The TCF (A Little History)

Most of us know about the TCF after all we have been there for all of the major events in the clubs evolution. But I thought I would take some time to give a brief history of where we came from and where we are today.

We (Jody and Ted) fished for the first time in Canada back in 1986. We went with our summer job boss from the Borough, Banjo. Banjo was and still is one hell of a guy and told us about the place, the fish and how much fun it was. We were hooked, and followed him up there that year.

We fished a little differently those years; we were up at 5:00 am eating breakfast and went up to the upper lake before 7:00 am. The upper lake required a hike, with all your equipment, Outboard Motor etc. We would fish up there all day, come back for lunch, and return again in the afternoon. We didn’t even know if you could fish on the bottom lake!

We fished with these guys again the following year and were becoming more comfortable with the place, and were starting to become friends with the owner Marco. We kind of ran into a snag with one of Banjo’s group and decided the next year we would come on our own.

It wasn’t long after that that, we decided that some of our other good friends would enjoy the camp and fishing that Marco’s had to offer. Soon Joey and Carl were coming with us. We also had a few other folks who came, but for what ever reason never came back. They were great guys and we had fun with all of them. One thing that was consistent was our Nucleus. That was Jody, Ted, Joey and Carl. We had some years when Carl or Joey couldn’t come for various reasons, but we were pretty consistent.

I for one believe the critical moment for our club came the year of the “Beer War”. The Beer War occurred one year when the members were Ted, Jody, Joey, Carl and Steve. We decided to fish on the upper lake, and took various supplies, food, beer, cooking utensils, charcoal and the like. Well as things turned out one boat had the beer and one had the food, well needless to say the beer boat drank a lot of the beer, and when we stopped for lunch, the rest of the guys discovered that there wasn’t much beer left. Well being a bit immature, we did the things we did best at that age, we argued, and fought, and said a lot of bad things to each other. It wasn’t a very nice meal.

The rest of the day was not much fun, and when we made our way back to camp, we didn’t say too much to each other. When we woke up, we started to talk to one an other, then we laughed, and we laughed at our silly behavior, and that was the moment that we came to an understanding, it didn’t matter about stupid beer or hotdogs, it was about us. From that moment forward, the TCF was founded. It wasn’t founded officially but it was founded in friendship.

I believe, that from that day forward, we came to a new understanding of what we really had, and what was really important. I can honestly say from that day each and every one of us has a special bond, and would go out of our way to help each other. We have had some of the best times together, and I for one hope they can continue as long as possible.

We have seen our children get involved and that has been awesome, our wife’s enjoy each other and we have had some great summer trips, winter meetings and just great times. I still believe if we didn’t handle that fight right, we may have gone home mad at each other and drifted apart, but we didn’t we turned it around laughed about it, and became a very tight bunch of friends.

I for one, thank the Beer War, (But Hey Carl……..Never…..NEVER bring BUDWISER!!!!!!!)

TheWebMaster