We got underway early in the morning on the 24^th of July and somewhat later in the morning we arrived at the Jasper Park office. We managed to park right in front of the office on the street and even as we were parking people started coming over to look at the boat. Cars were slowing down and folks were rubber-necking a nice long look at her and really giving a lot of very positive praise. We went inside the park office and took care of our business in there and through the window we could see that the commotion continued for some time. After we were done in the office we went back out to the street and took a couple of photos when the crowd dispersed.

When we arrived at Maligne Lake we had to wait a bit for our turn to launch and then put the batteries in and motors on, backed into the water and she floated for the first time. With me “at the helm” I backed away from the trailer, turned around and began a few modest speed maneuvers (mostly left and right turns) and some full throttle stuff. I had a hand held GPS unit with me and I got a top speed of around 9 kph showing on it but it’s an older unit with less accuracy than newer ones. My new GSP/Fishfinder/Depthsounder was only partly functional due to a wiring error that I couldn’t resolve on the lake. I didn’t have any use of the GPS function and had to manually transfer my coordinates to it from the hand held unit. More on that later.

I named to boat Coronet Creek as it was the destination at the far end of the lake that I could never get to with the boats I used in the past as they were to inefficient and used too much power to go the distance. I opened a bottle of champagne, poured a bit over the bow and had a good belt of it myself.

 We got the boat loaded while answering questions and accepting praise from other boaters at the dock and got underway. We were carrying about 528 lbs in deepcycle batteries, two trolling motors, a couple hundred pounds in fishing gear, food and camping gear, etc. That with the weight of two adults brought us up to about 1300-1400 lbs onboard. I/we had absolutely no concerns regarding the structural integrity or any dangerous handling characteristics of the boat. It was so stable in every way that we could absolutely relax and enjoy the ride. Even in modest cross waves caused by the tour boats (approx.45’ steel hull diesel powered passenger boats) that passed by us, we had no particular concerns. We sped out to Fisherman’s Bay mostly wide open on the throttles (both motors) and made it there in less than two hours, very impressive! Once we arrived at Fisherman’s Bay, we had once again to field a bunch of questions and answers by the fishermen that were camping there. After swapping fishing stories and stuff we got our campsite set up and took off for an afternoon of fishing and soon I caught the first one. Shortly afterward my fishing buddy caught his first. Later we went back to camp and cooked up our catch. They were delicious!

The next morning we set out for Coronet Creek at the far end of the lake and we took our time and fished our way there. At one spot on the lake we recorded a depth of 305 feet to the bottom. And there is no uniform depth to the lake due to its location (in the mountains) and so I can’t say it was this deep or that deep. The most significant thing to note is that almost everywhere the lake bottom descends very steeply away from the shore. And it is common for the depth to be 40 ft or more within 50 of shore! We arrived at Coronet Creek later in the afternoon and we were the only ones there with a powered boat. The others had kayaks or canoes which they were paddling. We met some interesting people from France who were tourists and couldn’t speak much English and were somewhat unprepared for their stay at Coronet Creek and so we helped them out and had a good time with them. They were three ladies and a 9 or so year old child belonging to one of them. We spent a couple of days at Coronet Creek caught some more fish, and then returned slowly back to Departure Bay meeting up with another friend of mine who had just arrived at the lake for a couple of days fishing.

We made our way back to Edmonton and had a very good time while we were out there.

Since we were officially on a camping/fishing trip, we didn’t dedicate any serious time to establishing the performance numbers for the boat in any strict engineering manner (considering the numerous variables that affect speed and handling), however generally speaking I made mental notes on several aspects of how the boat handles with different amounts of weight in it and at different speeds and have to say that the hull design is fantastic!

We had some problems with the fishing because the extremely warm weather caused the mountain snow/glaciers to melt at an accelerated rate which ran into the lake and brought with it a lot of debris and silt which clouded the lake quite a bit. This made it difficult for the fish to see the lures. And it unfortunately got worse the further we went back into the far end of the lake. We did catch fish but just not as many or as frequently as in previous years.

After getting back to Edmonton I got the wiring problem fixed on the GSP/Fishfinder/Depthsounder unit and now I had the GPS part working as well. The moving map thing worked really good and with the digital maps from Lowrance really added an interesting tool to the recreation of fishing.

After a couple of days in Edmonton re-grouping and re-charging my batteries I decided to head back out to the Park and this time I stayed at the Snaring River Campground. I made day trips out to Medicine Lake this time and since the lake is very shallow and full of submerged rocks I could only travel along slowly to avoid damaging the boat. Well not true entirely, I did open her up wide open briefly and this time I got a top speed of around 14 kph which is pretty darn good as far as I’m concerned.

The weather was absolutely awful this time and the fishing was about the same, however, this was where I caught the “WHALE”. The way it unfolded was the day after I got to Snaring River another buddy of mine made it out and we took his boat out the first time we went to Medicine Lake. He has an 18 ft cedar strip canoe and carries it on the roof top of his truck. We got it off the truck and loaded and off we went. He was of course the pilot and I the passenger and we only had a modest load in the boat, one battery, one motor, our fishing gear and us. I was very uncomfortable on the darn thing as it felt very tipsy and every move you made had to be done very carefully. It was very cold (it snowed in the mountains over night), rainy and windy. All that is permitted on Medicine is fly fishing. This required casing and this caused the canoe to rock badly; I didn’t enjoy the day much at all. My buddy caught a 21 inch rainbow on that first day which was quite impressive. Needless to say he was very proud of himself. The next day we took my boat out to Medicine Lake and while there was no great improvement in the weather the ride was way, way better. I took three batteries, two motors, our fishing gear and us. We fished the heck out of the lake again and I caught one that was 19 ¾ inches long then he caught one that was about 14 inches and then I caught what could only be described as a whale, it was the biggest fish I had ever caught anywhere in the mountain parks. My buddy who had worked as a fishing guide in Jasper Park (for Curries) for two years and had fished the lakes in Jasper Park for over ten years had never seen or heard of anything so big coming out of either Maligne or Medicine Lake! It took over ¾ of an hour to land in the boat and weighed 6 lbs 2 oz and measured 24 inches long and 13 ¾ inches around. It was too big to fit in the cooler! I really enjoyed myself and felt that the whole experience was well worth it! We took off back to camp and our fishing was over for the time being. We had caught our limit and had too much fish to consume while out camping so we headed back home.

Overall it was a terrific summer!

Enjoy the photos

Roy