Uchi Lake

Why do you keep going back to Uchi Lake year after year? a friend recently asked. Because I like to catch lots of fish, I told him, and I like coming home feeling like I’ve been on vacation.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve been to several different fly-in lakes…and have caught fish at all of them. But going to a new lake usually entails a few days of “looking” before you actually find those huge schools of hungry walleye sitting in twenty feet of water off the far end of a submerged point or underwater island. And if I only have six days to fish, I don’t want to burn two or three of them trying to “learn the lake.” At Uchi, I can go out and try areas I’ve fished for years, quickly eliminating unproductive water because I know what to expect from past trips. Uchi is small enough that I can try many areas in the course of a day, and never worry about getting lost, and big enough that if my “old reliables” aren’t providing enough action, I can search out new waters based on what I learn from my tried and true spots. That’s right, there are still areas on Uchi I haven’t explored, even though I have been going there for years!
The other reason I return to Uchi Lake year after year is because I like coming home after a week’s fishing feeling relaxed and refreshed. In years past, our groups have tried the more rustic approach to fly-ins: cleaning our own fish, filling our own gas tanks each morning, hauling in food, throwing our sleeping bags on rickety cots, coming in cold and tired only to have to build a fire in the stove for heat, preparing meals, cleaning dishes, traipsing to the outhouse in the middle of the night with a flashlight trained on the ground so you don’t trip over rocks and limbs. In the morning before heading out to the lake, we’d have to cook breakfast, clean up pots, pans, and dishes, prepare our lunches, which usually consisted of lunchmeat and potato chips, then haul our gear down slippery slopes to our boats. And that was all fine…and fun…but I’m not Jeremiah Johnson! After a week of that routine, it would take me two weeks to recoup back home.
At Uchi, I get up in the morning refreshed from a hot shower the night before, and a good night’s sleep on a real mattress and pillow, knowing my gas tank is full, that breakfast will be served in a comfortable lodge, that shore lunch will be crackling over an open fire at noon, and that dinner will be served when I come off the lake in the evening. Then, while the Uchi staff is cleaning dishes and putting away food after supper, I’ll be grabbing my cigars and jacket for a couple more hours of fishing before dark. Need I say more?

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