If Manitou, the omnipresent Algonquian spirit, decreed that I could fish but one Adirondack watershed, I’d choose Raquette Lake. World-class brook and lake trout, smallmouth and largemouth bass, landlocked Atlantic salmon, bullheads, sunfish, perch, whitefish and smelt commingle blissfully in Raquette. Numerous nourishing feeder streams provide the necessary sustenance for the lake’s diverse fisheries and bonus angling opportunities.

Just as important, Raquette Lake Village sustains the angler’s mind and body through the Raquette Lake Supply Company soda fountain and the venerable Tap Room’s smorgasbord of life affirming daily specials and liquid pick-me-ups. You’ll find authentic hard ice cream milkshakes at RLSC soda fountain to cool you on a hot summer’s day, and there’s always a bottle of potent Polish antifreeze lurking under the well stocked Tap Room bar to warm the cockles of your heart after a bone chilling fall foray on the lake.

I first sampled the essence of Raquette Lake angling, from dredging for lakers in forty feet of water with a copper wire victrola rig, to hauling canoes up beaver dam impaired feeder streams for bread bags full of native brookies, when my family resided on Tioga Point for three summers back in the late 1950’s. Subsequently, I’ve fished from North Bay to Sucker Bay to Eldon Lake to Sargent Ponds. The largest smallmouth bass I’ve ever landed was hooked on a frog colored flatfish off the long gone Boy’s Conservation Camp front dock, the day before 1959 bass season opened. Who uses a flatfish anymore? The monster “smallie” was two feet long. We didn’t weight fish back then. Length was the true measure of an Adirondack trophy.

Most every morning I’d hop into one of the camp’s metal rowboats and troll a gold Phoebe or parmachene belle streamer around Tioga Point in ten feet of water. My pretext was to catch my mother a mess of bluegills or smallies for the table. She’s always preferred the flaky white flesh of a bass or bluegill to the succulent orange flesh of a brook trout. I’ve spent my entire angling career attempting to convince her that trout are tastier. It’s not true of course, but bass and bluegills are a pain to gut, scale, skin and fillet, when compared to simply gutting and frying a trout. My mom would still choose a bass fillet over a Kobe fillet mignon any day of the week.

Maybe I’ve lost touch with the Raquette Lake hotspots, but I just can’t find the beautiful saucer-size bluegills that were so plentiful back in the fifties and sixties. Maybe I singlehandedly decimated the Goliath bluegill gene pool? After all, I was a veritable fish killing machine. The legendary guides would’ve been proud, especially Alvah Dunning, the Hermit of Raquette Lake, who claimed to have snuffed out the last indigenous ADK wolf and moose. I’d row around Tioga to the sunken iron sailboat on the north shore and spend hours catching eight inch bluegills with my fiberglass fly-rod and parmachene belle streamer right outta the shady cockpit. I don’t care who you think you are, catching monster bluegills on a flyrod is as sporting as hooking a five-pound bonefish on the Islamorada flats.

Fifty-four years later, one of our favorite trout fisheries has matured beyond recognition. It was always special to paddle a Grumman canoe around Boulder Bay and up Boulder Brook to worm plunk behind active beaver dams for native brookies. We’d glide up to and haul over successive dams, catching alder stained brookies up to fourteen inches behind every dam. The trout were so wild, they’d literally jump outta the water if you teased them with a worm a few inches above the surface. It was cold, mucky work, but somebody had to do it. Back on Tioga, camp staff waited till dark with bacon grease cured frying pans for the triumphant anglers to return. And then, the fish fry was on. What doesn’t taste great cooked in bacon grease? Okay, tofu. I suspect Boulder Brook is a chub and shiner nursery by now.

Raquette Lake is a preferred destination for bullhead aficionados. Bullheads, better known as Adirondack lobster, are a seafood connoisseur’s delight. The luscious white meat’s as sweet as any extracted from those grotesque Down East “bugs.” Being Yankee catfish, bullheads prefer feeding in low light conditions, especially at night when they forage sandy shallows for aquatic plants and animals. Back in the day, we fished the Tioga sand flats, bathed in the dim light of a kerosene lantern hung over a boat gunnel. Bottom fishing with sinker and worm was the preferred technique, but bullheads are sometimes hooked when slow trolling for trout with a Lake Clear wobbler and worm. The mouth of the Marion River provides prime feeding grounds for Raquette Lake lobster.

Talk about easy to prepare. Just nail the bullhead to the side of your camp, slice around its neck with a single edge razor blade, and peal the skin off like a sock with a pair of pliers. The innards pull right out with the skin. Behead those bad boyz, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, egg, and cornmeal, then saute them in browned butter. It’s the next best thing to a lobster roll at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset, Maine.

Historically, the place to cast for lunker smallmouth bass was “The Needles,” a partially submerged rock island shaped like a needle, northwest of Tioga Point. Since Confederate largemouths had yet to invade the North Country in significant numbers, smallies ruled. Now one of the most productive honey holes is in Raquette Lake Village off the RLSC boat ramp, where trophy bass of both species are released after tournament weigh-ins.

So Cable Guy, score a chocolate shake at the RLSC soda fountain, launch your $40K Nitro Z Series, and go a hoggin. When you’re finished, haul your vessel, park your rig, and head into the Tap Room for a cold beverage and a keeper size bowl of Pastabilities. Like they say in that hackneyed Old Milwaukee beer commercial, “Don’t get no better than Raquette Lake.”