Tuesday, June 16, 2009

We awake early to a beautiful sunrise; this makes 3 sunny days in a row. I can't believe our luck! Especially for a mid June trip.

After breakfast of a pot of coffee and a breakfast bar we head to the south end of Shell for some morning fishing. This becomes the pattern for the week; coffee and breakfast bar at sun up, fish for a few hours around Shell, then come back to make brunch before heading out for the daytrip of choice. Fishing is pretty slow, and this perch represents our only success for a long time. Not long after this though I connect with a large pike, and am able to land it. I know it's not huge by the standards of large northerns, but it's far bigger than anything I catch in the ponds around my home in the Chicago suburbs and I am very satisfied. Only two fish this morning, but as long as one of them was this big I am very happy. Not ten minutes later though my brother Ken ties into something really big!! He got it close to the canoe, but unfortunately it broke free before he was able to get it into the canoe. Not sure how he would have done that anyway, since we had no net. I don't know if this picture does it justice, but here it is. The rest of the day we explore Little Shell and Lynx, and catch enough fish for dinner but nothing spectacular.
I wake up in the middle of the night and am happy to see stars since the light polluted skies at home are pretty bad. I go down to the shore for a better view but since the moon is up the sky is too bright to really take advantage of the remote location so after a while I give up and go back to bed.