11
June 2004 - Friday - Day 2
Today we got up bright and early. Early wasn’t a problem because we’re so far
North that sunrise was about
We drove the boat fast, until we reached an island on the
right side, where we slowed down and started trolling. Within five minutes, Kathy caught the first
fish, an 18-inch long lake trout. That
made us optimistic about the fishing.
For the next few hours, we boated around the lake, trying to catch fish,
but were unsuccessful. When we reached
the portage point, we stopped and took a bathroom break, then
we got back in the boat and continued fishing.
We went all over the lake, but we didn’t stay long because it was very
windy and it made the waves choppy.
We saw a loon and got pretty close to it.
The
loon is the Minnesota State Bird, but maybe it was a draft dodger from the 70s. Now some would argue that the mosquito is the
Minnesota State Bird, and maybe it should be.
But just to set the record straight:
The Minnesota State Bird is indeed the loon. I’ve heard it said—right or wrong—that the
Minnesota State Bug is the Tick. Combine
the two and it’s easy to understand that the Minnesota State Person is the
Lunatic! But I digress…
Finally, we went into a bay on the North side of the
In
that same bay, I caught a large Northern Pike.
We
threw all of the fish back in–catch and release–because it’s still too early in
the trip and we didn’t want to bring them back to the lodge. When we get to
After a few more hours of fishing, we ended up back on
the East end of the lake, where the portage to Favourable
is. We stopped for another bathroom
break, carefully pulling our boat mostly out of the water, then decided to
stretch our legs and go for a short walk.
The walk was nice, however, when we got back to
the boat, to our horror, we discovered that the wind had increased, and drove
the waves into our boat, causing the boat to be filled with water.
The first thing we did was move all of our belongings to
shore where it was dry.
Kathy started to panic and get hysterical, but I remained
calm. I started bailing the water out of
the boat, but every few seconds, another big wave would crash into the boat,
filling it with more water than I had bailed out. It was a losing battle, and we were starting
to get worried. We were also starting to
get extremely wet. Our boots were
completely and thoroughly soaked.
The only solution, it seemed, was to turn the boat around
so that the nose was pointing into the wind.
That way, the boat cut through the waves instead of letting the water
in. The problem was, the boat was very
heavy, being full of water and with a heavy motor on the back. Another problem was the wind, which wanted to
keep pulling the boat back to one side or the other, which meant it kept taking
on water.
Finally, I stood in the front of the boat with a paddle,
trying as best I could to keep the boat from going sideways under the force of
the wind. Meanwhile, Kathy used a small
cooler to bail water out of the back of the boat. Slowly, we made progress, and finally
won. Kathy bailed out the boat. With the boat now afloat, our next task was
to load it with our gear again, get inside, then paddle out to deep enough
water to start the motor. After a few
desperate pulls on the motor, it started and we were on our way. We continued
fighting the horrendous waves until we got back to the bay we had good fishing
in. We kept fishing there for the next
couple of hours, catching fish, until it was time to return to the lodge for
dinner. By then, we were mostly dry
except for our poor wet boots.
When we got back to the lodge, they told us that two of
the other boats almost got swamped because of the large waves. It sounded like we had pretty good luck
fishing compared to the other groups that went out.
Tomorrow they say it might rain, so we’ve decided to
either stay at the lodge, or go fishing on North Trout, which supposedly has
large Northern and large Trout too. That
way if it rains, we can head back to the lodge.