Bugging Out!

 Decades of memories flooded back as I turned onto Highway 11 out of Nipigon. Hard to believe we have been coming up here 18 of the last 20 years. While some things have changed, I will tell you one thing that hasn't..... the bugs! Holy crap were the bugs bad this year. Mosquitoes, black flies as well as deer and horse flies. Every single one of them looking to leave you with a little less blood. Thank God for thermacells, electrified fly swatters and those little coil picks. Oh, and our screened gazebo. We would have been hurting without them. Even with all those things we were covered with welts. Dogs included.

We are no strangers to camping in bug country, while we do not enjoy it, we have learned to tolerate it. Things we have learned with the truck camper is that we have to tape a couple of our screens where there are tiny gaps that black flies can get in. Next up is the kitchen exhaust vent, we tape that down as those little critters can get in there too! Last, and probably most important is the closing the vent for the air conditioner. We learned that last year while in Alaska, we were laying in bed and watch mosquito after mosquito fly out of the vent into the camper. 

Barb only had one bug meltdown where she was ready to pack up and leave. She hates bugs! They love her. I can be standing right next to her, she gets eaten alive, while I don't get bit at all. Not only that, every single one of her bites swell up and itch like crazy. Mine itch, but don't swell up like hers. I did a little research; bugs prefer blood type 0 Positive. Guess who has type 0+? Yep, Barbie. They apparently do not like 100 proof blood which mine typically is, so I have that going for me.

A couple of you admonished me for not including dog pictures in our last post (Harry was not one of them). Both of the girls rode in the Jeep with Barb who followed behind me all the way from Devils Lake, North Dakota into Ontario. Zoey got the front seat, Dakota got the entire back end. 

Barb behind me

The first morning, we woke up to the sounds of a loon echoing off the trees. A mom, dad and baby loon call this lake home and were nice enough to share it with us for a few days. There is a short video below, sorry for the wind and shakiness, I was in the boat. 

Our first fishing adventure of this trip was to one of our two favorite lakes. The road to get there is an adventure in itself. 20 miles of some of the roughest gravel roads one will encounter. We made it to 20mph a couple of times, but not much over that. Back in the day I would take this road at 50 or better without blinking an eye, but pulling the boat was another story entirely. We made it to the launch in a little over an hour. The launch itself is in a river that lead to the lake, but before you get to the lake you need to cross a sandbar. The water was low enough that I had to walk the boat rather than just drive over it. 

Once out on the lake we were off like rockets to our favorite spot! 9 miles down the lake we pulled up to what we call "Secret Spot" We don't take anyone there, nor do we tell anyone about it. It is our spot. This is the spot Barb caught her biggest walleye, a 31"er. While we let it go on that day, it is long dead as the life span of the average walleye has long past. 

It wasn't long before I shouted, "Fish on!" and the battle ensued. After the best fight I have had in a long time Barb dipped the net in the water and pulled out a 25"er! My biggest on that spot. Not only did I catch the first fish which could vie for the largest of the trip, I caught the next 4 as well! A 21, 19, 17 and 16. We let the big ones go and kept the smaller ones for eating.  Why keep the little ones and not the big ones? You are only allowed to keep one over 18" in Ontario. We personally find the best tasting ones to be between 16-20". Besides that, did you know a female walleye can lay over 500,000 eggs a year? Why not leave them in the water to reproduce and keep some of the smaller males? When we left that spot I was up 8-2 on the fish count. Next up was "The Hump", a spot where we never fail to catch fish, but they are usually on the smaller side. It was not long before Barb closed the gap 8-6. 

Several hours later we put the boat back on the trailer with 8 tasty walleyes in the livewell. I not only caught the first, the biggest, but also the most! This is going to be my summer!

The next day we hung around camp waiting for our friends Chad and Michelle to arrive. For long time readers, you know them as the now former owners of Pasha Lake Cabins. They now own the piece of property where we are staying now on Paint Lake. While we waited, we launched the boat in this lake, got things organized for the week and let the girls swim. Dakota was in heaven! We do not let her swim very often as it takes several hours for her to dry off. 

Chad and Michelle arrived early afternoon and after getting all set up we hit the water to catch a few more fish. Sadly, we were all skunked, but we had a good time. While we saw Chad earlier this spring, it has been a few years since we have seen Michelle. We all hung out in the gazebo and caught up that evening drowning our sorrows and telling tall tales. Even the dogs appreciated the reprieve from the bugs!

The next three days were a blur. We fished every day, almost all day. Caught a ton of fish. Barb out-fished me two days, I out-fished her one. But the 25"er was still top of the leaderboard! We ate fish every night as you are only allowed to have so many in possession, so if you want to keep fishing you have to eat some. No problem there! We stayed up too late and got up too early. A nap of two might have been taken during midday breaks. While the weather was mostly decent, we did get a fair amount of rain. In fact, we were caught off guard a during one outing and Chad donned one of Michelle's pink sweaters. He looked over as he put it on saying "Not everyone can pull this look off!". "Nope, they certainly can't", I replied. 

The new livescope worked great! It takes fishfinders to the next level giving you an actual ultrasound-like image of the fish below you. 

Monday morning Michelle had to leave as she had to work the next day, but another one of our friends is coming up to replace her. Chad's high school buddy, Brian, was arriving for a couple of days. Again two days of fishing all day and countless fish. They got into some real hogs with the biggest one topping 29". Luckily the big fish contest is only between Barb and I and still sitting at my 25"er. In fact, I caught another 25"er just to prove I could do it again! That night we had surf and turf for supper as Brian had brought up four delicious ribeyes!

Sadly, the next day brought Chad and Brian's departure, but not before this..... 

Sorry for those of you who are queasy, I should have warned you. Yup, a treble hook right in the finger. I good news is that it wasn't my finger, or Barb's finger. It was Chad's. As we looked over our options, we were considering taking him to Nipigon, over an hour away to the clinic. But in the end, we left him alone with an ice cube and a pliers. 15 minutes later he was back sans treble hook. He said he was a man and just pulled it out, but by the way he screamed like a little girl when Barb put alcohol on his wound, I have my doubts. 

It was also our last full fishing day. After they departed, we hit the water needing four more fish to complete our take home limit. Other days we did that in 15 minutes, but when we NEED to catch fish, do you think we could do it? Nope. It took F O R E V E R! Three rainy and wet hours later we finally landed our 4th "keeper" walleye, there had been a few others, but they were small. 

Back at camp, we filleted the fish and started packing up. In the rain. We put the boat on the trailer, in the rain. Disassembled the gazebo, in the rain. Packed the Jeep in the rain. We packed the truck, in the rain. Did I mention it was raining? Guess what Barb's newly redecorated camper smells like? A wet dog of course. 

You will notice that there are no pictures of Barb holding a fish. That is because we only take pictures of big fish, and she did not catch any! Oh, she caught plenty of good eaters, but none that were picture-worthy. Sorry, not sorry Barbie!

All in all, it was a great week. We could have had less rain and less bugs, but the friendship and laughter made it all worthwhile. Both of our border crossings went well. The inspection into Canada went seamlessly, a few simple questions and we were on our way. The way back into the U.S. was the same.....for me....As I watched in my rearview mirror Barb was not pulling away. I pulled over into the nearby rest area and soon enough here she comes. They were questioning about the dogs CDC forms. Which we totally forgot about! I think that law went into effect last year. Opps! They let her through anyways with a reminder to have them next time she came through. 

After crossing the border, we finished the day in Two Harbors, Minnesota where we spent a couple hours at a laundromat and spent the night in a private campground. That wraps up the second leg of our adventure. Up next, the last and final leg. Who knows what adventures await!