August 2010 L&M Newsletter

Hello Sportsmen and Sportswomen,
We have a lot of information to cover in this newsletter that you might want to read about. Upcoming specials, a new lake, yeah, a new lake to offer next year.

We all, here at L & M, hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable summer. It won't be too long before the leaves will start to turn color and the fall season will upon us. So far, our summer has been good by providing us with our clients making memories for a memorable trip. The weather has been a little weird once again this year, with cold spurts earlier on, and now warm weather with many afternoon thunderstorms, but never the less, the fishing has been very good. Of course, each week is different from the next. Our water levels started out this spring very low, but, with rain this summer, the levels are in good shape. Time will only tell how the rest of season will shake out, weather wise. The bugs have been big news this year. On average, the bugs were not bad at all this year. Some periods were more so than others but the reports from our customers were that they had mostly bug free trips. That is a big plus for the trip.

Onto the points of the newsletter.

MAY SPECIAL... We will be running the May special once again for 2011. Same price for 2011 as in 2010. $900.00 per person. If you like the month of May to fish, you should be considering this special. We would also like to congratulate Jack Pregler of Iowa who won the raffle among our "2010 May special guests" and he has won a free fishing trip for himself in 2011.

Speaking of 2011. The rates for all of the trips will remain the same as the 2010 rates. We are not raising our rates for next season. If you remember, from 2009 to 2010 we rolled back (reduced) our prices and plan to keep the same reduced rates for 2011 to make our trips more affordable for our customers through the tougher economic times we all face.

A NEW LAKE for L & M in 2011. Meen Lake. Many of you have always asked if and when we will be getting a new lake to offer. The time has come. L & M has obtained a new lake and will be operating the cabin on this lake in 2011, starting late May/early June. Meen lake is located between Fawcett and Dobie lakes that we operate now. It is the only cabin on the lake, offering walleyes and northerns. The previous outfitter, who we obtained the outpost from, has not used this lake much at all considering this outpost was not their main business (their main business was a lodge on another lake). However, sin ce it has not been used all too much recently, the cabin needs a lot of TLC. Our plan is simple; the rest of the summer of 2010 we plan on doing some major work to the place. We have a good start to the remodel project but more needs to be done. Time is not going to permit us to finish everything we have at our other lakes/cabins, so we will try to do all the inside work (interior work is taking preference). Leaving outside projects (such as walkways, siding, roof, fish cleaning station, sheds, etc ) of the outpost site for later on, if we have time we'll start on some of these projects this year but looks like those items will be for future years. So it is a gem in the rough, a project in the works... As many of you know, this is the kind of thing that we like to do in our "spare time" working on projects like this, so this is the ideal lake for us and to fit in with the rest of the L & M lakes. With this all said, we can promise you, we will be working hard to get i t up to our standards as soon as we can, working at the most important items first, then working towards the other items afterwards. It's going to be a nice cabin though to start, just a few of the little extras that we have at our other lakes won't be completed right away. What do you say, is your fishing gear mean enough to tackle Meen Lake? A couple of the attached pictures will give you the idea of the cabin. It is not completed in these pictures so please keep that fact in mind when looking at them as we are working on the cabin right now.

On a side note: We will not be offering the May special for Meen lake in 2011. We want to keep May open with no bookings in Meen lake just in case we need some work time to finish any last minute projects next spring. We will be taking bookings for the lake the very end of May or early June to start its' grand opening off with L & M. We have done some research talking to people who have conducted fishery studies of the area in prior years. We have been told that Meen Lake will be similar to Dobie lake. With that being said, I think it should be a good lake for a quality wilderness experience, just as rest of our lakes we operate. The size of the lake is comparable to Wright lake, if you are wondering on the size of the lake.

Some of you have asked about our Shabumeni lake cabin. We recently sold our outpost on Shabumeni lake in the last year and Meen lake will be taking its place. Meen is located near our other camps as Shabumeni was a long ways away to the West and was not the only outpost cabin on the lake. Creating extra costs in maintaining Shab due to the location relative to our other lakes, so we decided to sell the outpost on Shabumeni lake. Meen Lake fits exactly what we are looking for in a replacement lake. Good fishing, nice sized lake, in the area of our other lakes, and being the only cabin on the lake. Just a little story about Meen and our 1 time we fished it this summer. Larry and I have been doing a lot of work to Meen recently and on certain nights we spend the night to optimize our work time when we do not have any flights the next day. One evening we took the fishing rod and few lures. We decided to have a little contest after supper o ne night. Ten casts each off the dock. Larry started, there goes cast one with no success. Cast two, same results, however, cast three provided a nice walleye and so did his 10th cast. Two walleyes in 10 casts off the dock. One on a spoon and the other on a rattle trap. Now my turn, needless to say I did not fair as well as Larry did.

