Boundary Waters, Day 4

Tuesday morning was calm. We took the rowboat out to fish around the bay. Jane caught a nice bluegill right off the bat. She also caught a fairly nice sized perch. I got lots of strikes but didn’t land anything. I had an exciting moment when I caught something large enough to make us scramble for the net. Sadly, it unhooked itself before I was able to see it. Judging from the way it swam, I’m sure it was a bass. A little while after that, I had a tiny perch on the hook. As I got it close to the boat, I saw a large bass following it. I left the perch in the water, and the bass took it! I suppose if we’d been faster with the net, we might have gotten both of them, but the bass struck hard and fast, pulling the line out of the reel against its will. I released the line so it wouldn’t break. When I tried to reel it in again, both fish were gone, but the leech remained. It was exciting!

Jane caught another bluegill as we were coming around to the dock again. We were both getting stove up from sitting in the boat, so we pulled in. I brought the chairs down, and we fished from the dock until the last four leeches were gone. Jane caught a small perch. I caught a little bluegill and a perch. Mostly small fish bit at the large leeches, making the bobber go down, but not getting anywhere near the hook. Still the leeches had amazing staying power. We got 30 minutes of fishing out of two leeches each. We switched to twister tails and continued getting nibbles with no catches. We decided we had enough at 11:00 and returned to the cabin.

We had steak quesadilla for lunch on the deck. We took showers and got dressed to go out into the world. We drove down to the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center even though Tuesday is Children Free day. It’s not so bad now that they have a designated building for kids’ activities.

The historic Chik-Wauk Lodge, now a nature center

One of our favorite permanent displays at the Chik-Wauk is of artifacts of the old-time fishing lodge.

Artifacts of the old-time fishing lodge

It seems romantic in retrospect, but the reality was a tough way to make a living. While there were exceptions, the general rule was that the husband spent the day taking (generally) men out fishing while the wife made dozens of loaves of bread and numerous pies in a woodstove, cleaned the cabins, washed sheets and towels, and raised the kids, if any. The romantic part is the idea of being in the woods, living rustically, and all the guests dining together in the main lodge at the end of the day, swapping fish stories, and having a sense of community that our modern age lacks.

We stopped at Trail Center story/restaurant on our way to the cabin. We hadn’t been in there for many years. The store is tidier than it used to be and stocked to the gills with dehydrated meals. The whole front part is floor to ceiling with shrink-wrapped food organized by content. I would not have guessed that there was a market for them, as my assumption would be that campers would either bring their food with them or get it from their outfitter.

I got a chuckle out of an old phone booth outside that was empty except for two cans attached by string on a shelf.

A phone booth equipped with two cans attached by string

I had poached half a chicken and frozen it in the poaching liquid before the trip. It got to the cabin still mostly frozen, so I put it in the freezer until we were done with the steak. I took the chicken breast out of the stock and sliced it. I sautéed mushrooms, garlic, and thinly sliced broccoli in butter and added wine and chicken stock. I added the chicken breast to warm it through and served it with tortellini.

Chicken breast with tortellini, broccoli, and mushrooms 

The wind died and the lake got smooth. We watched tiny circular ripples that looked like rain but could not be as the sky was clear. We figured they were insects, but what were they doing? I went down to investigate. It turned out to be small water striders that our friend Huck named “nellies” on a trip many, many years ago. The nellies only moved once and stopped. While I was down at the lake, I saw a loon and two babies far away. I ran up to tell Jane. We got the binoculars and saw that the babies were quite large, which was good. A few years ago, we saw babies that were much smaller, and Nancy told us that they were not likely to survive the winter. These chicks would probably be ready to fly by autumn.

The pictures did not turn out well because of the great distance. With a little imagination, you can see that the adult is feeding a chick in this picture.

Long-distance photo of loon feeding chick

And here’s another one that wasn’t too bad.

Another far-away shot

While I was in the bathroom, Jane saw one of the adults catch a fish right in front of our dock. I took my camera back down to the lake and got a pretty good picture of the two chicks.

Two chicks closer to our cabin

One of the parents popped up nearby. The chicks swam toward him/her and right into the light from the setting sun rippling on the water. The picture didn’t turn out well, but it was cool to see.

Chicks swimming toward a parent