Wednesday, August 26, 2026 Following two days of limited activity, today was the day we planned on braving whatever the weather threw at us and making our day trip to Fishdance Lake to check out the Native American Pictographs.

After a quick breakfast and cleanup, we set off through some moderate winds to head back out through the Kawishiwi river. Easy paddling through there and two easy-enough portages had us on our way there. While the pictographs were cool to see and had me in awe of the history held within all these lakes in the wilderness area, the real take away for me was the quality of fishing on Fishdance. Seems that lake must’ve been named aptly.

I started out throwing a small jig head and had a little luck, more snags than I cared for, which lead me to try some top water action. I’ve not had much luck back home with the lure I decided to tie on, but I thought at least I’ll stop snagging on rocks. It only took a couple of casts to learn that the fish here are not shy of biting on top water no matter the time of day. Over the course of the next few hours, I was hunting along weedy shorelines for anything that might bite. I wound up with 7 smallmouth bass and 2 pike (one of them the skinniest I’ve seen for his size). Everyone else managed to have a bit of luck too but only one guy tied on a top water lure of his own and he managed to haul in the biggest fish of the trip, a pike that looked to be over 30”. I can’t say I’ve ever had that much fun fishing before, which says more about this lake than my previous experiences.

Even on the narrow Fishdance Lake, we could tell by mid-afternoon that the wind was starting to pick up, so we decided to cut the fun and make our way back to camp. Getting back through the river was no challenge again, but when it opened up into Lake Alice, it was clear right away that we were in for a fight. Paddling NE to camp fighting winds from the NW made for a big challenge. Crashing down over white caps and exhausting all our remaining strength through the wide-open lake while trying to stay level felt almost as difficult as our paddle in on Sunday. At least we had more energy in the tank today. Two of the canoes made it while one had issues with weight distribution and had to take a pit stop. This was when we decided it’d be best to swap canoe mates to pair the two heaviest and two lightest guys for tomorrow’s journey to Lake Two/Three.

After we all made it back to camp some of the fellas were nice enough to start on dinner while I took some selfish time to lay out in the sun on the beach and take a swim in the lake. The cold water refreshed my sore muscles. While I was being selfish and enjoying myself, the boys were cooking up the best dinner we had all week: peanut butter chicken ramen. I’m not exactly sure what all was mixed together with the packaged chicken meat but I don’t know if I want to know, it just tasted like heaven that night. After dinner there was just enough daylight left for one more swim, then to pack up camp and prep for the travel day tomorrow. We were blessed once again with a beautiful weather day (save for the wind) and our best sunset of the week. Early night to try and be well rested for tomorrow.