Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - Fishdance Pictos & the Jitterbug that ate my face! I had my second bacon and eggs meal this morning and birded a bit before I made my way over to Fishdance to see the picots. It was a little breezy as I left, but no big deal. I was able to paddle through the second unmarked portage and then paddle to the top of Insula and entered the Kawishiwi River. I enjoy paddling rivers like this. The river paddle was uneventful until I hit Alice. The north wind had picked up and the waves were pretty high at the south end of the lake. Rounding the bottom of Alice was not fun. I was glad to get that behind me and I made my way to the pictos. I bumped into a father and daughter who were coming from the pictos and we had a nice chat. The pictos were nice; I took a few pictures and headed back. I was not looking forward to rounding Alice again. Alice did not seem to be as bad as it was earlier and I blew Alice a raspberry as I finished, she sent me another swell. Back in camp I rested, carved, ate, and fished a bit. I had been hearing surface strikes towards dusk and just after dark so I cast a Jitterbug a few times. On the third or fourth cast I had a strike close to shore, missed the fish, and had applied enough force that the plug came flying out of the water and attached itself to my face. Here is how I described it on Facebook. So, I had a fish strike the lure, I tried to set the lure, missed, and the lure flew out of the water and attached itself to my face. First thought, don't panic, even as you have a rather large lure imbedded in your face...in two places. I mash the barbs down on all of my lures to make it easier to release fish, so I should be able to just back the hooks out. My first try failed, so next is to consider pushing the hook point out and then clip off the hook above the barb and remove, but I had nothing to clip the hook with. I retried pulling the hook out, thinking I could paddle to another campsite to get some help if I failed. (It was getting darker, so, emerging out of the darkness into someone else's site with this thing attached to my face, would be the stuff of fireside horror stories.) I got the hooks out with a stronger tug and was standing there with my face bleeding, which is a good thing because it seemed that bleeding was a way to cleanse the wound. The next issue was how to care for my face without seeing what I was doing. I remembered I had my iPhone (I wanted to see if the gps would work without service. It didn't seem to but it did in Yellowstone on a bike ride.). I got my med kit and phone out, turned on the phone and used the selfie mode to use the camera as a mirror. I was able to care for my face and take a selfie as well. My only regret, other than missing the fish, was that I didn't think about taking a selfie while the Jitterbug was still embedded in my face. I climbed into my Amok hammock on the early side and started to read. My hammock had never been all that comfortable and I would wake up a couple times in the night and find that I had slid down in the hammock. I carefully looked around in my Amok and noticed that the lower pull straps were loose. I tightened them up and presto, a wonderful flat lie hammock. I only took me four days to figure it out! So ended day 4.