Shore Lunch Canada Style

Green Island Lodge is at the Northern end of Manitou Lake. The flight in to the lodge takes about 35 minutes from Cass lake at Fort Frances. Now the fishing is great, but even this die hard fisherman was more than impressed with the food at this lodge.

So I will write about the fishing later..More impressive still is the Shore Lunch.

We started out Sunday Morning with our guides Vince and Ray just after breakfast around 8AM central time.

Our first stop was a Lake Trout Hole about 10 minutes from camp.


Peter with the first Lake Trout of the Trip, and that d a r n Cigar...
These fish had a brownish blue color to them. The flesh was pink
similar to salmon




We caught some good eatin sized fish of about 2 pounds each, and then moved on to fish for some bass and pike.

It did not take take long to catch a nice mess of fish. About 10:30 we went to a prearranged spot on the lake and met with Steve Hensley and Vince Hissong our fishing partners of Team Fishin.com.

Ray and Vince the guide started to prepare the shore lunch. From out of 2 boxes they pulled 2 large frying pans, a pot, plates and forks, fixins, and condiments.



Ray cleaned while Vince set up the fire and boiled water for beans and corn. Large 1 pound slabs of lard were put into the pan. 4 pounds in all. First to be cooked was the horsedourves? Deep fried bacon slices. I could hear my arteries hardening, but they are delicious. Seems that a Cardiovascular guy told Vince and Ray that the bacon cooks at such a high temp that there is less fat left after the bacon is done and it drains the rest of the grease right off, so it is not as bad as you may think.

Ray finishing up cleaning the fish..the final rinse




Second item is the potatoes followed just before the taters are done by the onions. These are cooked to a golden brown, and normally malt vinegar is poured on for some extra flavor.

Vince Prepping the taters and the onions


Next is the fish. The lake trout goes in skin side down to keep it from curling up?then the smallmouth fillets. We missed getting a pike for lunch, but just barely. I hooked one at the lunch site but lost it when I slipped and fell in the lake. My vain attempt to keep it from getting back in the lake when It got off the hook.

Taters and the Veggies cooking




All of this takes about an hour to do from cleaning to cooking and the food is delicious. The fish is battered with flour and garlic salt. The bread is home made at the camp from scratch.. Then the cleanup is very simple. Put the paper and aluminum cans in the trash bag and leave the fish skins and potato skins for the eagles, otters, squirrels and bears. According to the guides the leftover are normally gone within an hour. One gull showed up about 10 minutes later, to start to munch on the carcasses. A plaintive cry brought in 2 more of his friends who waited patiently for us to leave,.. They pounced on the fish almost immediately.

My Lunch Plate... Home Made Bread, Taters, Lake Trout
Corn, Beans and that Lard Fried Bacon


A good cold Le Blat抯 Blue Canadian beer washed down the meal quite nicely. OH and the greatest thing is the ice is cut from the lake each winter. It is so clear you can read a paper through it and if you have a glass,.,. take it and put some ice in it after you have dipped it in the water?YEP you can drink directly from the lake.. Best water I have ever tasted. All in all the lunch was better than I had heard about. I would like to have tried some Pike and some Walleye, but the lake has very few Walleye and the pike were not cooperating on our first day out. They probably saw my performance on their friend and laughed so hard they couldn't eat anything.



Fishin.com staff is returning to Green Island this summer and will be using baits purchased from Dave's Bait and Tackle and by Punisher Lures.