Episode 125: LIVE from Nordic Point and Lumberjack Lodge (On the Road Again #1)

Ever wondered what it takes to film a fishing show in the wild, unpredictable outdoors of Northwestern Ontario? Join us as we kick off our on-the-road outdoor journal radio podcast series from the stunning Sturgeon Lake, staying at the beautiful Lumberjack Lodge. 
Angelo Viola and Peter Bowman, along with their dedicated crew, share the exhilarating start to our 2025 Fish'n Canada broadcast season. From recounting our scenic drive and overnight stay in Wawa, Ontario, to the incredible fishing adventures at Nordic Point Lodge—known for its exceptional hospitality and mouth-watering cuisine—we bring you along for a journey where comfort and good food play a crucial role in making these trips unforgettable.

But it’s not all smooth sailing; our adventures come with their own set of challenges. In this episode, we explore the cutting-edge technology that enhances our fishing experiences and the unique benefits of bringing your own boat, motor, and trailer to navigate the diverse lakes of Northwest Ontario.

We dive into the dual perspective view offered by our new live scope and blue water transducer setup, while also sharing our gritty reality of facing unpredictable weather and strong winds. Despite the rough conditions at Nordic Point, our determination to keep filming showcases the resilience required to tackle nature's elements head-on. Get ready for an adventure filled with innovation, perseverance, and the raw beauty of outdoor fishing.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:03

oh baby where'd you get that? Yeah, that's new for you it is welcome to the show and as you can tell by willie's voice there.

Speaker 1: 0:14

This is the first of a series of on the road again outdoor journal radio podcasts coming to you from uh fishing canada locations where we're shooting the new uh I guess it's 2025 broadcast season.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Oh yeah, I mean I would have said 2024 because it's where, but you're right, the broadcast season. We have to think ahead.

Speaker 1: 0:33

I'm Angelo Viola. He is Peter Bowman. Hi we have Boba behind the camera and Dean Taylor over there on the board somewhere and our lovely friends from Wisconsin behind us here. Give me me. Hell yeah, hell yeah. You're gonna see people walking in and out of the set. We are on location at lumberjack lodge on sturgeon lake. Uh, that is an absolute. We're gonna talk about it later, but it's an absolutely stunning, stunning location.

Speaker 2: 0:57

Everything about it is good, including the fishing, by the way, including the fishing we're in the front office.

Speaker 1: 1:03

So if you see people wandering in and out signing up, uh, don't worry about it. It's very cool. We told them they could do that. Yeah, we encourage it.

Speaker 2: 1:11

So this is, uh, the tail end of by the way we're in northwest ontario, just to let everybody know that, uh, this, the location we're at right now, uh, on sturgeon lake, is northwestern ontario. So it's a long haul, for it's pretty funny. We have the people from Wisconsin have a nine hour drive to get here, we're from Ontario and we have an 18 hour drive to get here.

Speaker 1: 1:34

You could drive across half of Europe in 18 hours. But that's what we do for fishing folks, and we encourage all of you to wander out of your comfort zone. I know we talk to a lot of people all the time and they say, yeah, well, you guys go up to northern parts of the country, especially northern ontario, and it's just too far to drive. But you know, the two days we spent getting up here are all going to be part of the adventure and the journey of course we are, and for instance, our stopping point is wawa ont, ontario.

Speaker 2: 2:04

Everybody knows Wawa. It's a great little town, a great northern Ontario town. Stay overnight, go for a little dinner in the town and take off the rest of the trip. Home of the giant goose yeah, Canadian goose.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Come on now.

Speaker 2: 2:16

But anyways, we're on the tail end of her.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Now we're down the home stretch. We've got another two days uh, another going home tomorrow, two days. While we're heading, we're heading home tomorrow yeah it'll be a couple days before we get there and, um, I gotta tell you it, for the first shoot of the season. Um, it has already been a full season worth of adventures and we're going to share some of those things with you the good, the bad and the ugly yeah, we've had them all.

Speaker 1: 2:43

No doubt about it uh, our trip started out to a wonderful place called nordic point lodge, which you're going to see on, I think, the very first episode of the fish and canada show for the 2025 season, and uh, it's a unique uh operation, to say the least. It's uh owned by uh willie palowski and his wife krista, a wonderful host by the way, fantastic, fantastic I gotta tell you maybe some of the best food oh yeah, their chef.

