Saturday, June 17, 2023 By morning the mosquitos had taken refuge in the deep forest (or wherever they go during the day) and my first priority was figuring out what went wrong with my hammock strap. Without being bitten and having some daylight, the fix was quick. The strap goes through the suspension buckle (two metal pieces), and one of them had managed to get upside down. This prevented the friction from holding the straps. If this ever happens again, I will be able to easily fix it! I will not forget this lesson, and you can “Take that to the bank”! We had Oat Pancakes with Eggs, cleaned up and packed up, then hit the water. Of course, we had to throw some jigs in the water, and I caught a 26” Pike and Peter caught two Pike and then we decided to start moving as it would be an eleven-mile plus day of paddling.
We worked our way north toward Sandbar Island in no hurry. I checked out campsite #3, but due to high water, this site did not look appealing, and I saw a comment that it was overgrown in poison ivy and didn’t look like it had been used in a long time. We moved on and I checked out campsite #8, same comments, but I did find the big box and it looked unused prior to my arrival. This would also be a challenging site to stay on without some site cleaning. But we did get some good action with the smallies in front of camp. Next, we worked our way up to campsite #9, which was gorgeous, but way larger than the two of us needed. We checked it out and had a snack break. Peter went out for some fishing while I did some stretching to loosen my hips, with the plan being we would meet at the island to our north.
I caught up at our planned rendezvous and we started searching for campsites that were not where we thought they might be. I was looking for site #18 farther north, thinking it was a small island site. After paddling around the islands near the border, I moved further in to where it was actually located just in time to watch Peter land another monster Pike. I told him that I might not always be along when he catches big fish, but I always get good pictures for him! Campsite #18 and #124 both had issues with poison ivy and we ended up on the island campsite #20 to the south in the bay. I ended up catching some smallmouths by shore and then a loon appeared, and it was not happy that I was using a Whopper Plopper that was colored like a loon. I apologized and put a different Plopper on and the loon posed for some wonderful pictures. I had paddled around the island, missing where Peter landed and ended up bushwacking to the top of the island from the Northeast. Peter told me the best landing was on the southwest and I bushwacked back to my canoe to bring it around to the easy access.