It rained hard overnight, and we were up at 6 a.m. again (ugh) and packed up a soggy camp. Our goal for the day was to make our way across Bald Eagle and to find a campsite hopefully on the southeast end of the lake, so we could spend the day fishing in that area, which we knew was a great spot for pike and smallmouth bass. We may have gotten too early a start, because every site we passed was still occupied; we didn't give people enough time to pack up and move on for the day. On a positive note, we saw the four canoes from the group that passes us the night before pulled up on shore at the very first campsite we came to.

We said a little prayer as we approached the last campsite on the south end of the Bald Eagle Lake, and were thrilled to find it open. Unfortunately, this site really sucked. Still, God had provided, so who were we to complain? We hung our food bag, our tarp and pitched our tent, then headed out fishing. The wind was howling (notice a trend here?) so we went into the Isabella River and tossed buzz baits and Senkos up to the weedline.

I nailed several pike this way, but my dad, who for no particular reason hadn't had much luck fishing the entire trip, was getting skunked. All he had talked about leading up to the trip was catching a big pike, and here we were, in a great spot to nail some nice fish, and he was getting frustrated.

We eventually came to the campsite that sits along the river, and this site was open. We agonized over whether to go back, grab our gear, and come back and take this site instead, but since we had already put up the tent, tarp and food bag, we decided not to.

Instead, we fished on, catching a few more pike, before heading back toward out campsite to relax for a bit and get out of the wind. If we thought the wind was blowing hard in the river, it was nothing once we got back out onto Bald Eagle. The waves were easily 2 feet high, so we paddled for all we were worth, keeping the bow pointed into the waves until we got even with our campsite, then making a mad dash for shore.

We hadn't had the foresight to keep any of the pike we had caught early, and fishing chances from shore looked bleak, but I tied on a Senko (basically a straight rubber worm), rigged it weedless, and threw it out and ripped it across the surface of the grassy weeds that lined the shoreline. After a few casts, a small pike porpoised out of the water behind the bait. I threw it back out, and the pike hit again. This time, I hooked him, and dragged him through the weeds to shore. We put him on a stringer for dinner.

Here's a picture of my tackle case. Since I love seeing what everyone else brings, I thought I'd post a picture of mine.

For lunch, we tried something new — bannock, which I had made up ahead of time. I simply added some water and mixed it up, then fried it over the camp stove. I livened it up with dried cherries, raisins, cinnamon and other spices, and it was actually pretty good, but filling. Ugh. It was like a rock settled into my gut. With the wind still howling, we played cards, drank up the rest of our Jack Daniels, and basically just relaxed and enjoyed the day, albeit from a less-than-ideal campsite. This site was stuck back in the woods, so we had no view. There was no rock table at all, so we tried to build one, with little success.

Eventually, we fried up the pike we had caught earlier, along with some broccoli mac and cheese.

We chased it with tang and rum, played one more game of rummy, ate gummy bears and watched the stars come out, then retreated into our tent for our final night in Canoe Country.