Thursday, July 02, 2015 We were all very excited to head north and explore Crooked Lake as well as enjoying the open water with no more portages until the food was eaten down. Right off the bat I caught a nice 20” walleye trolling a deep diving rapala in firetiger; a lure that would catch many walleye on Crooked Lake. We spent a good bit of time viewing the pictographs and enjoyed feeling the link to the people of the past. I had intended to bring some tobacco to appease Maymaygwayshi, the mischievous trickster thought by the Ojibwe to live in the cliff, but never followed through with purchasing some. I had my nephew pick out a couple of small lures that we left in nocks of the cliff face.
We stopped for lunch along the route and made plans to fish a narrow spot on the lake that created a lot of current. We marked large schools of fish on the portage depth finder and drifted leeches on many different types of jigs for almost an hour. Not one fish caught among the group. We headed north again when I spotted the white head of a bald eagle bobbing up and down in the brush on a small island. I told my nephew to get really quite while we let the wind push us up to the island. With camera in hand I was the eagle struggle to take off; flapping it’s wings in an awkward manner. When he finally did take flight I saw what was hindering his take-off; one of the biggest small mouth bass of the trip hung from his talons. He flew off to eat in peace.
The wind picked up as we headed towards Wednesday Bay and the sky began to darken with rain laden clouds. We began looking for a suitable campsite and passed up a few before finally settling on an exposed camp on the southern point of a large island. We hustled to get camp up before the clouds unloaded. Typical of my nephew, he had his fishing rod in hand and was working a zulu around the perimeter of camp. He got a massive strike in an open patch of weeds from a giant bass we dubbed the “camp bass”. Over the next couple of hours we managed to get nearly a dozen strikes out of this bruiser but could not hook and land it. We joked Maymaygwayshi was messing with us and did not like our offering we made earlier in the day. Everyone had been skunked since leaving Picture Rocks.
The weather settled a bit as it neared the late afternoon. Nathanial and I went out in search of fish. We headed south back to a place not far away where a narrow point caused noticeable current. Nathanial had at a half dozen or so misses of both small pike and bass. We finally tried a weed cocked cove off to the side. Bingo! We got a couple of rises out of some bigger pike. Nathanial was still fishing a zulu on light tackle when a big pike came us and grabbed it boat side. It bent the rod and broke the line. After that I picked up my heavy rod rigged with 30 lb braided line and a titanium leader. I attached a Lucky 13 in the frog pattern and threw it out far from the boat towards shore. I let it sit until all the ripples faded and then popped it once. A huge pike lifted its head and tried to inhale the lure but missed. I popped the lure two or three more times and the pike came charging. It smashed the lure and dove, racing towards the canoe. It went right under the boat where we got our first good look at it and turned right and ran some more. It took line at will and would then turn and race back under the boat in the opposite direction giving us another look at it. I told Nathanial to work the boat towards the shore as there was no way I was going to bring this beast into the canoe with us. Each time the pike turned and charged in the opposite direction the lures trebles began to work themselves free of its boney mouth. On the 5th or 6th pass the pike finally spit the lure and swam free. I turned in disbelieve to my nephew. His hands were trembling as he held the paddle, but had the biggest smile I had ever seen stretched across his face. Maymaygwayshi would have the last laugh today as we paddle home skunked. It was the only day of the trip Nathanial failed to catch a fish but I would bet his most memorable of the trip.
It rained and thundered throughout the night.