Speaker 2: 3:10

What was it? Do you remember his name? I want to say chris dean no, it was garrett garrett.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Yeah, maybe something like that, garrett. I'm sorry if I called you chris garrett he was so good man, his Outstanding, you know it's funny because I think food is one of those components when you're spending time at places like this. I think it's one of those components, that is, I'm going to say a must you know if you're doing the American plan.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Thing right, yeah, but a place like this, where I stay at now they don't do the American plan, it's housekeeping, but still food becomes a must because you've got to plan all your trips Will does both he does housekeeping and American plan. They've got a great main lodge that you can eat in and dine in, but you can also he has cabins where you can cook bring your own food in too.

Speaker 1: 4:13

So that's the big thing uh, this, this is uh a rubber tire trip which I think everybody should experience. I mean, the fly-ins are great, don't get me wrong, they're spectacular. In fact, the nordic point lodge offers a fly-in opportunity as well as a drive to.

Speaker 1: 4:30

But come on now, uh yeah, exactly because our very own dean taylor experienced it along with steve nitzwicki, also co-host, along with dean, of that episode of the fish and Canada show which you'll see later on in the season, and they they got selected to be the fly in participants, while Peter and I took the Prince craft and put it in the lake there and spent three days Parole Lake, parole Lake, parole. Lake Spent three days, which we'll detail here in a moment.

Speaker 2: 5:03

That's a big thing for Northwest Ontario. You're going to see so many people. Most people are going to bring their boat, motor and trailer package up with them. They're going to tow up behind them and you see, like in this parking lot here, this whole place we have right now, every camp, every cottage has a boat, motor and trailer. I don't even know if they rent boats here or not, they probably do. But at Will's Place you definitely can rent boats. But you see so many people just bring them up. I remember going to like especially the musky lodges in Northwest Ontario. They are just loaded with the best of the best packages. You know what I mean All the 20, 21 footers, 22 footers and the hardcore guys and girls going out there nowadays and it's just a great way, as Ann says, the rubber tire drive to these lodges on the best lakes in the world. So you see it a lot.

Speaker 1: 5:47

I would highly encourage if you should decide to make the trek to nordic point lodge, and if you own your own fishing boat, I would highly encourage you to consider bringing it up with you, because then you get the opportunity to fish one of the literally hundreds of lakes, all within an hour to an hour and a half drive from Nordic Point.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Lodge, yeah, that's a great point, right, and you can literally fish a different lake every day of your stay, and they're all spectacular lakes, they all have different species. You can target species or you can spend half a day here and a half a day there. Go speckled trout fishing in the morning and walleye fishing, uh, or bass fishing or pike fishing or lake trout fishing in the afternoon. That's a good point. If you don't have your boat, it's still a great experience. A wonderful experience because will has some boats in some of those lakes, I believe yeah, he's got his main boats.

Speaker 2: 6:47

He's got his main boats on the land. They're all like nice big 18 foot boats, they're beautiful, yeah. And he's got little boats, uh, 14 footers, on his outlakes, but you don't have that ability to drive to other lakes and put your trailer, your boat, there. So that's a big thing. You know it's not huge. Some people don't care, they just want to come up and not bring a boat up, and that's perfectly fine, you know, convenient.

Speaker 1: 7:05

So it's up to you, but you're missing out. I gotta tell you, you're missing out on the opportunity to skip and hop around. Um, so we came up here with our prince craft, our big 21 foot. Uh, prince craft, the expedition 200, and it this was its maiden voyage for this year. We were excited to come up here because we were trying out some new toys. First of all, let me just give a shout out to a new sponsor of this very show. In fact, dean, am I correct? A sponsor of the network or just the show? No, just the show, just the show, thank you.

Speaker 1: 7:47

So we want a big shout out to the folks at fish finder mountscom and we uh, we hooked up with these guys because we found their, their stuff online and we said, oh my god, we have got to hook up with them and start using some of their their goodies they make the highest quality most I the slickest looking mounts for electronics not just fish finders, but just electronics in general that you will ever, ever correct.

Speaker 2: 8:14

see correct, and they're. They're one of our main things we do in these fly ins is we still like to bring our, our electronics in. They make a portable kit like no other. They have a 30 amp hour battery pack you can run usb out of, you can do all kinds of stuff and then it powers our nine inch garmin for days. So it's a total, and then with their mounts on it, with their mounting and it's perfect. It's just, it's a.

Speaker 1: 8:36

I can't wait to use it but the main, uh, one of the main reasons we wanted to use this episode as an opportunity to play with some new toys because with their mounts, their fish finder mounts and transducer mounts, we were blessed with the opportunity to try something totally out of the box.

