The adventure begins -- heading up to Meta Lake

On Thursday, May 14, I departed Toronto on Via Rail’s The Canadian to head up to Nakina and then on to Meta Lake for two and a half months. The trip by rail, although having a scheduled duration of twenty hours, was very pleasant. I had an upper berth and so was able to get some sleep; the food was very good and the train crew were both accommodating and personable. I arrived in Nakina the following day at 7:45 PM – the only person to detrain.

Nakina is a very small but pleasant village that is now part of the amalgamated municipality of Greenstone (which also includes Gerladton, Long Lake, and Beardmore). Nakina was founded in 1913 as a major railway junction where the rail lines branched south to Toronto and east toward Quebec. During WWII, Nakina temporarily became a radar base operated by the U.S. military. In the 1970s, Nakina was home to a large paper mill. Today, however, Nakina relies on mineral exploration and tourism and it was from here that I flew into Meta Lake.

We departed Nakina at 7:55 AM on Saturday morning and flew west arriving at Meta Lake about 20 minutes later. After helping to unload the plane, I headed up to the lodge to unpack and settle in. A short time later, we began work on building docks, new boardwalks, and minor maintenance and renovations to the cabins. The lodge is rustic but very comfortable and well-maintained. Although accessible only by float plane, we do have satellite phone and television as well as internet. On hearing this, a buddy of mine jokingly commented, “What kind of a camp is that???”

Meta Lake, with a surface area of 30.79 square kilometres, has a maximum depth of 11.6 metres; average depth is 1.7 metres. Fish species include white sucker, yellow perch, whitefish, cisco, and, of course, trophy northern pike and walleye.

My colleagues at the lodge are very personable and went out of their way to make me feel at home. The food is excellent and is only surpassed by the fishing. Although we work six days a week, we have full access to all boats and gear and are encouraged to take advantage of this exceptional fishery. I did have a few minutes to fish after supper last night and caught a nice walleye swimming a jig tipped with a curly tail grub just off the dock. I can’t wait to get out with some of the other staff and land some monster pike and walleye! I’ll be posting more in the days to come….

My upper berth – cozy but comfortable (unless you happen to be a football or basketball player!)

The refurbished first class “Chateau” car

Nakina train station.

The DeHavilland Otter on Meta Lake.

Great report!!!

Looking forward to reading more as your adventure unfolds!

Were you expecting Internet to be available at the camp?

6 days / week!!! How many hours a day?

How does the construction material get to the camp? Winter road - not flying?

Alcohol at the camp or just for guests?

Same food as the guests?

How long since ice was out?

Are the bugs bad yet?

I need to start looking for this sort of opportunities for when I retire . . .

Thanks

Great report,

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like an awesome spot.

Retirement here I come !

Great read looking forward to more posts.

Hey guys, nice to hear from you! I did know, prior to coming up to Meta, that there was internet but I did confirm with the owner beforehand that it would be appropriate for me to bring up my laptop. The system was down for several days so when a technician was flown in to service it yesterday, everyone was pretty happy. You should have seen everyone on their devices!

We do work six days a week and put in regular hours pretty much, at least so far. The dockhands try to get the boats ready the night before but often, they may need to be down at the dock first thing in the morning to assist clients. From what I have seen to date, however, everyone is pretty relaxed; in fact, the owner came up to me on my first day at about 4 PM and said, "Let's knock it off for today." However, this week is pretty much getting things set up although there are four clients in one of the cabins. Things will be busier, I expect when the plane comes in on Saturday with new clients and, if something needs to get done, we'll do it no matter what time of day.

The owners are very personable -- they want us to enjoy ourselves too when we aren't working. Many clients bring up their own food but when there are those on the American plan, we eat the same food and, yes, we can have alcohol if we want to have it flown in on a scheduled flight. Approximately 3000 lbs. of freight are flown in every week during peak season and if we have any special requests, we just have to let the manager know so that those items are put on the order.

Construction and maintenance materials are flown in as needed. We do have a portable saw mill here, however. Today, we felled some big poplars and skidded the mill into the woods; in the coming days, we will begin building another cabin a few hundred metres down lake from the lodge.

Weather to date has been mostly cloudy although we had a winter storm watch last night. Today, there was snow on the ground and we had scattered flurries or sleet throughout the day. We are leaving the taps running overnight to prevent frozen pipes. Needless to say, we haven't had any bugs yet but they'll be here soon enough. There have been several days during the past two weeks when temperatures were comparable to those in southern Ontario and I understand that ice-out was around the end of the first week in May.

I haven't had much opportunity to fish particularly with the bad weather but I am looking forward to getting out soon and posting some pics. The crew up here is great and, to date, it feels a lot like being at my buddy's camp and helping him except that I'm getting paid here! Retirement and having opportunities such as this are certainly something to look forward to. Hang in there!

The attached photo was taken late this afternoon when we used a "retired" boat to skid in the portable saw mill to the future construction site.

A group of 4 of us were at Marshall Lake just to the South of you 3 years ago. What an experience!!! Lots of walleye and pike! If we came back at 3 or so for a mid aft break, we could could send 1 boat a 1/km to a small island to fetch enough walleye for dinner!!

Your report would be worth it for that picture alone. One of the greatest aircraft in the history of, like, forever!

We did the Marshall Lake canoe route last summer travelling through Marshall and Summit Lakes, down the Kapikotongwas River, into Stewart and Stone Lakes and then finally onto Ara and Meta Lakes. It's a great area and the fishing is absolutely amazing as you said. Although there aren't the expanses of exposed bedrock like in central and northeastern Ontario, it has a stark beauty of its own. Marshall Lake is nice; Meta is even better!

wow very detailed report. well done.

what's that white stuff on the ground though??


hope you get into some big ones

How did you get this job? I wouldn't mind having a summer job like that!

Keep sending the reports awesome.