Sunday, August 12, 2007 This morning we woke up late again and enjoyed a breakfast of bacon, egg, and cheese muffins. Pre-cooked packaged bacon on the shelf is a great item to bring with you and it made this first time menu item a hit. After breakfast we headed out fishing and caught a couple more northerns trolling the shoreline with Rapalas. Northern Pike are fun to catch but they lack the challenge of catching walleye. It was that thought that brought us to the southern point of the smallest island on the lake, another recommendation from the T.R.I.P.S. program. I was working a chartreuse 1/4 ounce jig and a white twister tail grub down the drop off and Oscar was casting his one dollar Rapala look alike as close to the shore as he could get. In the next hour or so we caught about seven walleye ranging from 12"-22". Oscar caught most of them on his cheap stick bait that he had tied on in the beginning of the trip. I had broken off a jig in the rocks and was tying on a new one at the same time Oscar was casting from the front of the boat. In one fluid ninja motion his bait caught the top half of my two-piece light action walleye rod and cut the line with a hook. ¼ of one split second later in the most boat rocking barbaric cast I have ever experienced, the top half of my rod was on its way to Walleye World at the bottom of the lake 40 yards from the boat. At the time neither one of us knew what had just happened, only that something went wrong. Oscar turned around and asked “What was that?” I replied cold as steel “My rod.” If Oscar would have done anything but what he did, I would have been seriously ticked off and it might very well have ruined our trip. However, he busted into the most gut wrenching laughter I have ever heard in my entire life. It sounded like a 4 year old getting tickled to death by his father in the front of that boat. So I could do nothing but laugh with him and grab my casting rod. He will never live it down and was definitely a good sport about all the teasing. He offered to buy me a new rod but I couldn’t take money for an accident from my good friend. After the Rocketing Rod we decided to head in to eat an early dinner and come back out and work the steep points of these islands during the last three hours of light and paddle home after dark. While widdling a wooden spoon (you always forget something at home!) my knife slipped and I suffered a pretty severe cut to the tip of my left thumb. Luckily, I was able to attach a large band-aid and double tape it to keep from heading out for stitches. I cannot stress enough that you are deep within the wilderness here, and foolish accidents such as this could cost you a finger if you are not careful. I was careless for just a moment and ended up with a fishing thumb out of commission for the rest of the trip. After fashioning a reflector oven with a large flat rock balanced over a corner of the fire grate with some other rocks that framed it, I made pizza boats with hamburger buns, sauce, pepperoni, and Colby Jack sliced cheese. Yes, as a matter of fact, the wooden spoon worked great for the sauce! We headed back out for fishing and went back to the hot spot from earlier. Working the west side of that same little bitty island and the north channel yielded a few more walleye and then our action died off. We headed over to the next closest island and worked around a large boulder just under the surface about 15-20 yards out from the north point of the island. We pulled up yet another few walleye from here, one of them I watched take my white grub about seven or eight feet below the surface as I bounced it off of a boulder. We went to work the third island after that and got no luck. Right before dark we returned to the small island and received no hits. Paddling in by moonlight was a treat and Oscar really enjoyed the dome view of the stars. Oscar refused to sleep outside the tent last night for fear of wild animals that snack on campers, but tonight we both slept under the stars forgoing the ironclad protection of our nylon dwelling.