The fishing trip ends: Day 6 and departure

Sun. Sun. Sun. The brightness woke me early (around 7am) and I got our breakfasts going until dad woke (with a bit of nudging). The night had also been a little difficult as we had had a visitor—a little bat had made his way in and was flying like mad round the cabin in the night. We had turned on the lights and I got a few good but somewhat dark pics of him perched on a baseball cap up near the ceiling. He panicked so much at one point when dad and I stood in the middle of the room that he swooped out of our way and actually struck the pipe chimney of the wood burning stove. He actually fell to the floor, paused, then lifted his little head, gave it a tiny shake and then was up and again flying at amazing speeds round the little room. In the end, I decided to sleep in the back room with dad and leave the bat to his own. As we headed out onto the lake we mentioned this to Tom who later told us he’d found where the bat had come in and sealed up the access point—and it is true, we had no more visits. 

Before even getting into the boat the fish seemed ready to say hello—for example this big northern in the shallows by the dock (pictured above right). Off we set—dad a bit pessimistic saying that sometimes on bright days like this the fish didn’t bite. But in the end he was wrong, and our last day of fishing was a great success—we caught a lot of 18-20 inch walleye. One three occasions our walleye seemed to be getting attacked by a MUCH larger fish—evidently a northern, who managed to in fact practically slice one of the walleye I had on the line in half (yes, the walleye did not survive, to the great satisfaction of a nearby seagull who feasted on the walleye when he floated back up to the surface). After a few of these, dad actually caught a walleye which the northern snatched as he was reeling in and this time we thought we would get him—that either he was hooked, too, or would hold onto the walleye until we netted him. But when the fish got to the surface it either spotted the boat or us ogling it and saying “Woah, that’s HUGE” and off it went. This happened once again and again I thought I would manage to net it and almost did but then he let that walleye go too—one he had hard around the head and which he did hold onto for a long time at the surface. We continued catching a few more good walleye before deciding to head off and have a lunch pause.

 After pausing for a lunch on a rocky little island instead of in the boat we cast round the rocky shores of the island and both of us caught some nice northern. As we headed in we stopped one last time on the hump and caught some nice fish on our last minnows, but never “the big one” dad seemed to be hoping for on his final day.

As the afternoon started to come to a close, the boats were cleaned out and washed for the next guests and we packed and cleaned out our cabin for them too. The big plane came in with some newcomers and materials (pictured here:). 

We ate some nice fish for dinner and then got a good night sleep after a last lovely sunset before getting up at the crack of dawn to get the bags out onto the dock and await the planes. 

Last evening view of the camp (our cabin is the one to the left of the triangle) the sunset reflecting orange in the windows

The sliver of moon over the Bull Mouse main house and office building

Ducks swimming off into the rich orange glow of evening

Our gear looked quite minimal (we are the little row with no plastic boxes between the two high-piled rows below!) among the piles of some of the larger groups and we thus had an easy time getting loaded on and off the planes.

Here are a few lovely pics from our flight out—in a smaller plane this time, so we have ear muffs. I am always amazed by how the land and lakes just seem to go on forever up in Canada in this part of Ontario where there are no roads or houses or signs of man except, of course, for this little plane we were on flying over it all.

Once landed back in Red Lake (pictured here below from the water as our plane taxis back to the dock) we unpacked the plane and packed up the car, getting a final picture in before we drove the 11hours back to Lake Sisabagama, WI.