Wednesday, August 05, 2020

Day 5 Rest day. Wow…... that was the coldest night of the trip. It got down to 43 degrees…………. I literally had every piece of clothing on, including my rain gear to stay warm enough to sleep. We woke up at no specific time as we were taking another rest day. The sun was out again and warming things up quickly. After breakfast and just hanging out for a little while, Nate and I took off on our fishing expedition at roughly 10am. This included one portage which was pretty tight and included an up and over a beaver damn, my first such experience in the BWCA.

Leaving on our fishing trip Beaver damn

We arrived with no problems and started fishing. Nate was all ready to go and bagged the first smallmouth within 10 minutes of our arrival. It was maybe 8 inches and was released to grow some more. As we worked our way down a channel, we decided to try a small shallow bay, maybe 4 feet of water. Nate had a crankbait and as I guided us into the bay, he hooked into the first keeper sized smallmouth of the day. It was an absolute football!!! Probably went 18-19 inches and was at least 4lbs. We decided to keep this one and hoped to give it some friends to hang out with on the stringer as the day progressed. As we were coming back out of the bay, we noticed that it got really deep really quickly, also known as a drop off, where fish like to hang out. It also had a cliff face that went straight down into the water with timber hanging out into the water. Jackpot. We switched to slip bobbers, jig heads and leeches. It was a bonanza!!! I had two jig heads that were bent because of the weight and strength of these fish! But the biggest fish of the day came from Nate. He hooked into a good-sized fish and when he got it to the boat and got the head above the water, it was a northern that would have probably gone 15 lbs easy. I say probably because we didn’t have the net which we accidentally left on the portage between Tuscarora to Owl (or so we think) on day one. And in all honesty if we did have the net, I think the fish would have been to big for it!! When we both saw the fish, we looked at each other surprised and that was all the time it took. The fish shook its head, broke the line and disappeared. Although we were never going to keep that one it would have been nice to take some pictures because it was a good-sized fish! I have never in my life had such a day as that on the water catching fish after fish after fish with a majority of them decent sized!! The last fish we caught was an absolute battle-axe of a smallmouth, a dark bronze with scars marking its sides. We released it back for someone else to catch, it seemed a fitting way to end the day. We probably caught over 40 fish on the day, a majority smallmouth bass. We ended up keeping only 3 for dinner and couldn’t wait to get back to camp and fry them up!

First keeper (of many!!) Nate's average fish my average fish I did catch a couple of footballs! Last fish - The Battleaxe, note all the scars The special guests of honor at what we hope to be our inaugural fish fry.

We cleaned the fish before heading back on through the portage and got back to camp about 5:30pm. We fried up the fish with some shore lunch and it was absolutely delicious!! Once dinner was done, we started to get ready for our exit day. We packed up what we could and laid things out for the next morning to make it easier to get an early start as we had to get to entry/exit point 54 on Seagull Lake. Once this was done, we were treated to a nice sunset…….. and bugs. You could tell it was going to be warmer that night because the mosquitos were out in force. They say ignorance is bliss and I can attest to that. We had a fire and while some of our party were complaining about the mosquitos, I wasn’t having any issues. I could hear them but they weren’t biting me, they must have had better hunting elsewhere. Then mom and dad went to bed and Nate and I started to garner more attention but it still wasn’t that bad…... until I turned on my headlamp to check things out. Wow…… they were everywhere. That ended the night as we doused the fire and scrambled to our respective shelters to get away from the bugs. But overall, this was our only night with actual bugs as every other night was too cold.

rods: didn't care, it was totally worth it!! lakes traveled: wouldn't you like to know :)

Fish fry with shore lunch, yummmm!! Sunset Night cap