Monday, August 21, 2023

Monday morning we woke up to light rain around 6:00 AM and little did we know that the rain was going to be on and off for the next several days and that not once would temperatures reach forecasted highs again until Thursday. We slowly packed up camp in the rain and began our paddle north towards Beatty Portage. When we got to the mechanical portage, temps were in the mid 50's and the rain was steady. I asked the guy there if he had an updated forecast and he just smiled, laughed and said "yep, its supposed to stop raining around 9". It's almost 10...so we both just laugh and move on in our rain gear.

We headed north through Lac La Croix, checked out the pictographs, noting Zups and some other structures on the Canadian side as we continued our journey towards Snow Bay. A few powerboats came by while we were in Loon Lake but were still docked at Beatty Portage when we left, no doubt hoping to wait out the rain. They passed by us at some point again along with several others throughout the rest of the day. As we started to look for campsites in the Snow Bay area, we noticed what Jaden dubbed the "highlighter brigade", a group of several people at a campsite all wearing various extremely bright rain gear and walking around in their campsite. I guess they made it easy for us to see that site was occupied! With site 12 and 13 both taken, we settled on site 10, a nice secluded site tucked into an island bay but still close to the areas we hoped to fish over the next couple of days. A quick exploration of the island found poison ivy all around the edges of the site and a big area next to the canoe landing, but the tent pads and main area were all clear so it wasn't an issue. Just don't plan to go exploring off open trails at this site if you want to avoid it. We got an updated forecast (temp at lunch of 58) with light easterly winds incoming for the next 3 days. We were hoping the old adage of "winds from the East, fishing is the least" won't hold true (it didn't). With the cold temps and having been damp all morning, we decided to head into our sleeping areas, warm up and get some well earned rest. After dinner, we explored the areas south and west of the site and quickly found the reef I had read about that would become a major fishing target of ours the next day. The fish trio of SMB, Pike and Walleye are all caught again before dark, along with a nice fat LMB. The sprinkles started to increase in intensity again as evening moved towards twilight, so we skipped the fire and headed to bed.