Monday, September 03, 2018 I have to say, I normally don't sleep very well in a tent but I slept pretty darn good last night. As usual I am up early and I head outside to make a few cast from the campsite......nothin'! Soon I hear my wife get out of the tent and she is starting up the morning fire....we are definitely going to need more wood. Our first morning we are having our favorite breakfast, Ovaeasy Eggs, Bacon, and Hungry Jack Hashbrowns.....They are the best!

In spite of all the work we did the day before we decided we would do a day trip today, the reason we picked Gaskin is for some of the loop day trips we can take from this lake. So this first day we decide to do a loop through Jump, Allen, Pilsbery, Henson, and back to Gaskin. So we pack up our day pack with some snacks, water, and stuff for lunch. I load up the fishing gear and off we go. Another great day for paddling. We get to Jump Lake and do a little fishing and end up catching a couple of small smallmouth, at least we got the skunk off the board! Jump is super small and we quickly portage over to Allen and end up getting a few more smallies. We have seen one other person all day and we are having a great time! The portage into Pilsbery was a long one but pretty easy. When we are on Pilsbery the fishing really picks up and we end up getting some pretty decent size smallies on crankbaits......love catching smallies! By the time we get to Henson we are getting pretty tired and the wind starts picking up a bit. We found an open site on Henson to stop and have a lunch of salami, laughing cow cheese on flatbread. So good! The portages on Henson are pretty much right across from each other so we decide to save Henson for another day and quickly cross over to the 92 rod portage back into Gaskin.

When we get over to Gaskin we have pretty much cross the whole lake going into the wind so this was going to be a chore, I also wanted to stop off in the burn area and collect some firewood. I find that burn areas are a great place to collect wood. The small burned pines can pretty much be pushed right over and they are usually perfectly dried. I didn't have a hatchet so I never grab any wood thicker than my wrist. It takes me about 30 minutes and I found enough wood to last us a couple of days. So we loaded up and headed back across the lake. When we got back to camp I was pooped and sweaty again, so I unloaded the firewood and decided to take another dip in the lake. Again my wife joined me brought our body soap. To baths in a row?????

After cleaning up and lounging in our hammocks for a while it was time to make some supper. Tonight we are having spam burritos! Don't knock it till you tried it! After supper it was time to try for some walleyes so we load up the walleye gear and leeches and head out......again nothin'! My wife caught one little smallie and that was it! So we headed back to camp for a fire and some chillin'!

We checked the weather radio because Tuesday was supposed to be our one bad day of weather, expecting rain and storms all day so prepared camp for that. We know our tent has a tendency to leak when we get a lot of rain so we setup the tarp over it. We also decide that we really like this site and that we want to do another loop that would take us into Winchell and since Tuesday was looking like a wash we are going to stay another day. Looks like we are all set so the rest of the night was spent star gazing, watching the campfire, and just talking about how grand life is. Ibuprofen and fireball all around to rest our tired bones and off to bed we go.

~Gaskin Lake, Jump Lake, Allen Lake, Pillsbery Lake, Henson Lake