The first night was chilly and I was happy to have packed a stocking hat last minute. After a full night’s sleep, I left the tent at 5:30am and was fishing from camp by 5:40am. No bites for two hours from camp wasn’t the start I had hoped for, so I started to get breakfast ready. Nick and I enjoyed a great breakfast of pancakes with blueberry infused Craisins and then hit the water around 8:00am. Tyler and Andy decided to sleep in and missed out on a feast. Our favorite way to fish is with top water Skitter pops so we began the morning tossing at boulders on shore. With nothing really going for the first hour, I decided to go subsurface with a shallow running crank and was quickly rewarded with an 18” smallmouth bass. I decided to try slip bobbering a leech on the first break line and quickly landed smallies of 18, 19 and 20 inches. Things were looking up!

We spent the afternoon exploring near Thursday bay and caught more smallies and a handful of pike. Nick caught a nice five pound pike that we put on the stringer for dinner. It was delicious and was the perfect amount of food for us. Tyler and Andy came back for the evening empty handed, so they headed out with leeches to try and catch a couple walleyes before dark. They did just that and cooked dinner with their headlamps.