JULY, 2011
Since posting up the stuff for my trip to Cuba followed by spring bass fishing across BC, I have not done any posting to the blog. For Basstravaganza fans here is a quick update about my wanderings:
After returning to Ashland, OR, from bass fishing in the Kootenays (see previous post) I spent a number of days writing up and posting the blog. Then rented a giant double-axle U-Haul trailer, the largest I was legally allowed to tow behind a Volvo, and made a trip up to Van Isle, where I am storing my stuff in a friend’s storage unit. It was a very scary ride, by far the hugest load the old Volvox has ever been asked to haul. Had to use a bull low gear I did not know the car even had, and grind up the 4 long grades on I-5 north of Medford at 30 mph. But the little motor never complained, and I dumped the stuff off, made it back to the 10:30 PM ferry from Namaimo, and back to the mainland after midnite. One more nite in Ashland, where I loaded the car and boat full of lumber, mattresses, and whatever junk I had remaining in my storage. Then took off immediately again for a last trip north. Here is a pic taken at the rest stop in Valley of the Rogue state park. Looks like a big load, and it is, but it is tiny compared to the previous U-Haul trip.
I pulled into a rest stop south of Olympia just before dark, and parked next to the biggest truck I have ever seen. Makes the standard 18 wheeler look like a toy. I think I counted 96 wheels on this rig, which was a double ended gooseneck trailer connected to gooseneck arch dollies and the cab. Must have been nearly as long as a football field. The big wooden box it was hauling seemed to be some kind of generator.
In the pics you can see my Volvo and Bullship parked next to the biggggg rig.
It was hot and dry in Medford, and I planned to get over to Van Isle that nite, so I did not tarp down the load. But my plans came to grief when I got near Tacoma around dark, and found out that I had no lites on the boat trailer. Every time I put in a new fuse it blew as soon as I touched the brake pedal. Too dangerous to drive on I-5 thru Seattle without trailer lites at nite, so I slept in the car at a gas station. Spectacular display here – when I heard deep boom-boom-booms in the distance. Looking N I could see red balls angling out of the sky at 45 degrees, then disappearing below the trees. A couple seconds later would come the sound of explosions? What is this – meteors? Is the US getting attacked by Canada? No – this is Ft. Lewis, where they do this all the time. Target practice for attack helicopters, which were so far away I could not hear their rotors, and so high they were above the low clouds. They are getting experience firing rockets at ground targets, prior to getting sent over to kill Muslims on the other side of the world.
At dawn I tried getting past Seattle before the rush hour madness, but it started to rain. Had to pull off and tarp down the load in the boat. Later that morn I pulled into another rest stop to test my ropes and lites. There was a big cedar stump there. I like big trees.
Finally made it over to Van Isle that afternoon, and unloaded my stuff. Home at last!But still homeless and crashing on friends couches. The rest of July was spent getting re-located, re-immigrated, and re-connected. And re-laxing after a hectic year and a half. I finally found a nice little place for me. Part of a new house in Nanaimo, where I can sleep, wash, cook and eat. Cheap and handy, with safe off-street parking for the Bullship. It is just S of downtown, and I can even see the ocean, (Nanaimo R. estuary) from my porch.
Did not have much time to fish so far this summer, but I got out a few times. My new apt is centrally located - 5 bass lakes around Nanaimo within a half hour drive. Only an hour drive up to Spider Lake to the N, and an hour and a half to the bass lakes around Victoria.
Here are a few pix from Matheson Lake west of Victoria.
I got out to Elk Lake in Victoria a couple times for the dawn bite. Fishing was slow, but not hopeless. Thick weeds along shore are driving most of the bass out into deeper water. Here is a big July SM that crushed aq buzzbait.
Here are a few pix from Matheson Lake west of Victoria.
I got out to Elk Lake in Victoria a couple times for the dawn bite. Fishing was slow, but not hopeless. Thick weeds along shore are driving most of the bass out into deeper water. Here is a big July SM that crushed aq buzzbait.
Later that morn I was dragging a black yum worm deep - about 15 - 18 ft - and lost a huge fish near the boat. Later caught a smaller one, a doubleheader with another local guy who was fishing next to me. We were both dragging worms deep, and hooked fish almost simultaneously. He had a scale and weighed his fish at 3 lbs 9 oz. So I brought mine over and he weighed it (this pic) at 4 lbs 2 oz.
