We are walleye fishing, that means quietly floating a minnow waiting for a bite, releasing the bail on the rod to “walk the minnow” as the walleye carries it off to some safer place and stops to actually swallow it (and the hook) then you reel it in and set the hook. So, there is lots of waiting, even more than regular fishing. Anyway, Kent gets a tug on his line and begins a minnow walk.  I’m just chilling when, bang, something hits my line hard.  I jerk back (never mind that is not what I was supposed to do while walleye fishing) and set the hook.  I pulled in the fish, but it already had Kent’s minnow in its mouth and lots of line tangled all around it.  What a mess, plus we had that whole “who really caught it” thing going on.  In the end, we put it back so it can grow a little more.

Since the walleye aren’t interested and the northern seem to be, we troll for a while in Roger’s Bay. The four small fish we catch and release offer some entertainment and other critters show up to share the afternoon.  A loon is floating in the center of the bay chirping softly.  As she moves, two little ones appear from under her wings.  Two eagles crisscross the sky and vie for the best perch.  The loon calls in alarm whenever they move near her.  There is a noisy scuffle between eagles and gulls.  It was a fun afternoon.

We take a quiet before dinner paddle around Brown’s Bay shallows. Red wing blackbirds do their noisy thing.  A kingfisher watches all from his high perch.  A cluster of diving ducks bobs and dives in search of tasty morsels below.

We end the day with campfire on the shore. Loons call; sometimes plaintive other times more like a laugh. A family of otters playfully makes its way just off shore in front of camp.  No campfire is complete without s’mores, of course.