Day 1 (Wednesday, May 10th)
This year, we decided on Allan Lake as our camping destination. It's about a 2.5-hour drive to the park office on Brent Road and then another half hour to the put-in on Wendigo Lake (access #25). We left Dunrobin reasonably early (8 am or so) and made our usual two stops on the way. The first in Arnprior for coffee/breakfast (McDonald), and the second in Deep River for worms (Canadian Tire). We got to the access point around noon, loaded the canoe, and headed south towards Allan Lake. Lucky for us, it was a beautiful sunny calm day – much easier to paddle the 2.5 km down Wendigo Lake to the Allan Lake portage. We did try some fishing (mostly trolling) in Wendigo, but no luck as usual. The portage (180 m) into Allan Lake was no problem – although it did take three trips to bring all our supply across!
Back in the canoe and bang -- John had a good size trout on his line! It turns out that the fast running water coming into Allan Lake was a great spot for brookies. With the anticipation of trout for dinner, we headed down/south on Allan Lake to find a campsite. We took the second site on the lake's east side, behind the islands and across the lake from the North River rapids. Allan Lake is 2.5 km long and 0.5 km wide at the most. The lake's attractive features are the two islands, numerous small bays, and a set of rapids on the west side (i.e. the North River entrance). The south end of the lake has the 255 m portage into North Depot Lake.
After a late lunch, we did go out fishing at the North River rapids – where we had success in the past. But today, the rapids had nothing to offer, so we moved on – casting and trolling up and down the west side of the lake. John finally managed to get a second trout at the Wendigo portage (the same spot as the first one he got earlier as we came in).
A beautiful day and trout for our first dinner – it doesn't get much better than that in Algonquin Park!
Day 2 (Thursday)
It was a cold night (maybe dipped to 0C), but I had enough layers to stay warm. For the first time, I tried an air mattress under my therma pad. The combination worked great to keep me warm and comfortable.
The lake was very calm in the morning, so John went off for some solo fishing before breakfast. He didn’t have much luck until he was almost back to the campsite – where at a few hundred meters from the shore, he landed a nice 18” lake trout. We had dinner in the bag, and it was only 9 am!
After breakfast, we reluctantly left the lake trout tied to shore and headed south for N. Depot Lake and the lower N. River. The water was high, so we were able to shoot the rapids into N. Depot Lake. We had no luck fishing the fast water entering N. Depot Lake, so we made our way (casting and trolling) down the 4 km lake. No fish. We decided to make the 770m portage into the lower North River, which is always an excellent area to explore and fish. Finally, down about 1.2km on the N. River (a rocky ledge point) from the portage, John got a hit on a large brook trout. We had to let it go since this large trout would be too much with the big laker we had back at the campsite. John went on to catch two more brookies at that rocky ledge fishing hole, and we kept one small one to take home for dinner.
We had a late lunch at the rocky ledge before making the journey back to the campsite. I was pretty tired from the day’s paddling (15 km) and portaging (1.7 km) – even though it was a nice calm day (definitely getting older)!
For dinner, John had the challenge of cooking the large 18” laker and the smaller brook trout. He did manage to do it in a frying pan with some aluminum foil as a cover. It was interesting to have both kinds of Algonquin trout side-by-side to compare taste and texture. The lake trout is good, but it’s hard to beat the smaller brook trout for texture and sweetness.
Day 3 (Friday)
Friday morning was another calm day on Allan Lake. After a coffee and muffin, we decided to get on the lake for some morning fishing before breakfast. Again, we had no luck at the N. River rapids or the west side of the lake – so we moved to the north end of the lake (Wendigo portage rapids) and then along the east side. After a few hours, we returned to our campsite for brunch with a couple of trout. Before our full breakfast, we had fresh pan-fried trout on toasted bagels for appetizers – which was very tasty!
We were out again fishing in Allan Lake for the afternoon and finished the day with three trout anchored ashore at our campsite (including John’s second lake trout). We decided to skip the trout for dinner, and instead, we dined on a sausage-based recipe that John cooked up. After two nights of trout dinners, it was yummy, especially with a glass or two of red wine!
Our site was pretty bare of firewood, so we brought some over from across the lake. Each night, we had a campfire for extra warmth and enjoyed the evening (a little sip of brandy didn’t hurt either).
Day 4 (Saturday)
We had some light rain overnight, and it did continue on/off through the day on Saturday. After breakfast, we took down and packed most of our campsite. Then, we went out for a bit of fishing and returned a few hours later with another 14” brook trout to add to our take-home collection (complements of master fishermen Verbaas).
John cleaned the four take-home trout, and we put them at the bottom of the canoe to keep cool (in plastic bags). After a few obligatory fish photos, we finished our packing and were on our way. We had a quick lunch at the Wendigo portage and then a straight paddle in light winds and rain to the access point.
The ride home was uneventful. The only stop was in Deep River for some ice (Canadian Tire) and a burger (Burger King). We arrived in Dunrobin around 8 pm.
Another great Algonquin trip and one of the best for trout fishing!
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Trip summary:
o Great weather on Wed, Thur, and Fri (some light rain on Sat)
o First night was the coldest (may have dipped to 0C)
o Caught 13 trout overall (including 2 lakers)
o The wildlife was pretty scares (or very shy)
o Can’t think of anything to change or bring on next trip (perfect).
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