Wednesday, September 07, 2016

We woke up early and headed out from the Spirit of the Wilderness bunkhouse around 5:00am. It was the second straight year we had stayed at the bunkhouse and again we had it to ourselves, which was nice as we did some last minute pack organizing and shuffling on Tuesday night. We had gear and packs spread all over the first floor of the house! We headed over to Britton's Cafe, but were disappointed to find out it wasn't open this morning. We called an audible and went over to the Holiday gas station to grab some breakfast before heading up the Echo Trail. The benefit to not eating at Britton's was that we were getting a really early start this morning. We had the canoes loaded and were paddling just as the sun was rising over the trees.

This trip I was joined by my Dad, Jarod, and Chris. All of us had been to Agnes before, just never all of us together. These 3 guys have been on more trips with me than anybody else, so it was great that we could all finally go out on the same trip. We made it to campsite #1806 by 10:30am! This campsite is not our top choice, because the whole camp is on a slope. But, we spend much of our time fishing the western side of the lake, and it makes it nicer for the day we venture over to Stuart. We had camp set and we were out fishing by Noon. This was going to fell like a bonus day, with how much time we were going to be able to spend on the water. We quickly found the walleyes, which never seem to be a problem on Agnes.

The fun part about the first day is that we were just fishing for fun! We had steaks thawing out for a big first night dinner. We spent the rest of the day fishing different spots, and even trying for different species. We finally succumbed to hunger and headed to camp to eat steaks cooked over a nice cedar fire. Along with the steaks, we had some instant mashed potatoes, which made for a nice hearty meal.

After dinner was ate, we did the dishes and made our way back on to the lake. We wanted to make an emphasis of having earlier dinners, so that we could be fishing at sunset. We went out and decided to try and catch some crappies. Over the last 5 years, the crappie population has just seemed to take off in Agnes Lake. We have ran into others that have also experienced this. We have started catching them in different parts of the lake as well, so they must be doing very well. Well, Dad got the first one of the trip, and like usual it was a beauty!

We fished a while longer, and Chris got his first crappie too. Then, we went back to camp, to enjoy the sunset and a fire. This had been a great first day! The weather had cooperated and we enjoyed hours of great fishing.