Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I again rose at first light, swatted through a moderate phalanx of mosquitos, and launched the canoe solo. This time I took a few minutes prior to departure to pile some rocks in the bow, and the extra 20 or 30 pounds of weight made a huge difference in the handling of the boat. (I figured that finding rocks was an easier and faster way of trimming the canoe than putting myself on a crash diet during our trip.) In spite of the improved canoe performance the fishing was so-so with only three or four bass and one northern landed, but I did catch a walleye in the 21 inch class to highlight an otherwise slow two hours of first light fishing.

I returned to camp in time to greet Elissa as she blossomed from her tent at a genteel hour, and thanks to her efforts breakfast was soon served. We’d originally planned to base camp at this site , but with the slow fishing in the area we decided to make a move instead. Deb at Seagull had told me that it might pay to fish some smaller lakes, so we tore down camp in preparation for a move south to Slate Lake. While breaking down the camp we found several ticks on clothes and on tents, so we engaged our tick radar for the remainder of the trip.

There was a moderate northerly wind, just about perfect for fishing our way south along the meandering shorelines of Saganagons Lake towards the short portage into Slate Lake. The fishing was not great, but we picked off bass and northerns as we travelled.

Did I mention that Elissa was quite smitten with her favorite Storm Thin Fin lure? I’d only packed three of them for our five day trip so she treated them like they were made of gold, sometimes going to great lengths to save an errant cast:

Ironically, only a few minutes after this photo was taken the just-salvaged lure was clipped off clean by a large northern. One down, two to go.

By late morning we reached the portage to Slate Lake.

If only all portages were so short and so easy! We cleared the narrows leading into the lake and paddled to the island campsite a few hundred yards in, where we set up our two-tent camp on a nice site. There were three or four newly blown-down trees around the perimeter of the site, all lying the same direction and some of which sported freshly splintered wood, so a recent storm must have paid a visit. We ate a quick lunch then sat on a perfectly placed waterfront rock on the north side of the island to map out our strategy.

The day was warm, bright and clear. I’d guess the air temperature was nearly 80, quite a bit higher than on the forecasts we’d seen. While sitting there we noticed a canoe fishing a half mile away at almost the extreme western end of the lake, the only people we would actually see fishing during our entire trip. We watched them for some 20 minutes, at which time they picked up paddles and headed our way. As they passed within easy talking distance of our perch on their way to the portage out of the lake I asked them how they’d done fishing and was answered with a brief: “Marginal at best. Few fish”. They never broke paddling stride and didn’t seem much inclined to talk. Maybe they were in a hurry to get back to their camp. Anyway, it was early afternoon, we wanted a fish fry for dinner, and we’d never fished the lake upon which we gazed, and the little intel we’d gathered wasn’t very helpful, so we figured that we’d best get busy.

We fished the narrows leading into the lake with no luck, then moved to a nearby gradually sloping point that was covered with boulders. The depth sounder showed that the sloping point continued on out to about 20 feet of water, then dropped quickly to about 30 feet. We anchored the canoe at the 20 foot contour, within long casting distance of the shoreline, and began tossing crankbaits over the rocks and deep jigging on the bottom. We caught a northern right away, then a decent bass, and finally, almost directly beneath the canoe, came up with a 21 inch walleye, the only walleye that we’d catch during the middle of the day during our entire trip.

Talk about timely, thanks to this long-shot walleye our evening fish fry was assured! Unable to catch any more walleye we switched to shoreline fishing and caught a fair number of bass, most of which were too big to keep.

But we were eventually able to add a couple of 13 inchers to the walleye so there’d be plenty to eat. I also caught this little guy on a jig:

At the time I did not know what it was, but I’ve since learned that it was a rock bass, the only one we saw in our two trips to Quetico. After a fish cleaning stop at a nearby rock ledge we returned to the campsite to prep for our fish fry, and during the meal prep time a group of three canoes travelled through the narrows between our island site and the mainland. They probably came out of the portage from Fran Lake and were heading to Saganagons. After an excellent fish fry Elissa did not feel like joining me on the water for the evening bite so I gathered up another pile of rocks for the bow of the canoe and decided to break out the fly rod for the first time this trip. The results were disappointing as I only tallied one 12-inch bass on a red/white seaducer pattern before adjourning for the night, but I did have several follows and a couple of short strikes.

Elissa did her s’mores thing on the campfire again, at least until darkness fell. It’s amazing how the mosquitos seem to instantly go from a few circling around your head to bajillions of bugs as soon as the light is gone. We weren’t bitten too much, probably thanks to a combination of permethrin-treated outerwear, DEET-sprayed hands and necks, and a thermacell, but the numbers of bugs buzzing around our heads was almost scary. At bedtime we became good at quickly unzipping the tent entrance then diving headfirst through the opening into a tuck-and-roll so as to be able to turn and zip close the entrance in mere seconds so as to allow as few winged visitors inside as possible. I’ve tried to describe to some of my friends the level of sound made as untold hundreds of mosquitos would crowd around outside the tent vent openings under the rain fly, but none of them believe how loud that mosquitos can be, even though we’ve got our share of bloodthirsty skeeters here in Florida.