After spending a night out in the beautiful countryside of Sudbury, enjoying a pig roast and many a drink, waking up early Sunday morning to be adventurous and active wasn’t high on my priorities list. My buddy John and I had talked about the potential of a one-night Killarney trip, but when we both stumbled into the kitchen at 11am it didn’t seem very plausible. It took us roughly an hour and a half, during which we would ask the other “So…want to go to Killarney?” with the reply, “sure, if you want to”, until we finally arrived at the conclusion that yes, we would go, and why only one night when we can go two!?

We scrummaged through the pantry and took anything that could be deemed camp worth, packed the fillet knife in anticipation for our big catch, loaded up all my camp gear and hit the road toward Killarney. We pulled in at 3:00 (half hour before the park closed), picked a spot that would be near decent fishing spots and that would allow us a permit, found out there was no where for us to pick up more kerosene tanks, realized we’d forgot the map and that John only had a pair of Welly’s from Wal-Mart to hike it. How else would you start a trip?

Our minds were on the fishing, and we talked about the past luck we’d had in the area, and the strategy for early spring fishing. When we came across the first large lake we realized a fact we’d slightly overlooked… the lake was still completely frozen, and impossible to cast into. Still, we we’re confident that we’d find a way, so after a short hour jaunt where we took many breaks to take in how beautiful Killarney really is, we finally made it to our campsite on Hagon Lake, and got settled. A healthy dose of whisky and fireball, pasta cooked for a family of 5, and a deck of cards quickly allowed the night the settle in and the day came to a close. I couldn’t believe we’d actually made it out here.

We woke up early, with our minds set on coffee, and fish. We ate, packed a small backpack and stylish fanny pack, and hit the trail in search of “The Big One”. A little bit of bush whacking and we came to some small rapids that had opened up the ice. We knew we had to get across. We stripped down to our gitch, held the camera equipment, backpacks and rods above our head, and slowly made our way across this treacherous river mouth. Luckily, we made it without a spill. What we found was that everything was about 3-5ft deep and we couldn’t cast out to anything deeper. Although we traversed the shore, we had no luck, but our little trip was not pointless and it was worth the life-threatening crossing.

A few hours later we returned to the camp to find our neighbouring beavers busy as work. Turns out that beside these large Canadian rodents, a few geese, our only other glimpse of wildlife was two deer carcasses directly across the path…just beautiful. We again ate enough pasta for 4 Russian Tow-Truck Drivers, had a laugh, and called it quits.

We woke up to grey skies and eventually rain, but we packed, threw our rain coats on and headed back to where we’d left off. While we didn’t catch any fish, we caught two two beautiful days in the backcountry of Killarney.