Speaker 1: 8:59

We used um, the conventional live scope transducer, the lvs 34, in its normal position, in other words, looking straight ahead forward forward view and on the other side of the boat, on one of the most robust uh mounts I have ever seen in my life. We've got this big um xr62, which is a blue water or salt water version of the smaller 34, but the big difference is that it will shoot beyond 300 feet. Beyond 300 feet, which to me, when I first heard about it, I couldn't even believe that there was that kind of technology. So we said, well, what if we mount them? We'd heard a few guys on the internet that had tried it, played around, especially fishing pros on the bass circuits that had tried mounting two 34s, one in perspective mode and one looking straightforward. But there was some interference, correct, and it just wasn't working. Shooting the same signal.

Speaker 2: 10:03

There was frequency interference correct and it just wasn't the same signal. There was frequency problems, frequency problems yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:07

So we said, well, why don't we try mounting this big 62 with this 300 plus foot range, put it on perspective mode on the end of this big pole and, uh, the 34 on the other side, and shoot them at the same time, shooting the same direction on two screens? And basically we're thinking in terms of, in our minds, an overlaid view. Right, because you can see one happening here, one happening here. This one is giving you the the north and south positioning of that fish or whatever, and this one's giving you the east and west. So now you kind of draw them together and it should be the answer to all of our fish catching problems. Yeah, good luck with that.

Speaker 2: 10:52

It did work, the system did work. Now we're just getting used to it. Obviously, we've had two shoots to do it with and you know, like six days on the water, whatever, playing with it and all that. It does work, but it takes a lot of getting used to. It's a lot of, you know, a lot of signal going out there and you a lot of interpretation, especially in that perspective mount. You're seeing a hundred and some odd degrees of a picture. We keep it pointing straight forward, for the most part on our boat and use a trolling motor just to go along, because usually that's our casting range anyways, like that. And then if you see something you can always turn the LifeScope Plus towards what you see and you'll pick them up like that. So it's cool.

Speaker 1: 11:27

It's really neat, by the way. We were using also brand new technology for us the new Kraken Garmin Kraken engine at the front, the electric motor, and normally it was designed for boats like ours with big, deep hulls. It's got long shaft, it's got everything that's required for a big aluminum hull, but one of the real cool features about it is that Garmin made it so that you could actually hook a LiveScope cable through the shaft and down into the head of the engine, so you don't have all of that wire cable hanging out on the outside. Now, for us, that's not how we hooked it up, because of these new poles and we wanted the mobility factor that the poles give us. So when the engine is on lock, the electric motor is on lock and it's trying to keep you in position. We're not losing the picture that we're focused on. So it's once again. This was all stuff we wanted to come up here and try out for the first time.

Speaker 2: 12:28

You know what else we tried out. Something new is the echo map ultra two units. They now are you're able to record on them. So today we wrote we were recording on our phones the screens and hopefully we'll be able to show that on the on the show if it turns out well.

Speaker 1: 12:42

It was cool, just that is the perfect scenario, and having this is, by the way, our 39th year of heading out for the first shoot of the season.

Speaker 2: 12:54

So we're a bit experienced. Thank you, George.

Speaker 1: 12:57

We are experienced at things, and all those things happened on this trip. So we're going to share some of those things with you, because a lot of you folks think that we go out and it's just beautiful. The sun is always shining, there's never any wind, and the fish, well, we know them all by first name. So when we come up to, so, when we jump in the boat for us we don't have to do anything? Uh, not. And these past 10 days are any oh yeah indication we started rough.

Speaker 2: 13:29

For sure, first two days we started really rough.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Give us a run down at nordic point.

Speaker 2: 13:32

So we get there and right off the hop in the morning we're having breakfast at the lodge and we look out and it's about a 20k constant wind in the morning. Well, that's just not. That's not too bad, but 20, 20k with, you know, 30k gusts or something like that. By the time we hit the water there was at least 30k constant, uh like throughout the the entire day and ended up being three days away. But the best part was the lodge owner will said it's never windy up here. It's never windy up here. We put our boat in the water three days and we got the snot beat out of us. I mean, no matter how big a boat you got in that stuff, it is rough. And in being rough and you're driving, we said the show must go on. So we hammered through all these waves it's not, you know, it's not the best thing for your boat. I mean, if you can avoid it, you should avoid it. But sometimes you got.