Every Sunday, typically while driving home from a weekend of fishing, Robert and I start talking about where we would like to fish next. We have spent a fair amount of the ice fishing season chasing various species of trout, took a few days trips for crappie and walleye, and were not entirely sure what we wanted to target next. With my birthday coming up, Robert surprised me by booking a room at the Elkhorn Resort located in the Municipality of Onanole, Manitoba and bordering the Riding Mountain National Park. Our weekend adventures typically lack modern day conveniences such as…
Author: Robert Karpiak & Robyn Grant
Robert Karpiak & Robyn Grant
—Robert Karpiak spent his childhood hunting and fishing under the influence of his parents, grandparents and extended family, and became a professional outfitter and hunting guide at the age of 19. —Robyn Grant threw her first cast three years ago in 2014, and once that lure hit the water she was hooked. Spending her summers in the Manitoba Whiteshell Provincial Park and Western Ontario, it didn’t take long for this casual weekend activity to morph into a full time passion.
I always find it amazing how the love of the outdoors can bring people together. This story began back in late summer when Matt Hendricks of the Winnipeg Jets and I found ourselves swapping hunting and fishing stories in the parking lot of a Manitoba Natural Resources Office. As a former outfitter and guide, I enjoy helping put others on trophy animals so our conversations quickly lead towards the possibility of getting Matt onto big black bear this upcoming spring. Phone numbers were exchanged and we went our separate ways. Matt and I kept in touch, and he expressed interest…
Our trips do not always go according to our plans or expectations, and life is full of uncontrolled variables. Take weather for example. We had been looking forward to our New Year’s ice fishing extravaganza on Lake Athapapuskow for months and could not wait to be set up on the big lake for big lake trout! The forecast for the weekend did not look promising as Mother Nature was predicted to cast an extreme cold spell across the country. We are accustomed to being out in the cold and have experienced frigid temperatures on this lake before so we kept ourselves in a positive frame of mind and decided…
With the holiday season here, tight schedules can force us anglers to overextend ourselves in order to sneak in some much needed ice fishing time. This was the case for Robyn and I this past weekend with my big Ukrainian family Christmas planned for Sunday. Given we only had Saturday to fish and wanting to continue our trout chase, our destination of choice was Patterson Lake. Stocked with brown and rainbow trout, Patterson is situated on the south side of Riding Mountain. It is just north of Shoal Lake, approximately 3-1/2 hours from Winnipeg. We have also heard the lake…
It’s Friday evening at 5:00 p.m. and I am sitting in my truck with my silver lab Ava, anxiously waiting for my partner Robyn to get home so we can finish loading up and start our five and half our drive to Twin Lakes. This will be our fourth trip to the stocked trout lake nestled in the foothills of the Duck Mountain, part of Manitoba’s Parkland region. Our goal this weekend is for each of us to catch enough master tiger trout to achieve our specialist badges in the species through the Travel Manitoba Master Angler Program. I’m going into…