I sleep better in the woods on the ground than in my own bed sometimes. Another good night sleep and awake at 5:30 AM. It is amazing how you can forget what day it is when you are in the woods. No cell phones and TV’s….nice. When you are up early, you go fishing. Dick put me in the front of the boat for some fly rodding. The first point produced a nice largemouth. A northern pikes hits my popper off the edge of a tree. It is a good fight. Not much more, but a flyrod top water bite is worth 50 other bites. Brian is making coffee and fishing from shore when we return. He knows how to make a fire….We have a limited travel schedule today. The kids sleep in a bit, we have a nice pancake breakfast and are off by 10 AM. The wind is still strong into us and we are in a narrow channel. We are all a bit nervous (are the kids?) as we head into the channel working hard to keep nose into the wind/waves. I ask for a strong effort from Nicholas for the next mile. He gives it to me as do the other kids. We turn east and the wind subsides. The Table Rock is at our left. I would like to stop but we have worked too hard in a short time. Who did make the table rock? We are now where I want to be in Crooked Lake….lets find a good site. The three canoes that past our site at 9AM this morning has our first site of choice. We work past them on the island and find a better site on the other side. We are glad to grab this site. We land and settle in. Good site for tents and fire. We have some firewood but well need more on Sunday. We have time to set up tents, hammocks and the rest of the site. We’ll be here for two nights. It is mid afternoon and we have time to fish. We all walk the shore and throw flukes with success with the northerns. Bryce, Brian are doing a good job of catching from various parts of the island. We haven’t found the walleyes, yet but I will cut up some northerns for dinner. Nicholas and I work our way around the island and find some current on the east side. I’m told this current can be too strong to paddle in the spring. It looks great for any fish species. I convince Nicholas to put on a Dardevle. He wonders why a chunk of metal will catch a fish?? I plead with him and convince him this classic lure may do something. The first big Northern smashes the lure right at the island. He has it for a second , but loses it. He hooks a second within 5 minutes and has this on for some time but loses it at the end. The hole and the current produces two more fish. He lands them both. A great time for both of us. I bleed like stuck pig getting one of the fish off the hook. His teeth are sharp….he slashes and cuts the stringer and we lose the few fish we caught. Regardless, we have a great time.

The clouds are parting and we will have a nice night. We clean fish, find wood, make a big fire, eat fish. The stars come out tonight and we have a great night around the fire. Atlanta has light pollution….we see a lot more stars up north. We see the Milky Way and what the boys say are iridium flares. They look like shooting stars but may be reflection from a satellite. Whatever they were, the sky is lit up on this night. We’re up until at least 11:30 with a big bright sky. We'd like to see northern lights.....no luck.