Monday, June 30, 2008  Sarah Lake-Conmee Lake

A light steam gently rose from the lake that surrounded our camp, it was still like glass, camp was nearly packed, a couple short stacks of pancakes were ready, and the sun was just rising.

We were up early, refreshed and ready for action, 13 miles of paddling and just a few short portages would be easy compared to the 18 miles and 13 portages we traveled through so far.

It was a few hours before the Northwest winds kicked in again, but it didn’t matter, we were almost there.

A small rock island made a good place to stop and cook up some beef stroganoff for lunch.

It was just after noon when we arrived to the tea colored waters of Conmee Lake, renowned for great fishing and solitude, the relaxing part of our trip was about to begin.

One of the first orders of business was chill the first one of the 3 plastic bottles of beer I brought.

The bottle, a small net sack, and a stone were launched from shore, where it would rest at the bottom until camp was set up.

Camp had a nice view of the lake, the stone fire pit was caved in and needed to be reconstructed. Dragonflies patrolled this camp like little fighter jets. If a mosquito buzzed by, a dragonfly would be quick to circle around, and presto, mosquito was gone!

Camp was set, and the whole day was still ahead, as we stood at the shoreline and took in the view, we talked about how our dinner was out there somewhere. With the winds still pretty strong, we would need an anchor. A rock the size of a bowling ball and the large net sack did the trick, nothing but decent a size Northern Pike to show for several attempts. Later, trolling around, every time we hit an area 52+ feet deep, we marked hundreds of fish 23-25 feet down below us, Lake Trout maybe, they weren’t biting. With Uncle Fishguts recent travels in mind, we switched surface fishing the more shallow shorelines, and the poppers! I paddled the canoe around the shoreline and managed to get off a few casts, but Laura really worked the edges of the shore with finesse. She made the popper look like a swimming frog and BAM!

The fish would respond with such a violent reaction, it was like we were fishing for alligators. She jumped every time, it was such a blast we kept it up until sunset. Even though half the assortment of tackle was used today to try and entice some Walleye, only the Northern Pike would bite, and there were plenty, we let go all but one. It was Pike for dinner. Careful to not bring curious critters in to camp, a large flat rock on a small island adjacent from camp would make a good place for filleting dinner.