Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I began yet another day with a first-light solo fishing expedition, accompanied only by a pile of rocks in the bow of the boat.

I paddled a few hundred yards across the lake to a rock pile that we’d found the day prior which came up to within three or four feet of the surface, anchored the canoe a long cast away and began working the edges with crankbaits. The result: the best walleye fishing of our trip. I caught five walleye within about 40 minutes, and had three or four more “on” that slipped the barbless hooks. The first two walleye, a 17 incher and a 20 incher, went on a stringer, thus ensuring (so we thought) our evening’s fish fry. The commotion caused by my fishing drew the attention of an otter which swam to within 50 feet, raised it’s head a foot out of the water and huffed at me before disappearing beneath the surface. By 5:30 a.m. the fishing was over and I couldn’t buy another strike, even when I switched to jigs and probed the depths around the outside of the rockpile. Dragging two fish on a stringer I trolled nearly a half mile along the lake’s northern shore and caught only a single bass and one northern before returning to camp.

Our plan was to spend two nights at this site, allowing us a full day to explore the lake. After breakfast while Elissa packed a picnic lunch I rigged a 10 foot stringer for our two walleye, figuring that we could fish all day without keeping any fish and still have a fish fry for our evening meal. It’s not much of a photo, but if you look closely here are the two fish as we left them tied to a tree:

I half-hitched the line around each of them about a foot apart, and with the lengthy stringer they were able to reach approximately two feet of water. By 9:00 a.m. we were underway on a day trip during which our plan was to fish our way around the lake, stopping for lunch where ever we could find a suitable spot. Our plan worked well in that we were able to fish the entire lake, but the fishing was not the greatest. We caught several bass and a few northern, but our catch was not overly impressive in numbers or in size of fish. The good news was that it was a spectacular summer day with clear blue sky and a light westerly breeze. In fact, it was doggone hot, easily into the 80’s, maybe the mid-80’s. So hot that we went through all our water supply and had to pump more, and so hot that we were ready to find some shade for our picnic. By the way, in the afternoon my depthsounder was showing a surface water temperature of 75 degrees, something I never thought I’d see on a June Quetico trip. A tiny island at the lake’s extreme western end hosted a minimal campsite that wouldn’t have been great for overnighting, but which was perfect for our lunch stop because there was a nice, flat rock underneath a shade-producing tree right at the water’s edge. While there we found this loon egg.

It was laying out in the open on a rock with no sign of any nearby nest, so we could only guess as to whether it was left over from a successful hatching or was the remains from a nest-robbing gull or other predator.

After lunch we continued to fish our way towards camp. A tall rock palisade in the northwest corner of the lake made a beautiful photo backdrop.

It looked plenty “fishy” to us, but produced little other than a bass every few hundred yards of shoreline. We were treated to a wildlife encounter while fishing the northern shoreline, but got no photos of whatever creature was bouncing along the shoreline a few feet in from the water’s edge. We each caught several glimpses of the slender, dark-colored mammal of maybe two feet in length that bounded along slinky-like through the underbrush. Perhaps a mink?

By mid-afternoon we’d circumnavigated the entire lake and were hot and sweaty under the blazing sun, so we returned to our camp. Checking on our stringer I found a surprise: the two fish that we’d left for our supper had turned into one fish! The smaller fish was still there and was completely unscathed, but the larger walleye was gone, gone except for the lower jaw, around which my stringer’s half-hitch was still affixed. I’d taken the line through both upper and lower jaws and cannot imagine that it would have twisted itself off, leaving an entire jaw behind? There were no signs of scales, guts or anything else left behind other than the lower jaw. I believe something stole our fish off the stringer. Whatever it was committed the dirty deed in the middle of the day between about 9am and 2pm, and was able to catch the fish in two feet of water. The otter I’d seen that morning? A mink? A turtle? Bigfoot?

We retreated to our camp to re-think our dinner plans and to cool off from the day’s efforts. Turns out that the rock on the north side of our island was perfectly placed for a swim:

which felt great in the heat of the day. Not the weather we’d expected at all, but it could certainly have been worse. We were visited by these guys while we were drying off:

And we heard anther group of canoes pass by the other side of our island on their way through the lake, the third group we’d seen (or heard) since our arrival, making this the busiest location that we experienced on our trip.

After our swim we were forced to consider the logistics of our dinner situation, having been robbed of half our stores. (Actually it was more than half since the thief had taken the larger of the two fish). Really, really wanting another fish fry I told Elissa that we’d try to find a couple of bass to add to our remaining walleye, and we took off around 5pm to give it a try. We weren’t very optimistic, having just returned from a day of lukewarm fishing and needing to quickly catch a couple of bass of just the right size: not too small to eat and not over the maximum size limit, but the fishing gods smiled on our efforts and we actually found our two bass in less than 30 minutes of fishing and within a couple of hundred yards of camp. Our fish fry was back on the agenda, and we’d accomplished a goal of having fresh fish for dinner every night of our trip!

After supper on the last evening of our trip there was still a good hour’s daylight, so I solo launched for my fourth fishing trip of the day. The wind was down so I thought I’d stick with the flyrod for the evening, partly because I hadn’t yet had much success on fly during this trip. I went with my all- time favorite Florida bass/panfish prospecting fly, the good old bead-head wooly bugger in olive, and this ended up being a good decision because I was able to take five bass and my first ever northern on fly. Well, it was really more of a northern-ette which couldn’t have been more than 15 inches in length, but this little guy adds the species to my life list on fly! Sorry about the photo, one-handed, solo, dusk, etc. The mosquitos located me at about the time this photo was snapped, so it was back to camp for the night. Once safely ensconced in our tents we found that it was so warm that there was to be no sleeping in our sleeping bags. We chuckled at the entry day forecast which had predicted 45 degrees this night and which was in error by at least 20 degrees!