Several families hired me to drive them into Canada to go Bluegill fishing on Rice lake.

The trip started around 2 am on a Saturday morning.
I drove farm house to farm house picking up everyone going for the 6 day fishing vacation!
My first stop was at an Amish family farm that had a fishing boat for me to tow.
I've been on fishing trips, but I couldn't believe how well planned the Amish are when it comes to fishing!

They loaded the boat with everything they were taking and off we went to pick up the other Amish fishermen and women.
Every Amish farm we stopped at they would load their equipment and one or two large coolers.
By the time we picked up our last vacationer the boat was full of fishing equipment and coolers.

We arrived at the pre-paid cabins on Rice lake around 4:30 pm. It was a beautiful summer evening.
They had rented me a small cabin right next to the boat pier and they had a very large cabin for all 12 of them up on the hill.
I went to bed early that night, but before 4 am I was awakened by noises on the boat pier.
I went outside to find everyone getting into their boats to go fishing! I couldn't believe it? Everyone knows you can catch Bluegills at anytime of the day? Why 4 am?

I went back to bed and woke again around 9:30 am when everyone came back from their 5 hour fishing trip with boat loads of bluegill.
They carried the fish to the cleaning station and pulled out their electric fillet knives and spent quite a while cleaning fish.

After the fish were all cleaned and in the freezer everyone went into the cabin for lunch. Come to find out all of those coolers were full of 6 days worth of meals! After lunch they took a short nap and guess what? Back to fishing! Next time I saw everyone was around 3:30 pm they all came back with more boat loads of fish. They cleaned them, put them on ice, ate dinner and, I couldn't believe it...they headed back to their boats.
They once again arrived at the pier just after dark with more fish to clean.

This routine went on for 6 consecutive days!
Everyone was happy as Larks!
They couldn't understand why I would only fish for 30 minutes or so everyday and eat what I caught. I thought I was enjoying a vacation, they thought I was wasting an opportunity to catch more fish.

At the end of day six all of the coolers of food were empty. They filled every last one of them with fish, over 13,000 fish that is!

There were several other Amish groups on the lake that week and on the way home they all used their driver's cell phone to call other Amish taxi's to brag about how many fish they caught. My group was beat by another group who had nearly 1000 more fish.

It wouldn't have been my dream vacation, but all of my riders thought it was the best.

Well, we made it through customs somehow and for the next several months I was invited to some really big fish fry's

I have so many interesting stories to share of my experience in Amish country. I've broken them down to make it easier to read.
Use the links below to find different articles.

Amish Taxi   Fishing Trip    Phone Shack