Day 6:  Saturday, June 12th

Today, I slept in until 8:30.  There is no rush today because it’s a planned layover day.  In addition, I’m not particularly motivated to crawl out of my tent early as the rain that began last evening was only intermittently interrupted from 8:30 pm until the early hours of this morning.  Things are still damp as I exit my tent and my gaze around the lake from my island home indicates that the conditions are foggy and misty.  However, there is only a breath of a breeze and again, all the cloud cover has kept the temperature at a comfortable level for the morning hours.  Yet, with all the moisture in the air, if feels very humid.  These conditions would persist most of most of the day, with the fog/mist being replaced by occasional showers.

Again, this is a planned layover day and for such occasions, I typically plan something different for breakfast.  This morning … pancakes.  However, the first order of business is hot water for coffee and a small container of cool water to receive my orange juice drink powder.  The orange juice goes down pretty quickly, and I continue to sip coffee as I work on the pancakes.  Soon the skillet is hot enough and I begin to pour batter.  My strategy is to consume one-at-a-time, as they come out of the skillet.  This insures that my breakfast will be pleasantly warm (if not hot) with each bite.  Number 1 comes out of the skillet and is slathered with syrup and I immediately pour batter for number 2.  My batter is finally finished when I hit number 4 and with a few sips of coffee to top off my meal, I’m feeling comfortably warm and filled inside.

I do a quick clean-up after breakfast dishes in anticipation of spending much of the rest of the day fishing.  However, by 10:00 the weather is more misty than foggy, so I decide to wait it out a bit longer.  By 10:30, I’ve become impatient with the weather because it looks like it’s not going to change.  So, I crawl into my rain gear, gather my fishing gear and launch my canoe.  Along with my lunch, I also take the preceding day’s dinner leftovers to bury somewhere in the woods away from my camp.  

My island camp is situated roughly in the middle of a bulge in the lake.  My focus today will be getting to know this area in some detail.  I head out to a point not too distance from camp at roughly the 7 o’clock position.  I’ll start there and work clockwise around my island.  I rigged to troll, and as soon as my lure crossed the hump of my first point, I had a walleye on the line.  Pretty descent size, but it’s not quite as large as my keeper on Mexican Hat.  I decide that with other dinner add-on’s this one will be sufficient.  So, on the stringer he goes.  I reverse my course and try the point again.  Sure enough, I tie into another walleye; one more drag through produces one more.  I’ve decided that this is enough and proceed more westerly until I get to the narrows where I’d entered this section of the lake.  Just beyond the narrows I nail another medium-sized walleye.  I double back to run the section again, but get no hits.  

As the bulge of the lake widens to the northwest, I start to pick up a series of pike.  The first one I tie into probably would run 36 inches.  This is an estimate because, no sooner had I gotten the pike to the surface than he did a run.  Unfortunately, my drag was set a little too tight for 6 pound test so it didn’t take much effort to snap the line.  OK.  There goes my favorite lure … a Yuzuri deep diving silver minnow.  I re-tie and put on another Yuzuri lure, but it’s not a deep diver.  I drag it through the water for a couple of minutes to not effect.  So, I change out to a Rapala Shad Rap.  Before long, I tie into another fish (which also acts like a pike).   This one never reaches the surface before it’s gone with my lure.  I inspect the line and it gives all indications of a knot failure.  Perhaps in my haste to re-tie earlier, I missed a step in the process.  I re-tie again and that episode is not repeated for the remainder of the trip.

As noon approaches, I also find myself at roughly the 12 o’clock position relative to my campsite.  I find a convenient take-out spot and stop for lunch.  Today, I’ll try peanut butter and a new product that I ran across a couple of weeks before my trip started … sandwich rounds.  They are thin round flat breads sliced through the middle.  So, each side is between an eighth and a quarter of an inch thick.  I slap the chunky peanut butter between and chow down.  The rounds have been well protected in my food pack by a small round plastic container the identical diameter of the rounds.  Although I’ve brought two rounds, I find that with some dried apricots, I’m perfectly satisfied.  So, I just lounge a bit before attending to other activities.

Before I continue my fishing adventures, I decide to take my evening leftovers and bury them.  I find a convenient spot, dig a hole and deposit the unwanted food.  After covering, I mark the spot with a couple of crossed sticks on the remote chance someone else might find this spot.  When I return lake-side, I decide to go ahead and fillet my catch.  After a couple of minutes, a significant portion of my evening meal is placed in a plastic zip-lock with a bit of water and placed under my canoe seat.  I chuckle to myself a bit.  Yeah, I’m protecting this food product from the sun … but there is no sun!

