As I prepped for the first extended fishing trip of the new season, the late evening air grew cool and breezy. The guideboats had already been loaded on the trailer, and all the necessary supplies were safely tucked away in coolers, packbaskets and framepacks. There was a place for everything, but far too little space for it all.

At the put-in, we purged our gear to lessen the load in order to make more room for cold beer, which in proper angler’s lingo is known as “trolling fluid.”

After a long day of pulling on the oars, hauling gear in and out of the boat and over an untold number of carries, the pleasures of a cold beer and a soft mossy log to sit on are innumerable.

We had covered the carries in record time, and all that was left was a quick jaunt up and over a long spiny esker that separated the five ponds we intended to fish. The route was laced with the roots of massive white pines, and it was hardened by cobblestones that were sculpted by glaciers that retreated from this region thousands of years ago.

It was still early spring, so the blackflies were not yet in the air. There was still plenty of snow hidden in the thick balsams, and pockets of winter’s ice-cover could still be found in some of the shaded bays. The witchobble bushes, aka cripplebrush, had not even leafed out, and there was no color to the woods, no spring blossoms and no spring peepers. The air was cool and the winds began to pick up as we hurried to pitch camp and set up the tents.

The usual camp banter included wagers on the first fish, the largest fish and, as always, the oddest fish of the day. The crew included many veterans of the old Goofy Group, an assemblage of angling fanatics who gathered annually to fish some of the most remote inaccessible waters in the region.

The core members of the group were on the hunt for big brookies back in the 1970s, well before New York state purchased the Lows Lake/Bog River Flow tract.

Our initial ventures in the early days were centered mostly on the Bog River Flow, where 2- to 3-pound brook trout were common and fellow paddlers were few.

We had a distinct advantage in terms of angling knowledge, as the original core members of the Goofy Group included a few veteran anglers who had fished the region for many years before it was acquired by the state and opened to the public.

The original crew included Old Bill Strong, a carpenter by trade and a trout fanatic by birth. In addition, Old Bill served as a caretaker for the Grassy Pond Hunting and Fishing Club, which had a cabin at the far end of Grassy Pond, off Lows Lake. The location offered easy access to the big lake, and to the surrounding remote waters scattered across the adjacent Five Ponds Wilderness Area.

In the 1970s, camp rules maintained a rule that required releasing all brook trout under 14 inches in length. Three- and four-pound brookies were common, especially in the fall when the big buck brookies gathered near an area known as “Forty Second Street” while staging up for the annual spawn.

Old Bill, my friend and brookie mentor would regularly brave the towering whitecaps and punishing westerly winds to access a small, tight outlet area where the big buck brookies gathered in schools that numbered in the hundreds. Often, he would venture off across the vast lake alone, with only his dog Eli for company.

Eli enjoyed trout, and Bill often battled with him while attempting to release an undersized fish that was flopping about on the floor of the boat. His coat was black as pitch, which made me believe he was half mutt and half otter.

After the state purchased the vast Lows Lake/Bog River Flow complex and opened it up to the public, there were a lot of changes, including a ban on the use of motors – whether on boats or floatplanes. The ban effectively eliminated access for old timers like Bill, his younger brother and most of the other old timers who had long leased a few acres for their cabin at the far end of Grassy Pond.

When I first visited the area as a young man, it was truly a wild part of the park. There was still an active golden eagle nest on the cliffs of Wolf Mountain.

Every year, Herb Helms would pilot his float plane into the pond with a client who was an avid bird watcher. It was a different time, and a far different place.

Despite the state purchase, the motor ban and the managed wilderness designation, the region provided a far wilder character than it currently does. I recall counting a raft of more than 50 loons that gathered on Grassy Pond in late autumn.

Wildlife was abundant, and my first chore in camp was always to clean off the sliding glass doors that provided a grand view of the pond and the cliffs. The muddy paw and nose prints on the glass window offered solid evidence of the most common visitor to camp, the big black bears that were always sniffing around, huffing and grunting in the nearby woods.

From our base on Grassy, we were within easy striking distance of more than a dozen remote brook trout ponds. In fact, back then, there were no bass in the Bog River Flow/Lows Lake. It was strictly brookies. Bass arrived years later, after a dam failed on a nearby private pond and made their way to the main flow. In recent years, there has been evidence of a brookie come-back, with reports of brookies back in the Flow.

A few years ago I landed an impressive specimen that weighed in at more than three pounds. Although it was covered with black dot disease and gill lice, it was likely a survivor of the old “Mud Lake” strain that once populated the same waters.

It’s nice to believe that nature will restore that once plentiful fishery back to its glory days. Fortunately, the surrounding waters of the Five Ponds Wilderness have been largely restored after a long, running battle with acid rain, climate change and more than a few “bait bucket biologists.”

In recent years, the lakes, streams, ponds and rivers of the northwestern Adirondacks have undergone an incredible transformation. They have become the go-to location for anglers seeking big fish in grand surroundings where the only competitors are eagles, loons and otter. It is a wild, section of lands that stretches west from the village of Cranberry Lake, all the way to Stillwater Reservoir and beyond. Fortunately, it provides a place of solitude where a man can still become lost, and find himself in the process.