Thursday, August 09, 2018

Knowing full well that our BW trip was nearing its end, Tyler and I decided to pass up the opportunity to fish for most of the day, and instead attempt our planned bushwack into Moon Lake, just west of Meeds. We got on the water early on a windless morning, took in some beautiful scenery, and headed back on the portage into Swallow. From there, we portaged to the west end of Swallow to start the process. I posted about this in a thread titled "Moon Lake near Meeds on the east side" on 1/16/19. It's a great thread with lots of information in it if you think you might want to get there. This is what I said:

"I did this bushwack in August 2018 with my 17 year old son, with much the same experience as Willfess provided. The difference is the creek was low enough and overgrown enough that when we went, we could only follow it for a couple hundred feet at most. After that, we walked the creek, and actually slid our canoe over the small trees that were completely arched over the creek, using the branches to support the weight of the canoe and just pushing it along, 10-15 feet at a time. It was tiring, but way easier than trying to weave through the forest, although it certainly would have possible that way too. When we got to the beaver dam, we put the canoe back in the water above it and were able to paddle/pull against the trees in the flooded forest until we got to more open water that led up into Moon. If you check Google Maps and see the open areas to the east of Moon, we were able to paddle that entire length, and saved a whole lot of extra work. If that wasn't an option (no beaver dam, really low water), that would have been a horrible area to get through as its very boggy and mucky. Luckily we didn't have to worry about that.

We stayed for a couple hours, caught a dozen or so pike in the 16-23" range, lost one bigger fish that was in the upper 20's, mabye 30", and ran into one of the most confused and angry beavers I have seen in my time in the BW. It was clear he wasn't used to dealing with humans in HIS lake. The lake is very dark stained, so we weren't able to see much below the surface, but there were sufficient weeds and we couldn't troll crankbaits without getting hung up, so most of the lake is fairly shallow (less than 15', most way less). We checked out the "campsite" area, which you can find marked on some maps. It wasn't much, but there is still evidence of fire use, maybe from people visiting in winter. We also found the narrow passage between the 2 parts of the lake, and paddled into the northern portion to explore. We didn't fish that portion of the lake, just the southern portion.

It was a fun experience to go where few others go, and despite the extra work to get in there, we really enjoyed it.

After our triumphant return from Moon Lake, we headed back to Meeds to talk with Curt. You're not going to believe this- HE CAUGHT FISH WHILE WE WERE GONE! Well, he caught 2 nice jumbo perch and a medium Smallmouth in about 5 hours of fishing, but after 4 days of no fish to eat, it was practically a feast! We tried fishing a little after dinner, and Tyler and I found some submerged rock areas that should have held fish, but produced nothing more than a crazy photo op.

All in all, this was the best day of the trip as the Moon Lake bushwack had been our goal for the last several months. We sat around the fire that night, talked about the trip, changes and plans for our next visit, and just soaked in our last night in the BW. We did some stargazing, packed up the non-essentials, and went to bed fulfilled.