March was all about working and fishing at Halley’s—hard work on the saw mill followed by some beauty catches pulled up from under the ice!

As all of you know, this is the month that the pandemic hit strongly all across the world. We are feeling for everyone who cannot enjoy the outdoors throughout all of this. We are so very thankful that we live where we live—we live amongst some of the greatest nature in the Canadian Shield. All of us here went to the grocery stores as limited as possible every 1-3 weeks and not going in public places. We still worked through the month of March with Chris, Amber, Rob and Bev at our office. We were lucky that our backyards have lakes that we were able to go and fish, ice roads to get us to other fishing holes, and miles of snowmobile trails that we could use for access to ice fish. We caught our own minnows, fished with our families, and the outdoors became our social life with the birds, squirrels and all the other woodland animals.

This was a month of getting stuff done across the ice. The guys moved our transportable excavator up to Right Lake where we were going to have a septic field dug hopefully completed before the season begins in May. February was also a month of firewood cutting at some of our outposts.

Chris and Amber are getting all geared up starting some of the planning as they are looking after the lodges at Caribou, One Man, and Kettle. Staffing, meals, souvenirs and equipment were on the list this month!

Taking advantage of the nice warm temperatures! Jamie and Rob built this new section of dock at our Halley’s Camps main office at River Air in Minaki. The temperatures are so different this week compared to the start of last week. Last week they were getting frost bit from the cold temps and this week it is almost melting!

As we do every winter, we have to prep for the summer to come. Jamie, Chris and Gene went by snowmobile today to cut firewood for some of our outposts for the upcoming summer. It is a perfect time to cut firewood as we have a cool but not so frigid day along with enough snow to travel the trails but not have to walk waist deep in snow through the woods. Some outpost were already done in December but some still have to be done this January.

This weekend was a busy one as everyone just got back from sport shows this weekend—Gene in Chicago, Chris and Amber in St. Paul, and Rob and Bev in Kansas City. It was great to see the turnouts at the sport shows this year as it’s fun to see fishermen looking forward to this summer and are eager about fishing like we all are!