And so the rains came......

Hey Mike...how about flipping that canoe over so the folks who see these pictures won't think we're a couple of dummies!!!

And it rained some more.....

Late that afternoon the rain decreased to a steady drizzle and we decided to get the tent up. Here's a shot of Mike's Timberline 4. This tent is less than a year old. He bought it to replace his original 15 year old T-4. The old tent died when it collapsed on him while open-water snow-camping last winter along the Isabella River. Ask him to tell you the story of him and his hound spending the night in a snowstorm huddled under his canoe.

His new Timberline has a vestibule. He's not convinced a vestibule is a good idea. One advantage of the traditional 2-door Timberline is it's excellent ventilation. The vestibule cuts down on the airflow

In the evening, with the rains slacking off but still unpredictable, Mike decided to dunk a leech in the narrows in front of the campsite. Here's a shot of Mike fishing from shore. Note that the food barrel makes a great camp chair.

We knew the lake held walleyes, but I wasn't too sure about the water in front of us. It was weedy and grassy, not your usual walleye habitat. Mike baited up with a leech and a bobber and was almost immediately rewarded with a walleye! "Must be lost", I thought. "Can't find it's school." That fish was released. Mike baited up again and a few minutes later hauled another walleye ashore. "Hmmmm...". By the time Mike was bringing in his third fish I had my bait in the water and was in on the action too.

Oh well...I was going to release it anyway. At least we got the picture!

We are primarily catch-and-relase fishermen and we caught more than a dozen nice walleyes that evening. Most all went back in the lake to fight again another day. However, one of the drawbacks of live-bait fishing is the fact that sometimes fish will swallow the bait and injure themselves to the point where they cannot be released. There were a couple that weren't going to live, and we looked forward to them for our supper. We hadn't really planned on eating fish that evening, but we weren't about to waste them either.

We'd had so much fun catching fish that we hadn't really paid attention to the time. It was almost dark before we laid our fishing gear aside and started getting supper ready. I filetted the fish while Mike got the stove going.

Those flareups can be a bit hard on the beard......

The filets are first dredged in flour, then dipped into beaten egg, then rolled in crushed crackers. Fry them in about a half inch of very hot oil for about ninety seconds.

This photo shows that the stove is actually perched on top of the food barrel. That contraption came in handy....

A long day of driving, paddling, and fishing was topped off with a bellyful of fresh walleye and a taste of brandy. I had no trouble falling asleep that night.

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