He said he caught one on this spot a few days previous that weighed over 6.
August, 2011
I also did a lot of work on the Bullship in July, including buying and installing a new sounder. As any fan of Basstravaganza 2010 can tell you, the Boatel (V 1.0) was brought online last spring.
PIC
Obviously the work of a brilliant genius, the boatel was an economy answer to accommodation for wandering bass fishermen. Set up the boatel and sleep in the boat. Although I slept in the boat a number of times across Idaho and Wyoming I never did assemble the boatel and sleep inside the frame. Too complicated, and too much work at the end of a long day of fishing when the mosquitos are swarming outside. Like the first versions of the A-4 rocket developed by the Nazis, V 1.0 of the boatel was created by the mind of an inspired genius, but it was too damn complicated. Pynchon describes the insane complexity of the first versions of the A-4. Even if they worked, which was seldom, they were not what the SS needed – something simple, dependable, that could be used to kill people.
After a long winter of contemplation I realized that there is a much simpler solution to the boatel concept. A few pieces of plywood, cleverly cut to fit across the gaps between the seats in the Bullship, creates a solid platform or floor. And then you can set your tent up right inside the boat! (Please do not clutter up the blog with thousands of responses like: “Wow, you are a genius.” or “I stand in awe at the visionary power of your intellect.” I already know that stuff.) So here is the prototype of the Boatel V 2.1:
Now it is time to test my invention, so I head over to the W coast. Other than a quick few hour trip a year ago I have not been out on Kennedy Lake for years. Biggest lake on Van Isle. Only a few meters above sea level, so very easy for salmon and sea-trout to migrate in and out from the ocean. Receives some of the highest rainfall amounts anywhere in Canada, often over half a foot per day, and all flows out thru one gap to the ocean. So the lake itself rises during repeated floods every winter, and hi water is more than 4 meters above low water. The entire lake used to be full of driftwood, thousands of full, old-growth trees that had washed down into the lake.
In the late 1970s I spent a summer “salvaging” shake blocks by cutting into the big driftwood cedars with my chainsaw and gutting the big logs for “cream” wood. Later a small industry developed on the lake for a few years, and people drove skidders around the shore harvesting the big drift logs. Hundreds, maybe thousands of logging trucks were loaded to haul the wood away. Although the bog logs are mostly gone now, the shoreline is still littered with billions of small logs, chunks and branches. I want to go over to one of my old favorite spots, “A” Creek, where I cut tons of shake blocks years ago, and where there was a big spirit cedar I used as a hangout. Also one of the best spots in the lake to fish for trout.
Although it is located minutes away from the tourist madness of Tofino, as expected I am the only boat on the lake when I launch,
This biggest and perhaps most beautiful off all lakes on the island is devoid of jet skis, water skiers, and fisherman. In fact, other than a few beaches along the highway, it almost never sees a human any more. A big drift log that washed down the river is grounded in about 15 meters of water near Laylee Island. The top is broken off, and over the years a little ecosystem has grown up on the stub of trunk that pokes above the lake.
First bushes and grass, and now even runted trees are living out their lives on this tiny little world.
You can even see a birds nest in the grass - probably a gull.
When the clearcutting frenzy was occurring on Van Isle in the late 20th century they logged off huge swaths around the lake. In places the loggers would leave a fringe of a few trees standing along shore. Many of these ancient old veterans are still standing. A block of about a square mile was cut behind “A” beach in the 1980’s. The 2nd growth is getting tall already, but is still dwarfed by the skeletons of the big old trees left along the beach.
These trees are not dead. Cedars, especially in windy nasty spots like shorelines, will have their main stem die off, only to send up another spire from a side branch, that also dies off, but is followed by another stem that reaches to the sky and dies off. The result is the classic west-coast “cathedral top” cedar. Largely dead, but still carrying lots of green branches. Trunk rotten and hollow. (Cedars are unusual among trees in that they almost always rot from the inside out.) And very very old.
This is not a clump of trees – just many cathedral tops growing off 2 trunks, that could well be over 1,000 years old.
