Author's Comments about the article on Dryberry Lake, Ontario, Canada "You'll Fall In Love With It"

Okay – I'm sure you get the flavor of the thing.

Here's more – I wrote that article in a bit of a hurry, with a deadline to get it in to the magazine. I put in our experiences, and quite a bit of stuff that I got from Neal. You recall that Neal is a fishing guide. At the time, I didn't appreciate the full ramifications of that. I do now.

I pretty much accepted what he told me, and didn't do any checking. I also didn't ask the right questions. And I definitely didn't do the research I should have done. As it turned out, a few errors crept into the story. For one, I didn't discover – and my good buddy Neal forgot to tell me – there's another resort, not on Dryberry but on another adjacent lake, Berry Lake. I claimed that there were no resorts on Dryberry. True, but….

And it turned out that a certain group of Muskie folks had been coming to that resort and fishing Dryberry for a couple of decades or more, pretty much alone. As you'll see, a few of them did not take kindly to strangers – me – coming in and telling the world about it.

Furthermore, I made a rash claim about the size of the lake, due to sloppy journalism. I couldn't find the size anywhere on the web. So I guessed at 100,000 acres. Inexcusable. It turns out that the real number is perhaps more like 27,000 to 40,000 acres, depending how much of the connecting lakes (Point, etc.) you count. The bottom line is that it's a vast, sprawling lake, which and my intention was to get that across, but I blew the numbers. Dumb.

Another statement of mine deserves a bit more discussion. I made another – and again quite rash – claim that more 50–inch Muskies had been caught on Dryberry than in the entire state of Wisconsin. I still tend to believe that may be the case, but when I wrote the story and even now, I certainly can't prove it.

But consider: I did a cursory search on the Muskies Inc. "Lunge Log" web site and got some numbers for Wisconsin Muskies, took what Neal had told me about his 50–inch records at face value, did a back–of–the–envelope calculation and comparison, and thoughtlessly blasted forth with my claim.

Well, as you'll see below, I was (very properly) brought to task for that by the Dryberry old timers.

However, I wonder if in fact it might not indeed be the case? One gentleman in a posting on the MI discussion board (I'll get to that in a moment) actually reported the results of a much more thorough search on the Lunge Log database. As I recall his numbers – and I have to confess to less than professional journalism in quoting this, since I can't resurrect the posting – I believe he said that the data showed that Dryberry had produced something like 1/4 the numbers of 50–inch Muskies as had been caught in Wisconsin.

And thus, Ozols was clearly full of shit.

Well, I've never, ever, denied that. And indeed I always have to respect those people who come to that conclusion – there is wisdom in them.

But if my recollection is correct, and his research was accurate, just think of the implications of his assertion. What we have is that according to the Muskies Inc. records is that one single, un-pressured Ontario lake, fished almost exclusively by a very small handful of folks, has produced 25% of the number of 50–inch Muskies as the state of Wisconsin, which has thousands upon thousands of Muskie fishermen on many, many lakes. Ufda.

And furthermore. The MI Lunge Log doesn't include any of Neal's 50–inch fish, nor, I believe, those of many of his clients.   (On our first trip, one of our party caught a 48–incher – that isn't in the records.) Plus I wouldn't necessarily be convinced that the other folks who have fished Dryberry have also entered all of their Muskie lunkers in the Lunge Log either. (Although without question the Wisconsin data certainly doesn't reflect the totality of 50–inchers from that state too.)

So add in all the 50–inch fish that are missing from the Dryberry and Wisconsin data. Which really has more? Well, obviously we'll never know. And it doesn't matter. The bottom line is that Dryberry is an awesome fishery for huge Muskies, absolutely the best in my own personal experience.
Anyway, that was dumb claim for me to make.

And I got ripped for that and other things.

After the first part of the story – that which you have just read – ran in the October issue of Muskie, the shit hit the fan in the Muskies Inc. discussion board. It exploded with innumerable postings about the failings of the article, and included many personal attacks on me. (There were also a number of postings by those who were very kind to me.)

Not that I didn't deserve a fair amount of hand slapping, given the things I've talked about here. But the whole thing really got ugly.

Anyway, one particular posting really caught my eye. This one made flat out statement that the article was "90% dreams and lies."

Well, that beautiful, poetic phrase took my breath away. It struck me that "dreams and lies" was a definitizing crystallization of fishing. I put a posting on the discussion board asking the gentleman if I could use his phrase in another article I was writing, didn't get a reply, but when ahead and did it anyway.

The result is the story you're about to read. That also ran in Muskie magazine later that year.

Okay – I'll finish up with just a few more comments after you read the article.

"Dreams and Lies"