Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Today there is very little wind, which is a nice change. We spend the morning fishing the lake around camp, and catch a few smallies and a sunfish that is barely larger than my lure.

Just south of our camp there is a weedy bay with a rocky peninsula extending into it. To stretch our legs we beach the canoe and cast for a while from shore. Nothing for a while, then paydirt! I get a strike from a very nice northern deep back in the weeds and am able to work him back to shore without losing him. I feel pretty satisfied to have succesfully landed him since it is the biggest Northern I have ever caught. (32" long, although he weighs 2 lbs less than than the 32" one my brother caught on our first day) It's getting later so we head back to camp for a pancake breakfast before heading out for our daytrip.
We have already been north to Fairy lake, so we decide to head out east to Fourtown. We fish the islands in the bay just east of the portage from Boot, but with little luck. Since there is very little wind today we are finally able to throw lures other than spinners and I catch a tiny pike on a tube bait, but nothing else. There is a rocky edge on the western shore of one of the islands, and the map shows deep water near shore there so we stop to relax for a while, fish from shore and have a snack lunch. Before even unloading the canoe I take a few quick casts and right away hook another nice pike! My camera is back in the canoe and he seems firmly hooked, so I leave him on the line and go back for my camera. By the time I get back to my rod he is gone of course. Oh well, I'm not too upset since I have the pictures from the one this morning, and that was the bigger of the two. We also catch a few smallmouth on leeches, and get some with lures, and my brother catches a nice walleye with a rat'l'trap. (the only walleye we catch the entire week incidentally. strange...)
When we get back to camp we find something surprising has happened; something has eaten the guts out of one of the fish we had left on our stringer! Strangely, it seems as if most of the meat is left, but all of the organs have been chewed out. I think maybe it was a mink, or weasel. I'm not sure what animals live around there, but last year we saw something that looked like a weasel to me, so maybe that was the culprit. Strange how he left the other 4 fish totally untouched though. But thanks Mr. Weasel; at least this way everybody got a nice fish dinner. :-)
The sun breaks out for a while to illuminate the eastern shore visible from camp.