The big “campsite” cedar I am looking for is a short hike from the water now in August. But in February after a week of driving rain its base is surrounded by a flooded lake, and rafts of driftwood logs and chunks bashing around in the storm waves. “A” beach is very different than I remembered it. Used to be lots of open gravel and sand, with low brush here and there. But now that the thousands of big drift logs have been taken away there seems to be much less disturbance on this beach, and the vegetation is coming back. At first I can’t find the big tree. Did it fall down over the decades? Used to be able to run around this beach, but now the bush is taller than my head. I finally find my spot, and the big tree is still there. Winter floods have pushed a pile of driftwood into the hollow base. My old campsite is returning to forest. Cannot let this happen.
This is one of few trees in the world where you can set your tent up INSIDE the tree, and I want to do this tonite. One drift log is too heavy for me to move, so I start s fire about a meter from the end. If I burn the end off I may be able to move it out of the tree cave to make room for my tent.
The little clearing in front of the tree is growing up in bulrushes, so I find a round heavy short drift log and use it like a steamroller to create a “lawn” in from of my new home. By late afternoon I have burned the end off the problem log, and I can then shove it out of the hollow cedar trunk to make room for my tent.
The little clearing in front of the tree is growing up in bulrushes, so I find a round heavy short drift log and use it like a steamroller to create a “lawn” in from of my new home. By late afternoon I have burned the end off the problem log, and I can then shove it out of the hollow cedar trunk to make room for my tent.
A nasty westerly blows up in the afternoon, so I cancel fishing plans and just sit around near my campfire, working on clearing out my old spot, and thinking about old times.
Next morn I get up early and rebuild the fire. Still need to clear some big chunks of driftwood away from my front yard.
I fish hard all around the reed bed at “A” beach. This area is often loaded with sea-run cutthroat trout, but they are conspicuous by their absence today. I hook one big one, about 18”, off the end of the bar. One jump and it is gone. Otherwise no hits. Later that morn I put on my neoprene waders mask & snorkel, and swim all around the reed bed. The shallows in Kennedy Lake used to be swarming with small fish. Dace minnows, juvenile cohos, bullheads, small trout. But today I see not a single fish. And the water is very clear, probably 6 meter vis. Is there no plankton in this lake any more?
Smoke from my campfire drifts around the big cedars on shore.
In the afternoon I head across to the hwy side, and drift back to the boat launch. Fishing is better here, and I get into 4 or 5 nice cutts. Not as big as the one I lost this morn.
I tie the Bullship to shore near the boat launch and drive back into town.
Set up the flooring and then move the tent from the big cedar into the Bullship.
Tonite is the christening of the Boatel (V 2.1), and I need to celebrate. So I buy a mickey of Capt Morgan run in Ukee, and head back to the lake. Get back to the campsite just before dark and rebuild my campfire. Low cloud is forming on the mountains across on the hwy side of the lake, as the air cools, and the humidity rises from 99 to 100 percent.
Set up the flooring and then move the tent from the big cedar into the Bullship.
Voila! Luxury accommodation in the heart of the Clayoquat wilderness. Tonite there are thousands of tourists paying huge bucks to sleep in identical sardine can motel rooms within 15 miles of me. But I have the entire lake to myself, and probably not another human within 2 miles of me tonite. I sip rum by the campfire before heading off to the boatel, anchored in the drizzle at the creek mouth. Fade off into sleep with the gentle rocking of the boatel and rhythmic slapping of the wavelets against the hull. Next morn, early – very early. The boatel is a success. I am still alive, and still afloat. And the boatel vision – like the IKN – is still a shining star on the horizon.
One thing I had not taken into account in V 2.1: In my attempt to maximize simplicity I did not include a bathroom in the plans for the boatel. Need to bring a pee bottle along next time. At the first grey of hope in the morn I unzip the tent and look out. Even tho I am expecting it I must say it is a shock to look out of your tent flap and see nothing but water. The Bullship is very stable in the stern where it is wide, but very tippy in the bow where it is not. I manage to pee over the side, and then try to crawl back into the tent, where the zipper is open on the R side. As I am trying to stumble back into the tent in the near dark I slip. Nothing to grab onto here! And the boat is tilting ominously to the side. I lose my balance as the boat rolls, and suddenly … Man Overboard!
Item #1 in future boatel user manual: Do not fall out of the boat!
