Day  4  8/7/08

Paddling and fishing.  Fishing and paddling.  We spent a full day rowing around the lake.  And by around the lake I mean around a tiny portion of it.  Clearwater Lake is huge!  Vast!  Deep!   We had no luck with the fishing during the day, not surprising, but good for casting practice.  We decided to change lures about halfway through the day, and put on the jumbo Kamlooper.  It is quite heavy and casts like a dream, sailing through the air like a shot.  An older couple in a rowboat with a trolling motor drifted by.  We watched them catch a fish, and soon they called out to us to inquire whether we were having any luck.  Of course we had to say no, but they informed us they had caught their quota and were headed home for supper.  The man asked if we had “willow leaves”, which of course we didn’t have, let alone even know what they were.  However, I noticed that the last couple of feet of his line had many shiny objects spaced along it.  Taking that cue, I proceed to attach our beer can tabs along our line.  I attached a mostly dead worm (it would appear that the cooler is a better bet for the tub of worms…) to our line and let it out.  Far.  Jess was rowing the boat back toward our campsite, and I was reclining across the boat, bobbing our line now and again, and we got a bite!  I reeled it in and reeled it in and reeled it in.  Apparently I had let out the line quite far…..and I lost the fish .  But it was proof that we actually could catch a fish – exciting business!  No more bites for the day, but at that point we were exhausted from the paddling in the sun and had to be landlubbers for awhile.

We gathered firewood for our nighttime fire, and even though it wasn’t dark, built a barn burner.  It was effective for keeping the mosquitoes at bay, and was really quite a doozy.  I fixed up some rice, black beans and tomatoes with a bit of taco seasoning for dinner, with some steamed green beans on the side.  It was delicious and filling after a full day of paddling.  As dark was setting in, we heard the same noises we couldn’t identify the night before.  We spotted wing flaps and were able to see a pair of screech(?) owls, clearly in a mating ritual, and accustomed to owning the trees around our campsite.  They moved about in the trees before retreating further in the forest. However, the minute we went to bed the owls returned…and proceeded to screech and coo and chat all night long.  I actually found it kind of rhythmic and soothing.  And Jess slept like a rock, so somehow the screeching was able to meld with the subconscious and be unobtrusive.