GRAND FORKS, N.D. _ It's still more than a year off, but the dates have been set, deposits have been paid and the planning has begun for a fly-in fishing trip in July 2020 to a remote lake in northwestern Ontario.
Headwaters Lake is located near the notch where the borders of Ontario and Manitoba angle northeast toward Hudson Bay.
By floatplane, the outpost camp is about 120 miles northwest of Red Lake, Ontario, a departure point for outdoor adventures about 7{ hours northeast of Grand Forks.
Fishing Headwaters Lake will be a homecoming, of sorts. I first fished the lake in June 1992, when two friends and I spent a very chilly week in the wilderness and experienced the kind of walleye action for which fly-in fishing trips are known. We didn't spend much time targeting pike _ or "ditch bass," as we call them _ but we landed several and watched an absolute monster hit a walleye mere inches from the boat.
The pike let go before we could land it, but the encounter left a shredded walleye in its wake and the three of us literally shaking from the rush of what just had happened.
If the pike wasn't 45 inches long, it was close.
Headwaters in 1992 was under different ownership than it is today, and the owner at the time had let the cabin fall into a state of neglect.
Ditto for the outhouse with the top door panels broken out, which we quickly dubbed "The Puppet Show."
Walleye fishing was spectacular and as simple as dropping a jig and a twister tail _ any color worked as long as it was yellow _ into the tannin-stained depths. Typical of walleyes in many northern lakes, the fish were strikingly dark with golden-yellow bellies.