Next thing I know I am flat on my back underwater. Lucky for me I anticipated problems in the first test of the boatel, so I anchored in 2 ft of water. Also lucky for me that there is no one around to see what an asshole I am. No early morning trout fishing today. Must rebuild the big campfire in a hurry, take off my wet clothes and change into dry. Then finish off the rest of the mickey for breakfast beside a roaring fire.
The boatel looks just as noble and splendid in the morn as it did last nite. Kennedy Lake Hilton.
Today is calm and drizzly. Much better weather for trout fishing than yesterday’s sun. I load up my gear and head out. Out in the flats off “A” beach I hook into a few nice cutts. All get off. OK with me, I am using a single barbless spinner. Then I head back across the lake to the hwy side. Today I am getting into fish all along shore, especially near Thunderass Creek mouth (This is the old logger’s name for the creek, now extinct like most of the loggers. In deference to political correctness, the sign on the hwy now says Thunderous Creek.), the next little creek down the shore where I hook a big cutt, at least 18”, makes one sizzling run and catapult leap and shakes off.
Later I land a nice trout that has gulped the spinner deep into its throat. Don’t want to mutilate the fish, and I want to keep one for dinner, so this is it. A beauty 13 inch Kennedy Lake cutt.
These are beautiful fish, freshly returned from the ocean, waiting in the lake for the impending runs of sockeye and coho, upon whose eggs they will gorge. If these sea-run cutts are not the finest tasting trout in the world I would like to find one that is better. Bright pink/orange meat.
By noon I am loaded back out, and off to Port Alberni and civilization.
Aug 15
I go down to fish Shawningan Lake with Mike C. One of the great Van Isle SM lakes, and I have hardly fished it this year. We start in late afternoon and the fishing is OK, with a couple pushing 18".
In spite of the speedboat traffic we manage to get a few on buzzbaits in the evening. Gotta luv those smashing late evening buzzer hits!
Aug 17
Aug 15
I go down to fish Shawningan Lake with Mike C. One of the great Van Isle SM lakes, and I have hardly fished it this year. We start in late afternoon and the fishing is OK, with a couple pushing 18".
In spite of the speedboat traffic we manage to get a few on buzzbaits in the evening. Gotta luv those smashing late evening buzzer hits!
Aug 17
Went out to a local Nanaimo Lake at midnite. I have been wanting to try the nite bite, and the recent full moon is fast waning. Takes me a while, but I locate a pack of meanass surface-busting smallies. Crushing surface hits, spectacular high jump leaps in the moonlite, I love nite fishing.
4 big fish on 6 casts, the 2 biggest get away beside the boat. The lake is on fire!
So I quit and go home without making another cast. I will rig up seriously for nite fishing, and come back tomorrow.
But when I go back at 11 PM the next nite the bite is not happening. I get a few smaller fish at first, and then not another bite from midnite till 2 AM, when I give up. Go figure.
Aug 20
I tried Quennel Lake, where I have hardly been this year. Fishing was slow when I was there earlier. The lake is down in late summer, so the only public access is a swampy mudhole. Nobody fishing here today, unlike in spring when it was packed with fishers. I start with a buzzbait before dawn - no hits. Then switch to a buzz frog, which DOES get bit.
The frog bite continues until the sun pokes above the horizon. Then I switch to black yum worm. I fish until 9:30 AM, and land 6 fish over 17" - the best day I have ever had here.
The fish are dark here, like the stainede water they live in. Biggest one is 19".
And I am back home making coffee before 10 AM.
Aug 23
I tried Quennel Lake, where I have hardly been this year. Fishing was slow when I was there earlier. The lake is down in late summer, so the only public access is a swampy mudhole. Nobody fishing here today, unlike in spring when it was packed with fishers. I start with a buzzbait before dawn - no hits. Then switch to a buzz frog, which DOES get bit.
The frog bite continues until the sun pokes above the horizon. Then I switch to black yum worm. I fish until 9:30 AM, and land 6 fish over 17" - the best day I have ever had here.
The fish are dark here, like the stainede water they live in. Biggest one is 19".
Aug 23
Got tired of those 18-19" dinkers at Quennel, so I went down to Victoria to fish with Mike C. Got skunked early at Langford Lake, so we migrated over to Elk. Fishing was not fast but we stuck some good ones dragging worms deep and slow.
