June 25
Our last full day on the Flowage, and another must catch dinner scenario. I woke up around 6 to the sound of rain falling on the tent, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Finally up about 10, I think Brian was up a little before me. Once the rain quit and the system moved away it turned into another very nice day.
We struck out around noon after a leisurely breakfast and tried to shadow a bass boat with the canoe. Really, we were just following along maybe 1/4 mile behind them trying to work the same areas they were. We didn’t catch anything. We poked around the big open area of the Flowage towards Murphy’s Landing and circled the islands near Bonies Mound with no interest. We started to ply around the shallower spots of the western shore of this huge bay, hoping to tease out a bass from the grass and lilies. By this point in the week we’ve switched to throwing pumpkinseed senko worms rigged weedless, and Brian is very good at precision dropping the worms just beyond his target spot and flipping them up and over the lily pads.
The camera got left at camp, which is too bad because the bays we were poking in were very pretty. No way the bass boats could get in here, either the bays were only a couple feet deep or the entrances were too choked with boggy clumps of floating vegetation. The canoe, however, was perfectly suited to this and in the back of one such little finger bay Brian got rewarded with a nice 16″ bass. Both of us also had several missed strikes on the senkos, no doubt had we had more time and more plastics we could have come back and boated more. Still, Brian’s bass plus the last couple baked potatoes each will be a perfect meal to cap our final night around the fire.
We returned to camp to yet another mother turtle burying her eggs, this time off to the edge of the canoe landing. Soon enough that clutch of eggs might fall prey to one of the animals in this area who would think turtle eggs a wonderful feast. Or, that clutch may remain hidden and warmed by the summer sun eventually producing a brood of turtles that will help to replenish the population.
Millions of peeping frogs serve as my lullaby tonight, as I drift off to sleep. I feel relaxed and reset.