Day 4 July 1,2023 Layover on Sarah

Meals.BF: Pancakes, Lil smokies/L: Bacon, lettuce and Rehydrated dried tomato sandwiches / D: home dehydrated creamed chicken base w/ foil packed chicken,dried mushrooms and celery, Quick rice. FD corn

It’s my 63rd birthday today. Yay? We got up, and were down at the lakeside to get water for the gravity filter when a solo paddler was paddling by between the island and our campsite. He was making a video for his youtube channel. He said he was on day 8 of 11 days and had gone through the Basswood River portages to Crooked then up through Brent, Conmee and back down through Sarah. He had an aluminum canoe that he said weighed 82 lbs and was having to triple portage every portage and the portages he had been going through were really in rough shape. We gave him some info on the portages he would be hitting on the way out. At least he can use the river portages and just pull over the beaver dams. That should make it a little better. He was the only person we had seen or would see until we got back to North Bay.

We made breakfast, cleaned night before and Bf dishes. We decided to move the tent to a tent pad further up the hill due to a pine tree leaning about 40 degrees over the pad near the fireplace. It started to rain just as we got the emptied tent up the hill so Dan ran back down to put the utility Tyvek tarp over our sleeping bags and clothes. I got everything up to the tent and spread out to dry during a break in the rain while Dan worked on putting up the tarp while fighting some big gusts. We had checked weather on the InReach and it had not mentioned any storms. Oh, well. After the squall passed it was dry and sunny the rest of the day. We did laundry and hung it out to dry, ate lunch, showered w sun shower, relaxed some and got ready to finally go out fishing.

We paddled over to a nearby wall and tied off to a bush. We really need to remember to rig up an anchor. I kept catching the bushes on the bank and Dan lost 2 leaders. He said one felt like a really big fish, I’m not sure why he lost the other one, we both have new line on our reels. We were getting bites on every cast we managed to get in the water. I had caught a log and didn't look to see my hook was bent out, so missed what looked like a really nice Walleye on the way back to camp. Made dinner, then decided to mix up the Beignet mix. Way too much mess, but they were really good with honey and powdered sugar.

Dan went up to the latrine and came back several minutes later rather put out saying he couldn't find my paracord markers. I went up and helped him find it. It was within sight of the tent, but I had marked a less obvious trail and at night it is more difficult to see the strings. I was told to use longer strings and within sight of each other next time. Will do!