My Friday started around 3:30 a.m. I woke up thinking my clothes smelled awfully smokey from the fire the night before. As I rolled over in my sleeping bag I saw some flickering lights outside the tent and was baffled. Had one of the guys gotten up and started a fire in the middle of the night? I jumped out of the tent to find a fire outside the fire grate. Apparently one of the logs that the previous group had left near the grate was too close to our fire and had been smoldering inside. When the winds picked up in the overnight hours they stoked the embers in the hollow core of the log and flames were shooting out the end, and that was enough to send me into panic mode. I start rummaging through camp trying to find a pot to fill with water and douse the fire. All the while I'm in my stocking feet and nearly slip on the wet rocks into the lake on two or three occasions. After 6 or 7 gallons of water, the fire was out, and I went back to bed. The only problem was I kept having dreams of our entire campsite going up in flames and the USFS charging me with starting a forest fire. Not the most relaxing thought in the world. Later that morning, when I told the group what had happened, they were freaked as well as relieved because they thought it was a bear they heard tearing our camp apart. Regardless, that served as a glaring reminder that we needed to go out of our way to make sure every fire was thoroughly extinguished before leaving camp or going to bed.

As for fishing, Friday was okay. The winds had to be blowing at a steady 15 mph from the east and again this limited our fishing options. But Buzz17 and I found a nice honey hole on the south side of the lake out of the wind and landed some eating size walleye and some really nice perch.

After dinner it began to rain and rain and rain and get colder and colder. Despite the rain we still threw out the ciscoes and slip bobbers and once again landed a handful of northerns in the 33"-34" range.