Holiday Cheer:
As in todays world, finding time to do things seem harder and harder. The holiday season flew by us in light speed and before we knew it the holidays where over. We hope each and every one of you enjoyed a blessed Christmas with friends and family members, and wish in the same way that everyone has a great 2012. We spent our Christmas with family doing the routine traditions on Christmas eve with gifts and the yearly tradition of oyster stew. Lucas, Nikki, Hunter and Madeline and Matraca all came over for Christmas eve and on Christmas Day we spent the afternoon over at Lucas' place, looking over all of the gifts and enjoying another great meal. The day ended with all of us joining in on a couple of board games. Travis, Chris, and Jaycie spent Christmas with her side of the family this year so we gathered at their home in Zumbrota, MN over New Years to celebrate a belated Christmas with them. Doesn't matter when you get together, it is great!

2011 Hunting With The Adams:
We had an excellent fun-filled hunting season. As many of you know, Larry and I each drew special tags. Larry drew a NV elk tag and I drew a WY moose tag where each tag was over 10 years of applying for. To start the season off we did my moose hunt in Wyoming. Overall, that was a very fun hunt. We set up camp a couple of days before the Oct 1 opener, to check things out. The moose were rutting...so calling was an effective tactic. The hunt was more of a quanity versus quality hunt. We saw a lot of moose but nothing real big. The moose I ended up shooting was neat to watch prior to that though. There were 3 bulls competing for a cow. Saw them fighting...which was a highlight to watch, I shot the winner of the fights.

Larry's NV elk tag was a November elk hunt. We pulled into the hunting area the day before season and found ourselves in the middle of a snow storm. That hung in for 2 days before we could see far enough to hunt effectively. His hunt was much like my moose hunt, a lot of elk, but not much for size as what we hoped for. The snow storm triggered the migration of the elk off the mountain into their wintering area's and most of the elk where within a couple of miles of being in another state when we found them. We worried that they could decide to finish moving towards the stateline, so, he ended up taking a nice 5 point bull.

Our Montana hunt went very well. Better than expected. After we got back from Nevada we started to deer hunt around our place in Montana for a few days before Lucas brought Hunter out for his first deer hunt out west. I shot first, which I didn't expect to shoot till later in the season but saw a good buck earily on. Then Larry shot a deer of a lifetime, the one he has waited for many years. This deer was a true beauty. It was a non-typical 12 x 18. It was ironic where he shot it. He shot it on a 160 acre piece of state land that prior to this year was nothing but prairie dogs. The state lease came up for renewal and a different rancher took over the lease and farmed it. Behold...a good deer hunting spot. Hunter was next to bag his deer. He made a great shot with his 243 at 243 yards on the first night of his stay. Lucas ended up hunting for 9 days looking over a lot of different bucks. The day before the season ended, he took a nice non-typical 9 x 4 buck. It was worth the wait to tag a great deer like that. Mary missed out on a good hunt this fall.

We actually did some fishing while we were hunting this year too. Caught some nice Rainbows while we were on the elk hunting trip in Montana. That was a nice treat for us once.

L & M 2011 Overview:

Where do I start? Seems so long ago last spring was that I'm bound to forget something on this topic. The spring started out normal as usual. Ice out was normal, which was a nice welcome after a couple of prior years being late ice outs. Opened up camps all in time for our first customers. This spring we had to finish our remodel project to our new lake, Meen Lake cabin, before the first fishermen arrived. We successfully did so. We placed new spring mattress's in Meen, Dobie, and Wright lakes this spring. We replaced the single burner fish cookers with double burner fish cookers at Dobie, Wright, and Fawcett lakes. We also did a cabin upgrade to Otatakan lake by adding the electic system using a Honda 3000 watt generator. Which means it is now set up with 2 house refrigerators, coffee maker, microwave, electric toaster and electric lights. Almost as nice as home. We had so many good compliments on how Austin lake was set up, that we did the same basic system to Otatakan. Meen lake also has this electric/generator system. During the summer time we found time to build some walkways, we put on a new metal roof, added new sections of floating docks, and built a new boat ramp at Meen lake.

The weather last summer overall was very dry. One of the driest we've seen in a while. There were a lot of forest fires in the area causing smokey air to deal with. Some lakes were near the fires and caused for close monitoring but we were lucky not to be shut down by the government, due to the fire situation. We were also lucky not to loose any cabins as some of the other outfitters did around the area. Many of our customers did see some spectacular sunrises and sunsets as the smoke in the air magnified these settings. With the dry year, we had very low water to deal with as the summer progressed on. It is still too early to predict what spring water levels will be. We haven't had a lot of snow so far this winter, but a lot can change between now and spring.

2012 Rates:
In spite of all high gas prices and higher prices for everything to in doing business, we were forced to raise our rates, but not as much as we should to help keep our prices as affordable to our clients. We decided to raise just 50.00 per person. We are still offering a May special rate for this upcoming year, along with our other specials. Tim Bailey of MI won our raffle drawing in the May special but due to circumstances is not able to take advantage of winning the raffle. As everyone can relate, prices from grocery's, clothing, items at Wal-Mart, prices have gone up and so have the supplies and equipment to operate our business. Please check out our rates page for further details. http://www.lmflyin.com/rates.html

Being it is an election year and not to get too much on the subject, I just hope everyone is planning on voting and are watching who they are voting for very carefully as this is our chance, the people, to make a good choice (s) on how the USA will be governed the next 4 years. After seeing the Iowa Cacacus results, just goes to show every vote counts.

