Seagulls are an incredibly adaptive, and misunderstood animal. The ones most people see in the Walmart parking lot should be considered a completely different species than those up here fighting with the eagles for food. The Walmart seagulls, like so many of us, have fallen into an artificially comfortable lifestyle. With their false sense of security, Walmart seagulls think they feel the same accomplishment as wilderness seagulls.

With fish already in the bag it was another lazy morning around camp, I can sleep for days here. We ran into our real first problem so far this trip, we ran out of whiskey last night. Minnesotan Mudd is way too good, next trip, more whiskey! With my camp stove out of commission we made a nice, hot coal fire and made an all out fish fry with French fried potatoes on a cast iron. Wow was it good. I wasn’t too sure how cooking it on the fire with the oil would be but we kept a close eye on it, didn’t have any grease fires, and the fish and chips turned out amazing. I could eat potatoes, oil and fresh fish for literally every meal.  

I resisted the urge to fall into a food coma and we cleaned up camp and tried our hand at fishing during the afternoon. We planned to venture to the other side of the lake, but when we were on the water the wind seemed a lot stronger than it was at camp. 200 yards out from our camp there were a flock of seagulls eating surfacing shiners off the top of 50 feet of water. With it being as windy as it was we took a scouting row out with the canoe in the chop. Paddling between the jumping shiners in the middle of the lake, hoping the fish were chasing the same shiners as the seagulls. We trolled holding our rods between our legs in the classic boundary waters troll through the middle of seagull alley. You know in the lion king when Timone and Pumba go bowling for buzzards? We were literally paddling through buzzards. Straight into the wind, straight for each seagull perched above the jumping shiners. I had a bite and the fish got off, it’s a lot more testing to land a trolled fish in a canoe, rather than my bass boat. Soon, Seth pulled in a nice smallie and we felt accomplished at finding fish in an unlikely spot. 

Rowing for buzzards was fun, but a lot of work, and the wind seemed to have died down a bit so we then trolled our way over to the other end of the lake. We found a bay with nice structure and a gradual drop and tossed some lures. Within a couple hours we had a handful of northern each. Seth had a mid-20’s in the boat trying to get it unhooked when I had a big strike. I tried to play it as he was able to get his fish back in the water and as soon as he had a hand on the net, my pike shook the hook. I had a look at it, not a trophy, but a mid 30 incher that would have been a new personal record for me with northern. Wait this is a fishing story; it was at least 50”. We drifted to an island and I hooked into another monster small mouth on the same jerk bait Mr. Northern had just swallowed. This was the biggest smallie of the trip, 21.5” 4.5 pounds. – He will look good as a replica on my wall. Seth lost a nice mid 20’s walleye next to the boat just as the sun had finished setting. It was too dark, and we were done losing fish while casting over each other’s lines so we headed back home