As we roast in the crock pot of an Arkansas summer, the Fuller family of Fayetteville has been fishing in the cool pools of Canada.
"The highs were in the high 60s and low 70s," said Chris Fuller, the band director at Elkins High School. "The lows were in the mid 40s."
The fishing, though, was white hot. The Fuller party -- which included Fuller's wife Tina, daughter Rheanna, father Robert and mother Anita -- caught smallmouth bass, walleyes, northern pike and muskellunge. Most of the smallmouths were 4-5 pounds. That's "sweet dream" territory for Arkansans. The walleyes provided supper every night, and the pike were a hard-fighting bonus.
The setting was Lac Seul and its connecting lakes in northwest Ontario near Sioux Lookout. That's about four hours north of International Falls, Minn., and about four hours east of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Fullers have made this pilgrimage for 31 years. Photos prove that the area looks the same now as it looked then, Chris said. The quality of the fishing is also timeless, he added. Only the numbers indicate how good it really is.
For eight days in early June, Chris Fuller and Robert Fuller caught 318 walleyes. Most were 12-15 inches, but Tina Fuller caught a 23-incher.
"We call those little ones 'pencils,'" Chris Fuller said. "They're fun to fight on 4-pound line, and they're great to eat. You can't beat that walleye. It's better than crappie."
In Arkansas, smallmouths spawn in March and April. In Canada they spawn in June. Chris Fuller said on one lake he and his dad found 50-100 beds in an area the size of a parking lot. This, along with the Fuller's catches, appear to make Lac Seul one of Ontario's premier smallmouth lakes, but locals say that for numbers it compares poorly to other lakes.
According to the smallmouth bass fishing page at siouxfloatinglodges.com, Lac Seul has so many pike, walleyes and muskies that little smallmouths don't last long. However, the smallmouth fishery is top-heavy with mature fish up to about 8 pounds.
"A 20-inch smallmouth in Arkansas is about 3 pounds," Fuller said. "There, a 20-incher is a 5-pounder. They're like big footballs. They're chunky and fat, and they're a lot darker than Arkansas smallmouths."
Expectations are a lot higher than they are in the United States, too, he said. In Arkansas, he explained, there are many days when you might expect to get five to 10 good bites.
"When I go to [Alabama's] Wheeler Lake, every time I throw a bait out I feel like there's going to be a pulldown," Fuller said. "It's the same deal up there. Every single cast I feel like I'm going to catch a fish."
Fuller and his father often lost count of the consecutive casts that netted a walleye.
"We'd go 18 in a row before we missed one," Fuller said. "We had 100-bass days and we had 100-walleye days, but some of those we quit. We could have had 200."
During the long days of June, an angler can fish himself to exhaustion, Fuller said. It's fully light at 4 a.m., and it doesn't get dark until about 11 p.m. A day starts with a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, fried potatoes and coffee. A shore lunch consists of fresh walleye fillets from the morning and fried potatoes.
"I've got the big frying pan, and I'll make a fire pit out of rock, cut the 'tatas up, fry the fish, clean up and get back at it. We go to bed with sun out and be beat," he said.
Along with the great fishing, an angler can expect to see moose, bears, eagles and many other kinds of wildlife. You can spend eight days there and not see another angler, Fuller said, adding that the most powerful presence is silence.
"You'll hear a lot of quiet," he said. "You can get a lot of places and stop, and you'll hear quiet like you've never heard it before."
This year, he said, the weather was perfect the entire eight days. In other years it rained torrentially, and other times the weather was mixed. There are mosquitoes and biting blackflies and gnats.
One thing that never changes is the melancholy feeling fuller gets when it's time to leave.
"One time I got sad when it was over," he said. "My 11-year-old daughter Madison said, 'Daddy, you can't come back until you go home.'"
Sports on 06/28/2015