December 31st, 2024 – Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We would like to extend a very Happy Holidays to everyone! Mom, Lindsay and I enjoyed a really nice Christmas in Dryden celebrating with all of Lindsay’s family. It was so nice to get everyone together and spend a couple of days visiting, and eating too much food of course – haha.
Our weather up here has continued to be all over the map. About two weeks ago we had lows down around -25F and just a few days ago it was 36F and raining for two days straight. We had quite a bit of snow (and not a lot of ice) before the rain, but the rain melted and settled a lot of the snow out. Of course once the temperatures started to drop again everything is now coated in ice and our snow pack is multiple layers of snow and ice stacked on top of each other. We have enough ice to fish on the smaller lakes but the bigger, deeper trout lakes are still a little sketchy. Temperatures are forecasted to drop more this week and hopefully we will add to that ice so we can get out on the hardwater safely.
As promised in my last post, I would write an update with some pictures from this fall as it was a good one! Moose season kicked off in September with archery season. We only had two groups of archery hunters in this year and both were successful each taking a very nice bull! The hunters were battling temperatures far too warm to have rutting bulls out much during the daylight, but despite the less than ideal conditions both groups were able to connect. I was only able to grab pics of one of the bulls as the hunters were working fast to break down the animals to get the meat taken care of and cold.
As archery season faded into rifle season, we still had quite a few groups of fisherman in camp that were enjoying the unseasonably warm weather and the good fall fishing. Opening day of rifle season marks the first day of our last week being open, and this year it was a crazy one. We had 5 groups of hunters in camp spread out across the 7 cabins, and on opening day we had 5 moose come into camp! Not one from every group as some groups had multiple tags and brought in multiple animals, but it was one hell of a start to the week! As the week progressed we had 2 more moose come into camp making 7 total for rifle season and 9 total for the year. I’m not certain that’s a new camp record but it has to be very close, and I think 5 on opening day is a new record! We had 5 bulls, 2 cows and 2 calves to mark the season and all 5 of the bulls were very nice moose all near or breaking a 40″ spread.
After opening week was finished and everyone was gone it was Just Lindsay and I at camp for about a week or so finishing up any last jobs and closing down and packing up. Before putting my boat away for the winter we snuck out for one last evening of fishing, and what an end of the fishing season it was! We caught a mess of fish at Red Rock and I was fortunate enough to catch a 28″ walleye, my best for the season!
Afterward we were treated to one of the most spectacular sunsets I think I have ever seen on Press. The sky faded to a dark orange so brilliant it almost seemed eerie, like a storm was brewing, or something even worse almost otherworldly. It was such a dramatic gradient of colour it could be seen clearly in the reflection in the water.
It sure was a hell of a way to send off the 2024 season!
In the last few days at camp we had our two new docks delivered. The crew brought them in from Kenora and dropped them off on the shore where they will be assembled come spring. These two docks are going to cabin 1 and 2, and the old docks at those spots have been moved over to the campground so we have a couple of somewhat usable docks over there again.
I would like to take a quick moment to give a big public thank you to my friends that come up and are a part of my moose hunting group. We tagged out early this year, and as a result the guys who had the week off put in a lot of hours of work for me at camp and accomplished a TON! This includes finally getting all of those old derelict docks from the campground broken down and hauled off to the dump. The shoreline is cleaned up a lot and it makes the entire camp look a lot nicer, thanks guys!
The plan is to continue replacing the oldest cabin docks each year with 1-2 of these new docks as our budget allows. Of course we are still hoping to add new bathrooms to cabins 2 and 4 as well. It looks like we may have someone lined up for this fall to get cabin 2 done, so fingers crossed nothing changes between now and next fall and we will continue to see constant improvements and upgrades.
We would just like to say thank you again to all of our guests old and new that vacationed with us this year. 2024 marked our busiest season yet and 2025 isn’t looking any different. We are very fortunate that we get to do what we love and that wouldn’t be possible without you guys and gals! Take care and keep your eyes peeled for another post coming soon to talk about our personal hunting adventures this fall.
Thanks,
Ryan