Wednesday, June 17, 2009 We wake early to another beautiful sunny day! Here is a view of fish clean island as seen from camp. Coffee and snack and local fishing, then back for brunch before heading out to what will become the highlight of our whole trip. We have decided to go to Agawato this afternoon. On the map it looks like a shallow lake and it is a dead end. There is only one entry and it is off the beaten path so we think it probably doesn't get many visitors. We think we will probably hook up with some northerns in there, if nothing else. After zig-zagging endlessly back and forth through the long shallow bay full of downed dead trees we finally reach the main lake, and are not surprised to find we are the only ones on it.

After a few minutes my brother lands the first smallmouth on a topwater lure, while I get nothing with spinners and rapalas. He quickly gets another, and another, while I continue to get nothing. I guess these fish want topwater, and topwater only. We make a circuit of the entire lake back to the shallow bay, and the entire time we are nailing smallmouth on anything topwater. My brother is throwing the cigar shaped lure with propellers (a devil horse?), and I am catching them on poppers and buzzbaits. This is pretty much the first time in my life I have caught fish on topwater lures, and boy is it fun! Especially since the action is so consistent. We stop for lunch at the lone campsite on this lake, which I would describe as a great place to have lunch, but a horrible place to camp. I don't think there was any place I could rightly describe as a tent pad, and the landing was an abrupt transition from water to a steep hill; no place to pull up a canoe to get out or unload easily.

I see a strange looking flower here, which I recently identified as a Lady Slipper Orchid in a book about the ecology of the region.

After lunch we make another circuit of the lake with the same result; smallmouth after smallmouth. What a fun afternoon. Domo Arigato, Lake Agawato! (sorry; had to say it...) No northerns though, which seems odd. I wake up in the middle of the night again to a clear sky, and this time it's a bit earlier and the moon hasn't risen yet. I'm able to do some star gazing in a darker sky, and am amazed at the number of satellites I see. It seems I can point the binoculars at random and 3 out of 4 times there will be a satellite moving through my field of view. And the number of stars in the binoculars is amazing; almost like fuzz. Cygnus the swan is overhead as is the milky way; a particularly dense field of stars.