2014 Canoe trip - Day 2

[rusty]

We woke up to rain, though it wasn’t heavy and things cleared up quickly, at least to a drizzle so it wasn’t really a problem. The morning was fairly leisurely and we took off about 10:30 from Caviar Lake, heading through Denmark and on to Rowan Lake. The latter is a bit of a misnomer since most people get there by paddlin’…… We certainly did; the wind was blowing its ring out all day which started out interesting and quickly became tedious. Early in the trip we had to cross a big expanse of Caviar, the wind was at our back and there were plenty of trout on the sounder so we tried a bit of jigging on the way across but without luck. Dave and I were in one canoe and Mike and Jason in the other. The other two canoes tried it briefly but then kept moving. When we got to the southern shore of Caviar we started fishing again for bass but it was pretty quiet so Mike and Jason got the paddles out pretty quickly. Dave and I were about to do the same but saw some fish on the bottom and thought we’d quickly get the jigs out. Of course Dave managed to hook another trout which he duly landed, it was a 29 incher, about 5 ½ lbs. A little lumo paddle tail plastic jig did the trick this time. It was sunny and warm there and everyone else was way ahead of us, so we started trying to catch up. We couldn’t see anyone ahead and the conditions were deteriorating but we knew where we were supposed to meet for lunch and we started racing the storm clouds. We were getting close to the rendezvous point but couldn’t beat the storm, nor could we find the brothers as they didn’t seem to be anywhere on the island we thought we were supposed to be at. After paddling around it a couple of times we were totally soaked and had decided the crew had paddled on further, which turned out to be the case. They were all waiting about 15 min up the lake under a nice big blue tarp they had had time to set up, and flashing their lights so we would see them. We got the trout but had to pay the price. Well, I paid the price anyway, Dave was still smiling so I think he could care less about how wet he was! Can’t remember what we had for lunch but it included beer which tasted pretty good by then.

After Lunch we had to get further east on the Crow, moving up a long narrow arm which ended at a waterfall. There was a broad cleared portage area beside the falls which were crossed by the ruins of a log bridge. There were massive steel pins in the bedrock, so it looked like there was a lot of stuff hauled up or down there as some time in the past. It was sort of steep but only about 20 or 30 m up to the next lake, Denmark. From there we had a relatively short paddle to a portage across a peninsula that would take us to Rowan Lake where we were going to spend the night, it seemed like it might be a bit of a shortcut and save paddling around the peninsula and up a little creek in the lake. John and Carrie decided to go the long way around and meet up with us at the camp. At the portage there was a bit of gear, the usual stash of boats. When we got to the end of the portage we found there was a fishing camp there, but no one was around though the workshop was open. On our way back some guys came up on a quad bike so we told them what we were up to and they offered to use the bike to carry our gear across - Sweet! These guys made up for the other Canadians at the Moose and Fiddle festival! We got sorted out in record time and started paddling up towards where we had thought we might find a camp, the weather had calmed down and cleared up and there were some pretty nice little shallow bays around which Dave and I started fishing, while Chris and Ada began scouting for a camp site. The calm sunny weather seemed to have brought the bass into the heads of shallow bays where there was a lot of aquatic vegetation, and we got a few on poppers, Dave got quite a nice one on the green popper I had made for the trip which he kept, but mostly we let them go. I got a small northern about 25”. We could see that John & Carrie and Chris & Ada had found a spot for a camp, so we headed over. Everything was a bit damp but at least it was clear. It was another of these good camps that had been pretty well cleared out and set up with a table, fireplace with steel grate etc. Also the tree stumps had been carved into crucifixes like Salvation Camp, so it must be on a route used by some church camps or something. John and Carrie mad pasta salad for dinner and crepes for desert. It had been another pretty solid day, forgot to take a group portrait but slept well.