Work Week - June 2004

Nearly a dozen local anglers made a work-detail trip to the Pennsylvania Camp on Georgian Bay to Canada. Five of them tangled with and ultimately landed the largest fish of their lives.

The Pennsylvania Camp is a large fishing complex on an island that is reached by plane or a half-hour boat ride on the large bay located east of Lake Huron 400 miles north of New Castle. The huge bay is almost half as big as Lake Huron.

The men arrived halfway up the bay at Parry Sound, deposited their gear into boats and motored to the island camp. They built two new boat docks to add to others that exist at the camp. The camp has a large lodge with an additional dormitory building to accommodate a total of 25 vacationers at one time. Groups schedule their visits during the winter time and often reserve a cook. The camp is owned by the combined membership, most from Lawrence County.

When the recent work group completed its daily upgrading for the coming year, they itched for some boat trolling. They hit repeated bonanzas on five successive days catching the largest muskies of their lives.

Catching a near 50-inch muskellunge was Earl Comstock, who with boat partner George Getty had to abandon their boat in shallow shore waters to land their fish on an island rock because the net they had was too small for their whopper.

Bob Barbato landed a 48-inch musky using a rattle trap lure and only eight pound test line.

John Ohorodnyk, Skip Bukowski and son Zack also fought and landed muskies near the 30-pound class on the same island point on successive days.

Kurt Menges failed to land a large musky only because the fish broke loose at boatside.

All muskies and other fish were returned to the water alive for later vacationers to land them again.

A hot lure while trolling was a perch-finish spinner bait.

The group also caught and released many bass and northern pike. Some of the pike reached 30 inches and a few of the bass were 20 to 21 inches.