4 day canoe trip with wife

kgd

kgd

Joined
Feb 28, 2007
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My wife and I did our 2nd annual canoe trip together last week. This was the first time Becky visited Puzzle Lake with me (my 5th trip) and also the first time she canoe camped in our canoe (my 3rd) purchased last August. Originally I planned to take her to Superior Park where I did my last trip with Joe, but after that trip I felt the portages were a bit too rough and too uphill for her. Puzzle Lake seemed more to our speed. We had a very relaxing time, easy portages, great fishing, a superbly scenic campsite (with a vault toilette) and of course lots of swimming.

We drove up from Windsor on Thursday morning and arrived at the put-in by about 6:00 pm. This gave us enough time to paddle through and transport our gear over the first two portages to our campsite, set up camp, with enough evening sunshine to enjoy the 'magic hour' of largemouth bass fishing on mudlake. That first nights fishing had her hooked. Topwater action with jitterbugs and hula poppers made for some spectacular surface strikes. Needless to say, we ate fish every day, but kept only enough to satisfy our daily tasting. Loyst Lake, the more scenic and clear of the lakes, had great fishing and pretty decent smallmouth action. Albeit, the timing and presentation for the smallmouth was a bit different, requiring more patience and a willingness to let the fish take the bait. All our fishing was done on artificials. For largemouth, the surface lures, spinners fitted with worm hooks and rigged with rubber worms/grubs was great. For the smallies, texas rigged worms very slowly trolled near the shorelines were the ticket.

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[youtube]1-wHy9kf9ds[/youtube]
 
Sweet!

That one picture defines the term "glassy smooth" lake!! (pic 8)

Beautiful - it was relaxing just reviewing your pictures - thanks!

best

mqqn
 
You've inspired my wife to want to go up north for a trip.:)
Great pictures.
 
Oh man, thanks sooooo much for sharing these pictures.

Looks like you two had a great time. :D
 
Beautiful trip Ken, the fish looks awesome! Too damned hot to cook here most of the time. I grilled lobster over some coals once, but since the temps are in the hi 90s with 100+ heat indexes...and since my clothes can literally be wrung out by noon, mostly I drink a lot of water and eat MRE components when I am in the field. I did have an awesome plate of frog legs at Crabby Bills a week ago :)
 
Nice trip there Ken!!!

I had a few questions, but the video answered most of them for me, except for one. Did you end up boiling for water purification, or did you bring some sort of filter?

Enquiring minds......that are sitting behind a computer wishing they just returned from Puzzle lake, want to know :)

Good stuff!!!!

B
 
Brian Andrews said:
Nice trip there Ken!!!

I had a few questions, but the video answered most of them for me, except for one. Did you end up boiling for water purification, or did you bring some sort of filter?

Enquiring minds......that are sitting behind a computer wishing they just returned from Puzzle lake, want to know :)

Good stuff!!!!

B
Click to expand...

Hi Brian,

We used a water filter - MSR pump brand. Trips like this, especially when my wife is involved, always give me the leeway to look towards upgrades and improvements. After this one, I think I'm going for one of those gravity base camp filters like Rock6 tends to use. The pump is good and its lasted us for about a decade, but it does get annoying having to scrub the ceramic element after every 2 L or so and we are now getting to the point where we will have to pay the $65 for the replacement filter (according to the gage supplied with the water filter). We were happy to be able to drink semi-cool water as opposed to boiling water though.

For cooking, we used a trangia set up and 500 mL of fondu-fuel lasted us pretty good, but I had to be effecient with the cooking and this certainly wouldn't allow boiling water for water prep - 1 L of fuel would be necessary for that. Our use of fire was mostly restricted to nightly entertainment. Of course, when a fire was going, I usually filled the baby bushpot with water, boiled it for tea or just to let it sit until morning and have some cool water without the pump, pump, pump action going.

All the best.....P.S. - my wife would have probably mortgaged the house for an ice-cube on day 3!
 
Hey Ken, good to see you getting out with the wife. We did a few backpacking trips with our son and his friend, but my wife was really wanting just us two to do a trip together; a little jealous of you two:D

I won't go pack to a pump filter unless I just want to try something different. The Sawyer (and Katadyn version) gravity filters are worth their weight in gold. Unless you're on the move and can't stop for 10 minutes (that's where a pump filter would be more advantageous), the Sawyer filter can be hung up and operational, delivering water much faster than you can pump in minutes. Also, once it's up, it's easy to keep filled and leave you with water "on-tap" when you need it.

Love the fish! Looks like a great dinner. My wife and son went into town today, so I jumped in the kayak and caught a few large-mouth bass, kept the smaller of the three (about four pounds) and had a great lunch:D

We really want to do a kayak (no canoe at the moment) trip for a few days...you can cover more territory and often get into more remote and peaceful areas. How were the mosquitoes?

ROCK6
 
Great stuff as always ken !

I've vowed to take up fishing so many times it's not even funny, after seeing this post though " I'm going to take up fishing !":positive:
 
Thanks for the Info Rock6, the mossy's weren't all that bad - they just came out screaming the hour after sunset and before but settled down okay in between. The deer flies were a constant companion though except under wind. Deer flies are at their most annoying during portages...
 
kgd said:
Thanks for the Info Rock6, the mossy's weren't all that bad - they just came out screaming the hour after sunset and before but settled down okay in between. The deer flies were a constant companion though except under wind. Deer flies are at their most annoying during portages...
Click to expand...

Good to hear...I'm familiar with deer flies and their relative "horse flies" down in GA/FL can give you a heck of a bite! How long were your portages? We use to do a chain of lakes in the BC area when I was younger...some were easy, others were a good distance!

ROCK6
 
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