Wednesday, June 15, 2011 Day 4____ Kawishwi River to Pan Lake. We woke up at 6:45 it was another clear day. Brad made triple berry muffin/pancakes while I fruitlessly slip bobber fished hoping to catch the fish I knew were down there. We packed up camp and were headed out at 9:30. We got to Pan at 11:00. We heard a bunch of rustling at the portage landing into Pan so we hurried up and got in. A minute later a Bull moose walks out of the trees into the water about 100 feet from us. It was really awesome so we snapped a few pictures and went on our way. We got to our campsite and set up camp and then ate a lunch of salami, pepperjack cheese, crackers, gorp, and hard candy. I did some slip bobber fishing in a back bay because it was really windy. I threw one out kind of just because and I journaled and read my Bible in the shade. I relaxed for an hourish catching 3 smallies but not a whole lot of action. At 3 we were kind of getting bored so we decided to fish the calmer side of the lake which was the East. (I had never heard of an East wind really but the wind blew from the East/ Southeast for about 4 straight days so maybe that was why the fishing was poor.) Anyways we went out for about an hour and caught 2 smallies and 4 pike. One pike even T-boned the fish I was catching and he let go right as I got them to the boat. Then Brad dropped his lure over the side of the boat and caught it. At about 4:30 we went back to camp. We putzed around a bit and collected some firewood. It was really windy still but we didn’t know what else to do so we decided to jig the 50 foot hole on the East side just to try something. We didn’t really know how to fish deep like that so I decided to throw a jig and jig it along the bottom and Brad vertical jigged a minnow. On my first cast I let it sink to the bottom for about thirty seconds and then started jigging along slowly feeling the bottom. I had only reeled for about a couple seconds when I felt resistance. I wasn’t expecting to catch a fish so I figured I was snagged. I set the hook though and I felt it tug back. Immediately I realized it was a huge fish, bigger than anything I'd ever caught before. I loosened the drag a bit and fought with the fish like I never had before. My heart was pounding super hard and it was by far the most excited I’ve ever been fishing. When I had fought him for about 2 or 3 minutes I got him to about 10 feet below the boat but I was still unable to see him. I survived his first mighty run but not the second. I have an ugly stik which are very stiff rods and he bent it in half against the canoe because it was straight under us. I felt the line go tight and I knew I was finished.( I’ve never went fishing for really big fish so I’m not accustom to using the drag much so I didn’t really know how to use it much or I never really had before but if I ever hook a fish like that again I’m letting all my drag out. Lol.) I sat there for the next half hour with my heart pounding just utterly heartbroken. I’m not so mad that I didn’t catch it but I just want to know what it was and how big, approximately, it was. I wish I would have at least got to see it but o well what do you do. I guess now I just have a one that got away story. Anyways, enough of my sob story. After a while we went back to camp. I was still feeling sorry for myself but catching 3 nice smallies from camp helped a little bit but there was still that ache. We ate a supper of Wild Rice and fish and went out to troll for the night. We caught 5 smallmouth, 2 pike, and 1 perch. Then we went to bed at about 11.