A so-so night of sleep. First too hot and then too cold. The morning was cool and windy. Mark and I went out fishing early, heading north and working a group of small islands and reefs. Great looking fish habitat but no luck. Headed back and the boys were already in the process of making breakfast. They cooked up bacon and Cache Lake cranberry scones.
Nate and Kos were looking for adventure so they decided to head for the portage on Rawn Narrows that leads to the Bisk, Beg and Bud chain of lakes. It’s a long way in to get to all three lakes, but if you’re not carrying gear, it's’ a beautiful hike. Kos caught another smallmouth and they reported that they saw a lake trout at the bottom of the rapids in Beg Lake.
Mark and I took a swim in the middle of the afternoon to cool off. The weather is ever-changing up here. One minute the wind is blowing and it’s overcast. Five minutes later the sun is out and it’s hot. We have been monitoring the weather pretty constantly and we keep hearing the same thing: “sunny with a 70% chance of rain”. That pretty much covers the bases. Mark and I stay in camp and take it easy. 68 degrees.
(Mark) It’s a new era with GPS, power banks, solar panel chargers and portable power banks, satellite links for cell phones, Garmin watches you can load your maps into and walkie-talkies that actually work with AM/FM, GPS and NOAA radio built in. Kos uses his Jet Boil for everything…
(Mark) 2 pm - N&K back from the Pickerel River dam/Bisk Lake portage which they walked. Kos caught a nice smallmouth. Hot and sunny now—it was chilly this morning. N&K went swimming and are now both asleep. I worked on my spinning tackle (the Pflueger reel sucks), set up my 6’6” St. Croix rod. tied a new 9’ bass leader on my 9’ four-piece St. Croix fly rod and one of the flies Bill Asprey sent me that he bought in Montana last summer where he was trout fishing with his family.
Jim and I took another wade to the rock (sand bottom here), dive in and then sunbathed for a few. A stunningly beautiful afternoon, almost no bugs, nice breeze and I made cocktails for everyone with a bottle of concentrated orange+carrot+ginger+toasted caraway from a friend’s small business “Shrubwell”.
We cleaned out the food pack for dinner- freeze dried chicken and dumplings, delicious Prairie Breeze cheese and onion quesadillas and peach cobble for dessert.
(Mark) Took a walk to the 5-star campsite on the other side of the island. Beautiful late afternoon light.
As happens here constantly, the wind then came up and it became too rough to go out fishing. So even though it has warmed up noticeably, we had a last fire. Off in the distance, I noticed a commotion on the water. It was one merganser chasing another frantically around and around in huge circles. It went on and on. They never seemed to get tired. Finally one ran the other one off. Great show, but just act I.
A while later, a momma Merganser duck pulled up with her seven babies in tow. They dove and splashed right off shore, feeding on minnows. Then, about the time were going to bed, here she came again, this time with all of the babies riding on her back. One more quick round of fishing before they turned in for the night.