opened in 1991.
We first had gone to Shouldice, where outdoors TV star Debra Johanneson caught a 31-pound northern last September, then I left to explore Kabania.
Petros kept a portable depth-finder at Shouldice, and he quickly uncovered the major and minor spots-midlake rockpiles, emerging weedbeds near dropoffs, and bars near holes where the wind could pound baitfish.
Thick schools of walleye were hugging the dropoffs at 8 to 11 feet, and fish were caught up to six pounds.
Petros, Bortz and Rezny also released respectable pike, Petros losing one in the 20s, the jig popping from its mouth at the boat.
The Sakanees intend to use their established camps for serious fishing and perhaps develop Kabania and others for families and groups that want to experience culturally oriented eco-travel.
Kabania would be perfect for the latter. The four trapper cabins could become way stations on a canoe odyssey through historic Indian corridors.
George had pointed out a 150-year-old battlesite, a ”haunted”
settlement once used by a rival band, a spectacularly scenic Indian cemetery on the edge of a fossil-ridden bluff.
”This is where you take people on trap lines in the fall and winter,” I suggested to Morris back in his home at Landsdowne House.
”You encourage them to help the trappers, maybe let them skin a nice pelt. You tan that pelt for them and send it to them as a keepsake to hang on their wall at home.
”People never forget a trip like that.”
Through the night, other ideas tumbled forth. We were brainstorming their enterprise. Guests could stay in picturesque Landsdowne, maybe in a rehabbed house belonging to the abandoned federal weather station. That station could become a community crafts museum. Old skills could be resurrected. Craftsmen could tan moosehide to fashion vests and jackets and moccasins to order. Beautiful mitts and caps could be made from local furs.
”They need to find a way to use their trapping skills,” observed Kayfes, who works for an Indian tourism association. ”Trapping is part of their culture, and they are not about to give it up. As trappers, they were independent businessmen. Trapping meant a TV set or a trip to see their sister in Thunder Bay. It was a lifeline to the outside.
”Well, even if they can`t sell furs for the money they used to, maybe they can sell the historic experience of trapping. Whatever they can do to make a buck up here is only going to make their lives a little better.”