Update on our new cabin system at Austin lake. The modified generator/solar along with propane systems, all working together, makes for a first class system. People absolutely love it. With this, since we are tearing into Meen lake cabin gutting the place in our remodel project, we will be going right to the same basic concept on Meen lake cabin as Austin lake. The people have reported great things on Austin lake cabin. Seriously, if our customers would not like this set up, we would not be adding it to Meen lake and using our old system of propane/solar instead. We have had reports from clients who have done fly-ins for over 20 years like the new set up at Austin over the old way of doing things. Those people have seen all kinds of set ups on how a cabin can be ran and this is their favorite system.

Boater's safety course... We have touched base a couple of times on this and would like to thank all of our customers. At the time of writing this newsletter 98% of our people have taken the boater's safety courses ahead of time, as we requested to help us out and to comply with this new government law. Having that completed is the best route for the customers... far better than the alternative method. To continue our update on this, we found another web site that offers the course along with the others we have provided before in previous newsletters, if anyone doing a trip this year or next needs to still complete the course. This one might even be easier than the others we have mentioned. Any state course will work (North Dakota, Florida, Colorado, etc to name just a few), just pick one and take it. This course should take only a few minutes of your time.

http://www.boatus.com

Then click on free online safety course on the left hand side of the screen. Any questions about this one feel free to let us know. The wardens have made a visit to our camps this spring and they did ask to see the boater's safety cards and kits. So don't forget to bring your card and kits on your trips. If you would like to get the other web sites as well that we mentioned before, let us know and we'll pass those onto you, too. Remember, too, to bring your boaters safety kits as well, they are a requirement by law.

Facebook... We are learning our new facebook page and trying to stay active with it. We invite you to become a fan of L & M. If you haven't already signed up, please do so, and help us keep it rolling.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Emo-ON/L-M-Fly-In-Outposts/64166214528

If you are wondering about the fishing this year at L & M, we invite you to follow our fishing reports section on the web site. http://lmflyin.blogspot.com/

Big fish of the year so far has been a 46 inch pike caught in Wright lake by the Schmitt crew in July. Truly a beauty of a fish. Many other pike over 40 inches have been caught in all the lakes and nice walleyes as well. As many of our customers say, though, they come to catch fish and enjoying catching whatever fish decides to bite their lure. Guests trips usually always mean more than catching fish... The plane ride, the sunsets/sunrises, the eagles and other birds or wildlife, the company of good friends/family, the list goes on.

Road construction on the 502 Hwy from Fort Frances to Dryden has been completed. The big Causeway (bridge) crossing Rainy Lake is still under construction though. But the 502 is all completed and is in really good shape. They resurfaced half of the road last year and completed the rest of the highway this season. The highway even has a descent shoulder on the sides now. Guests have commented how nice the road is now that it is finished. Now they can drive and enjoy the beautiful scenery while on the drive to here.

Potatoes... Just a brief update: The law has changed for crossing the border with potatoes. This season that was changed... you are able to bring potatoes across the border with you into Canada. As long as they are in the store bought packaging and not in excess of 10 pounds per person. Previously, you were not allowed to bring potatoes across, so this is good news.

For those who are booked with us in 2010 yet this year, every group leader should have received your flight time letters. If you have not received them by regular mail, let us know and we'll send another one to you. Please inform L & M of the information we requested (overnighting, pre-orders, group sizes, etc) if you haven't already done so.

In our ongoing marketing strategy of today's world, we have decided to utilize the internet even more and other marketing ideas to replace the old way of doing things. In saying, this upcoming year will mark a first for L & M. This will be the first year we will not be attending any sport shows for our advertising. In past years, we kept cutting back more and more on the shows. The attendance at these shows is not terrible, just not enough serious potential at the shows to justify the expenses in doing them. Just letting all of you know we plan to keep in contact with all of you who saw us at the shows through other ways.

Other than that, we've been doing a few other projects to keep us busy around here. We replaced many of the boat transims this year, put down some new flooring in some of the bedrooms of the cabins, added storm doors to most of the entry ways into the cabins, built a new shed at the base.

We hope everyone enjoyed reading our newsletter and to stay in touch. Next newsletter will be sometime later this year, if no further updates are required, our next newsletter may be our annual hunting report after the Thanksgiving holiday. If we do not write until then, remember, go and vote. Let's hope we get America rolling strong again. Until next time, God bless.

Larry, Mary, and Shane Adams
L & M Fly-In Outposts
www.LMflyin.com
LM@LMflyin.com