Friday, July 02, 2021 I slept well but got up early. By 4 I was awake. I read until 6. The hammock is far more comfortable than the ground, but the inability to shift in the night leaves me with a unique stiffness. By the third day of a trip, I try to find that place where I don’t recall the day, where the lake dominates time, where place matters more than calendar.

I paddled before coffee. A morning like this is a gift from God to remind me of where I am at and why I am here. There is a unique reef to the northeast of the island that I had spied the night before. I trolled towards it, picking up an eater pike just short. Casts across with a silver Mepps consistently enticed strikes, bass of unremarkable size. Several beasts were spotted just hanging back - I decided to wait for dusk to try for them.

I paddled to the south east corner, a marvelous mess of islands and bays. There is a camp down there somewhere, but I didn’t find it. The first bass of any size comes from casting deep at minnows skipping on the surface. With a solid eater in the boat, I turned back for shore and a real breakfast.

Pancakes and bacon are my favorite canoe country breakfast. Maple syrup shots and ghee butter round out the luxuries. My new pan, a hard adonized aluminum Firebox, works wonderfully, as does the new strategy of mixing the batter in the ziploc. The plan for the day, charted out over coffee at the lake side, consisted of naps, books, short paddles and long swims.

I am happy to report that I executed the plan perfectly.

By late afternoon, the heat had really built. I found a shady spot high on the north side bluff. One canoe spooked me in early evening - a pair fishing that was returning to the SE camp that I never found. Adams is such a lake that someone else on it is rare enough to notice. I felt an intense guilt at my reaction - who are these people to be on my lake? It marked over 48 hours without seeing another person.

Dinner was the bass and potatoes garnished with olives and onions. There isn’t another meal in any other place I have ever enjoyed more. A decent breeze blew up, warm but refreshing for the day’s heat. I finished the meal on the north side, hoping to catalog the collage of colors a northern twilight would paint on the opposite shore. It was a stunning display, an intensely beautiful scene that can’t be replicated by human acts, thus proving our place in the great expanse of the universe. For the first time, I played some music lightly, and the soft piano echoed the evening bird song. It was a time for poetry and promise, purpose and potential.

My dusk paddle took me back to the promising reef. This time I slowly fished Zulu’s, drifting as quiet as possible, still feeling huge, loud and out of place. After several small nibbles that plucked at my plastic, a big strike spooked me. A feisty bronzeback danced to the boat; a quick lift over the gunale and I lipped the 18 incher. I know breaking 20 is the goal, but anything over 17 is enough for me to celebrate. Released back to the deep, the brute still haunts my dreams.

Chasing bass took me to true dark. Getting out of a boat after an hour of fishing, in the dark, trying to be quiet as every bump and drop echoes across the lake, is humbling. At my arrival at the Nemo, disaster struck. The evening breeze had blown up the edges of my bug screen. After my hurried entry, I was shocked to find it full of mosquitos. Looking down with my headlamp, I was stunned by the shadows - there were so many bloodsuckers, I could see their shadows racing along the ground. Panic set in. What do I do? The previous two nights I had heard the swarm, a constant buzz that only faded by early morning. In a rush of adrenaline, I tried to reset the tarp and screens, but it was futile. I donned my bug shirt and tried to sit down at the lake, hoping the meager remaining breeze would offer some respite. Again, failure. So, I did the only thing I could think of. I bundled up in the hammock, wrapping it tightly. For the first time in my experience, I realized why the bug shirt came with gloves. The constant buzzing kept me awake, and the occasional sticker thrust in a gap of my armor.