Fishing Stories and Tall Tales

[OldTimer]

I have already shared one Bustard Island fishing trip story in this thread…… here’s another:

Each year on one night of our late spring fishing trip to the Bustard Islands in Georgian Bay the bunch of us would be invited over to the Drever cabin for a fish fry.

The Drever brothers (Bryan & Art) were commercial fisherman who held a licence for the surrounding area. They apparently were quite good at their profession as the income from a partial year sustained their families for the entire year. Their ship was a typical steel hulled fishing vessel about 60-70 or so feet long. They had a small group of cabins/sheds on another island not too far a run from our place.

They rarely got into a large town much while concentrating on catching and delivering their catch to Britt, or Parry Sound. Their target fish was walleye.

The deal was that we would provide the beer (lots of it for the meal, plus a full case), the bread, butter, and baked potatoes…………. They would provide and cook the fish and baked beans.

Everything would be cooked outside sorta “shore lunch” style.
They had two of the largest lumberjack skillets I have ever seen, really deep – each about 2 foot in diameter with 4 foot long handles. These were used over an open fire with lard and left over bacon grease to fry up the flour drenched fish fillets.

It was a GREAT meal, and really fun times. No one went away hungry! Everyone had seconds or thirds+.

Over the years I wondered about the type of fish presented as it varied widely in size and shapes. I never really got a definite answer from Bryan Drever.

On what turned out to be my last trip there – I went down to their cabin earlier in the day in the Boston Whaler to drop off the beer, ice, and a few other things and discovered something……….. there was Bryan, Art, and their nephew cleaning that night’s fish…….. Yes - there were some walleye (pickerel to them), but also a fair quantity of carp which they were filleting and then slicing the large THICK fillets in two planes to produce smaller and thinner chunks for that nights fish fry party. They’d been doing this all along through the years - They made me promise not to say a thing that night.

That night’s guests also included two couples we invited along - from sailboats that had anchored in our bay.

I found it interesting and amusing that the crowd that night repeatedly praised the cooking and the excellent deep fried walleye fillets.

Good times.

I never did tell any of those guys the secret…… why would I - it all was so delicious.


Cheers,

OldTimer