Bassin and Birchbark

I have just returned from my trip to Canada. I stayed with my Mom and Dad who live on Gooseneck Lake near Ardbeg, Ontario. The weather was so so with some warm days, some cool days and a cracking thunderstorm one night. The mosqiutos were wicked on a few evenings as my ankles will attest to. I was able to get out with my Dad to collect some birchbark. He took me to a couple large trees which the beavers felled into the water.


First we cut down the length with a carpet knife and made a few small cut across the diameter

Next we took a paint scraper and slowly peeled the bark off. There is a strange layer between the bark and the wood. The closest thing I can compare it to is like the crumbed cracker on the bottom of a cheesecake. I noticed several other older trees felled by beavers where they had eaten this intermediate layer. Its about 1/2" thick and once removed the "wood" of the tree is exposed. The bark on these particular trees is quite thick and very smooth on the outside. I noticed when the bark had a smooth outside it was easy to peel.

A nice long length of smooth thick bark being

peeled from a tree.

We used Dads boat to get to the fallen trees as they were quite far from his house(cottage). The boat was pulled ashore right next to the trees. Heres a load that we hauled back. My dad is going to rip this into 1 1/2" squares for me on his bandsaw. Im looking forward to making some very nice grips with this stuff

I also got to do some bassin with the flyrod. Poppers were working quite well and I managed some 18 bass. The smallest fish was 16" and the largest was 22". What suprised me was I only caught one small rock bass. All of my offers seemed to be a better stamp of fish than what my Dad normally catches while trolling or casting. All of my fish were released with the exception of a 24" walleye which also took my popper one evening. Here is a few photos

A 17 incer!!

He thought it was a frog. His mistake!!!

A bonus "popper" walleye