Rotten luck, that’s all you can call it! The day before my birthday, in mid-October, I was fishing in Canada, way out in the Lake of the Woods, and found a great spot for walleye in a remote wilderness spot. I was catching a lot of them, many between 18 and 20 inches long; hard-fighting glassy-eyed rascals, with some 12-inch yellow perch mixed in. Who could ask for a better day? There I was in a peaceful and beautiful setting, out of the wind without another boat or human within miles.

At the edge of darkness I started my motor and headed for my cabin, six miles away, with a cold wind in my face and strong waves buffeting my boat. I was there 5 or 6 days and the temperature stayed above 40 degrees the whole time, never more than a 15 mph wind. Canada at its best! Most years in mid October I am there, elated with fishing and grouse hunting and getting some writing done. At the dawn of my birthday, October 11, I walked down to my boat and found that the starter on my motor was done for. Fried… done for. Rotten luck! But… if it had happened the night before I would have been sleeping on a nearby sand beach, trying to keep a fire going, listening to the howl of timber wolves on Wolf Island. An adventure to write about, perhaps fending off a pack of timber wolves. But no! Darn rotten luck!

There I was, below my cabin at the dawn of my birthday, with no outboard motor. I headed for Tinker Helseth’s nearby lodge to tell him I was on my way back to Missouri. Tinker’s son-in-law recommended that I just go fish for smallmouth bass on a nearby small lake, where I could get around with only my trolling motor. I have fished that lake before, putting in with my War-Eagle boat down a little lane that few know about. When I did, I caught dozens of big smallmouth, one after another, just drifting across a windy rocky point. Few lakes in Canada have shown me such smallmouth fishing. I have never seen another boat on it. Amazing!

In October last year I caught lots of smallmouth there above four pounds and two or three at five pounds or close. In Canada, an eighteen-inch smallmouth will outweigh the same length bass from the Ozarks streams by nearly a pound. I remember a spot off the point where I hooked and lost a giant brownie that I thought might be the biggest I had ever hooked. Was he still there? He was… In almost the same spot, I hooked him again, or one like him. He nearly took my light-action spinning outfit with him when he hit. But I had the single-hook jig set well, and I loosened my drag, hoping the six-pound line would hold.

He made hard and powerful dives and runs that took him 20 feet away from the boat, and that rod arced like I had never seen it bow. Just a few minutes before I had hooked a 6- or 7-pound northern, and landed it. When you have fished Canadian waters for forty years as I have, you learn to tell the difference in the struggle of a northern pike and a smallmouth. I had no doubt the fish struggling below me, making my drag whine, was a brownie.

Your impulse is to horse them a bit, but this once I used my head. I knew I would never see him if I didn’t let him wear himself out. It took about ten minutes, but he did wear down, and finally I saw him about three feet beneath me in that clear water, broadside. I nearly lost my composure… almost jumped in after him! Thank goodness that starter had went out. Because of that I was about to land the largest smallmouth of my life. I made a swipe at the monster with my net, and missed him. I figured that miss would reinvigorate the bass, maybe let him escape. That’s what usually happens when you miss. But swipe number two brought him into the boat, and I sat there looking at the first six-pound smallmouth I have ever landed. He was flopping on the floor of my boat on my birthday. I don’t keep smallmouth now, as I did when I was young and my family about lived on fish and ducks and rabbits and squirrel. But I would keep this one. I drove to a small grocery store in Nestor Falls Ontario to have it weighed. Six pounds, four ounces the lady said. I will have a new goal now… a seven pounder!!!

To see the photos of that giant brownie and other pictures from Canada in October, look on my website… wwwlarrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. That is the website you should follow to read other columns I write.