At some point the previous day we had decided to pack up today and head for a site on Shell. We needed to meet our outfitter back at EP 14 at 10:30am (or maybe 11) the following morning (one of the guys in the group had a flight to catch out of MSP on Sunday afternoon). We kept track of how long it took us to get to our site on Lynx and knew that this put us in a position where we'd have to pack up very early on Sunday and even then it would have been no easy task to make it out by that pre-arranged time had we stayed on Lynx. And we didn't want to make the outfitter wait.

So we packed up and decided to take the route through Heritage rather than go back down around through Little Shell. Portaged to Heritage, then portaged to Shell, no problems. Immediately see that the northern con island site was now predictably claimed. The other 2 sites on the island were also plugged. We paddled south around the other island and the site down there was also taken. We turned west and discovered the two sites on the southwest corner of Shell were open - we took the one closest to the portage because we liked it better. It was a fine site.

We got set up and I went out with 2 others in our 3-man, determined to catch some fish. We hit the bay in the southernmost part of Shell...paddled to the back of it and let the wind drift us north and east...we did this three times and caught a fish every time - a pike, a walleye and a smallie. THIS was the spot! Finally.

One problem...that wind that was helping us troll right over the fish kept getting stronger and stronger. By the 4th time we tried our paddle and drift plan, it pushed us out of the bay and half way down the lake before our lines were in the water for more than a few seconds. I had no interest in getting pushed straight across the lake, so the fishing wasn't meant to be. We headed back to camp and spent the afternoon being lazy and swapping stories while listening to the wind howl through camp...nobody was about go back on the lake.

Had a nice evening save for about a 30-minute period that featured a swarm of mosquitoes unlike any I've ever seen. It was brutal, but thankfully fairly short-lived.