People have been asking what do we expect for 2012 in terms of water levels. So far, not much snow in the area. Last year ended with low water levels. The weather is very unpredictable so its nothing we can predict. It is far too earily to say. Unless we get a good amount of snow yet this winter or good spring rains, expect lower than average water levels to start the season.

Fishing License:
As in the past we will still be able to issue fishing licenses. Many of you who are reading this should have received a letter in the mail to renew your Ontario Outdoor Card that has expired this December. If you got that letter, make sure you renew your card ASAP. It takes approx 3-4 weeks to get your card back. The link below will get you started, bottom of that page is where you need to go. http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/STDPROD_091032.html

http://ontario.ca/n541 This is the website to go when you are applying to receive a new Ontario non-resident fishing license. It will surely be faster for each fisherman to apply online and get your license before arriving at L&M. So if you do this, please advise us when you do and when you receive your license in hand so we can plan accordingly.

You have the option to also buy your license too at that time, if you elect to buy the license, too, make sure to get the 8 day conservation as we do not allow Sportsmens licenses to be used at our fly in lakes. If not, at the very least get the Ontario Outdoor Card renewed. After that is renewed and you have your new card in hand, go to our web site and fill out the fishing license form on our web site. http://www.lmflyin.com/license_request.html

You should be able to use either website provided by Ontario government to apply for either type of license you are needing listed above.

Boaters safety: Just a reminder. The vast majority of you who are reading this already completed your boaters safety course. Bring that with you for your fishing trip. If you haven't done so, get that course completed and bring the proof of completion with you. Once it's completed, it is good for any future trip to Canada. And it is a government regulation that each person who drives the boat at all, has this boater safety certificate of completion of the course on you at all times in the boat. Here is the link for the boaters course if you need it to take it. This is one example that works (its free, can be done online, and fairly easy), ANY course works so if you find another you want to take instead that's OK. Once you have it done, you are good for life and never need to take the course again. And any course from any state, is good to use in Canada. http://www.boatus.org/onlinecourse/default.asp

Silent Auction:
We have held silent auctions in the past that yielded postive results and we have had a cancellation date recently that we plan to auction now to try to refill this date right a way. Seems this economy is still struggling with what is all going on in the world.

Lake: Dobie June 5-10, 2012
Please check our L & M web site for further information.
www.LMflyin.com
Same rules applied as previous auctions.
Rules to apply: Auction starts as soon as this newsletter is sent out and will close Febuary 11, 2012. If you wish to place a bid, email us with your bid and we will require the following information for the bid to be accepted.
1) Price per person of your bid.
2) How many people will be in your group.
3) Your name, mailing address, email and your phone number.

All bids are welcome. If you are the highest bidder when the auction closes, we will contact you (that is the reason why we are requiring your contact information) and a deposit will be required to secure the trip. In the event the highest bidder does not produce the deposit to secure the fishing trip, the 2nd highest bidder will be contacted, and so on. L & M reserves the right to hold a reserve bid. If you are interested in placing a bid, please email us and place Silent Auction Bid in the subject line of your email with the other information we have requested above to have listed out in the email. Email us at LM@LMflyin.com

Sportshows:
We are not planning on doing any sport shows in the winter/spring this year, which is the same plan we have used the last a couple of years. For the money involved (price of the show booth, lodging, eating out three meals a day and other expenses) there is just not enough return on reservations from any of these shows. We just cannot justify doing any of the shows the way they work now. We have found that working the internet and utilizing our depth of repeat customer base, word of mouth referring new clients is the new way in order to find our clients for the fishing season. A couple of examples we use is this newsletter, our face book page, and the direct referral program. Here is the link to become a fan of our facebook page.

Lakes:
We will be operating 1 less lake in 2012. Lucas & Nikki have decided recently to purchase our "south" camp on Fishtrap lake. He will be operating Fishtrap from now on. We are concentrating our efforts to our "north" lakes. We will be operating the rest of the lakes as last year with the exception of Fishtrap. For more information on the lakes we operate (Dobie, Wright, Fawcett, Otatakan, Austin, and Meen), click on this link. http://www.lmflyin.com/cabins.html

Odds And Ends:
For those who like airplanes, a friend of ours who has an air service in Sioux Lookout has spent much time making a great book of bush planes. We have a copy of the book in our office and it's a great book. Go to this link if you wish to check it out further. You can purchase your own copy if you wish using the link below. http://www.richhulina.com/

Our beech 18's have a few spots in the book. If you speak to him, tell him that L & M referred you his way and his great work on this book. The beech 18 section of his web site has a few good shots of our airplanes as well. Check it out!!

We also have a new camp host to greet you this year. Sadly last year (June) we had to put down our old German Shepherd, Gabby. She was a great dog and has really been missed. Earily in January we picked out a German Shepherd pup, Zasha from a new breeder in the mountains of Montana. She's been a handful but is full of life and energy. As I write this letter she is laying below the desk sleeping at my feet. I took her for a long walk today so hopefully she is played out for the night. Pictured is her at about 8 weeks of age. In the picture she was out helping us cut firewood. We know you will all love her friendliness as you did Gabby.

In closing, we hope you all enjoy reading our first newsletter of 2012. If there are any questions that we can assist you with, please feel free to let us know. We always look forward to hearing from any or all of you!!!

God Bless!
From your friends at L & M Fly Ins
Larry, Mary, and Shane Adams
LM@LMflyin.com
www.LMflyin.com