I’m back on the water again and continuing my clockwise search.  Not far from my lunch site, I pick up a few more smaller pike but nothing else.  I decide to do a few “W’s” across from the shore toward my campsite and also to a point beyond my campsite to check the depth of the lake.  I’ve been consistently registering depths between 10 and 20 feet as I navigate around the shoreline.  However, the deepest section I detect is approximately 40 feet.  Yes, this might be deep enough to hold a laker, and the lake is supposed to HAVE lakers, but I suspect the deeper sections of the lake were back in the direction of Hansen.  So, I don’t bother to change out my lure for something that could get down really deep.  I continue my fishing rotation, continuing to pick up a pike here and there, but for much of the remainder of the early afternoon, action is not particularly abundant.  I finally close the loop at roughly 3:45 and pass over my beginning point of land one more time, and just like the start, I end will one more smallish walleye.

I head toward camp, lure still in tow and make a loop around my island, but it’s not gaining any attention to any local fish population.  So at 3:45, I decide to park my canoe and start doing a few gathering activities in preparation for a move tomorrow.  I gather up several items that are lying out or still drying under my rain fly.  My timing is good because had I delayed to do this until after dinner, I would have been trying to do it in the rain or wind up with wet gear again.  There isn’t a whole lot to do since I had pulled most of the dried laundry in yesterday, but I have a few pots and pan spread around and some stuff sacks drying.

I killed a little time by playing with a portable AM/FM/SW radio I’d brought along to get weather reports.  I’d brought a small radio on previous trips and wasn’t very satisfied with the reception.  This year’s radio is a bit more up-scale and includes a jack-in wire antenna that is probably 12 feet long in addition to the normal telescoping one.  However, even with an antenna boost, reception on the AM/FM bands is still poor.  I do hit one FM signal that is playing popular music, but I have no interest in that content.  (I later find this station again on my last day out.  It is broadcasting from Kenora and does have a brief weather report at the top of the hour.)  The shortwave bands are more active, but none are detected that are broadcasting weather reports and many are foreign language broadcast.  I do find one station providing international news, which I listen to for a couple of minutes before switching off.

By 5:00 it is time to start preparing dinner.  The prep-time is very short since the bulk of my meal will be composed of seared walleye (again with the Prudhomme seasoning) and couscous (with pine nuts).  I blanch the pine nuts in boiling water for a couple of minutes before adding the couscous.  This dish will be ready quickly, so I’d already fired-up stove #2 to receive the skillet and the first round of fillets were sizzling in the pan before much time had elapsed.  Again, I used the same strategy as before.  I’ll cook a round of fillets and eat them, along with the couscous, as I’m tending to the second round.  And again, this process works out well and even the couscous stays sufficiently warm until all has been consumed.  Yes, that’s right!  I ate it ALL.  I must admit that fish and couscous is one of my favorite meals to fix in the wild.

I relax for a few minutes after dinner and continue to sip on my “iced” tea.  But, as I inspect my surroundings, it again begins to look like the skies could cut loose at any time.  So rather than lounge for an extended period, I decide to take care of business.  

Dinner dishes are quickly cleaned and put out to dry.  I follow this with my daily SPOT transmission (got to let the wife know I’m still alive and kicking).  I also decide that I need to burn a little trash that has been collecting for several days.  So I gather up the burnable items and coax a small fire to life.  There isn’t much burnable wood around that isn’t pretty much soaked, so it’s a bit of a challenge.  However, I ultimately succeed and I pick-out the foil lining of a couple of food pouches that I’ve placed next to the fire to burn off the paper exterior and eliminate food smells.  

I guess I should mention that I grounded my food pack for this entire trip.  This area is further north than Quetico and, for the most part, there are few trees sufficiently large to make for adequate food-pack hanging.  I did much the same on my trip last year to WCPP.  However, unlike last year, one thing is different around camp.  Almost all of my campsites had sufficient dirt over the rocks to accept tent stakes.  Many tent pitching’s from my previous trip required “tying down” the corners and vestibules with rocks.

With all of camp chores completed and my canoe tucked away for the evening, it’s time to lounge again and have an after dinner drink.  I have to hustle this activity along as the rain returned by 8:00, so I decided to turn in a little earlier than normal.  The rain did continue into the night, but again I tend to enjoy the sound of rain on my tent fly.  What I didn’t enjoy was lying down … yep, that back muscle is still reminding me of that episode two days ago.  I down a couple of pain killers again and the rest of the night goes well.

Oh, I guess I should point out something that I have NOT mention – NO PEOPLE.  Today was my first day of complete solitude on this trip!  Go figure.  I’m in the middle of what should be a major traffic lane and there is no one to be seen.  I’ll take it!!!

Next:  Day 7: A move to Telescope Lake (and MORE PEOPLE)