Tank smallie beside the boat.
Ridiculous to catch 3 fish of 20" or more in the middle of a hot August afternoon, here in the Capitol Regional District (population 400K), right next to a screaming busy 4 lane hwy. But we did.
Mike C with a pig
Notice the huge 7" worm I am throwing - like a small black Ukranian sausage.
You are technichally supposed to measure fish from the tip of the lower jaw (fully extended) to the fork of the tail. In which case this must be the heaviest 18" SM ever. But if the otter had not taken a bite out of its tail it would likely be over 20".
3 x 20" smallies on a hot August afternoon.
Aug 27
Went out with a variety of frogs to try the dawn bite at Quennel. Not much happening on the surface, but I got my biggest ever Quennel fish on a worm.
Amor de Cosmos
Bill Smith joined the Mormons and left Nova Scotia in 1840, moving to Iowa and then on to California to join the gold rush. In Oroville, CA, he legally changed his name to Amor de Cosmos - “lover of the universe”. In 1858 he moved to Victoria, capitol city of the British colony of Vancouver Island. The city – with a population of 300 the previous year - was booming after gold was discovered in the Fraser River. De Cosmos founded a newspaper, the Daily British Colonist, which still exists in the form of the Victoria Times – Colonist. When Van Isle joined with the mainland colony of New Caledonia in 1870, de Cosmos was elected as the second premier of the new province. He was instrumental in promoting the merger of colonies to create the new province of BC, the completion of the Canadian transcontinental railroad, and the merger of BC into the young country called Canada. In his honor a watershed in E central Van Isle has been named after him – Amor de Cosmos Creek – along with its main headwaters lake. When I first moved to BC in 1970 I spent the summer living on the beach at Wreck Bay on the W coast of the island. The next summer a few friends I had met at Wreck Bay the previous year came back for a visit, and we went on a trout fishing trip that took us into the AdC watershed. I remember parts of the trip clearly, even tho it happened 40 years ago. Am I that old?
We had no boat, but we a hatchet. And we hated the logging companies that were annihilating the towering old growth rainforest by mega-clearcutting. Like most good timber land on Van Isle, the AdC watershed had been allocated in perpetuity to giant logging companies in the form of Tree Farm Licenses – like handing over most of Iowa to Monsanto as a Corn Farm License. And the biggest and baddest multinational of them all (at that time – now extinct) was MacMillan and Bloedel, who had a big sign made of a 4' x 8' sheet of 3/4” plywood erected on posts along the logging mainline road, announcing that you were entering Tree Farm 29, or what ever it was. We chopped the sign down with our hatchet, pried the plywood sheet off, and took it with us into the woods.
The AdC watershed is unusual for coastal BC in that the land is usually not steep slopes running off huge mountains. Instead it is low and rolling, with many little lakes nestled among the hills. We carried the plywood in to a lake, chopped down a few little pine snags with our hatchet, dragged them down into the lake, and used to spikes from the sign to nail the plywood onto the poles. Voila – we had a raft! Not quite the serious fishing machine that the Bullship III is, but we could pole ourselves around out on the lake. We paddled across one lake, disassembled the raft, carried the parts over a hill, and rebuilt it on a second lake. That's the way it is in AdC land – lakes everywhere. I remember very clearly that we were catching lots of nice native cutthroat trout casting fry flies off the raft. That was the first time I ever caught trout on a dry fly.
I have never been back since. Can't even remember exactly which lakes we fished or roads we took. Don't know if the roads still exist, or if the public is allowed in to the area. So I decided to take the Bullship Boatel up to AdC land to explore the land of my old memories. Must first drive up island to Campbell River, about 1 ½ hrs from Nanaimo, where the freeway ends, then take Hwy 19 NW another 20 minutes or so, past Seymour Narrows. This is where the famous Inside Passage around Van Isle is compressed between the main island and Quadra Island to the E into a narrow channel full of raging tide rips and criss-crossed by sport fishing boats, commercial fishing boats, giant ferries and Alaska cruise ships, tugs towing log barges and log booms.
Seymour Narrows (in the distance)
A busy place for boats.
Right in the middle of it all used to be Ripple Rock.
So. They decided to blow up Ripple Rock. People in BC are used tot being confronted by huge walls of rock and enormous trees, so they have become good at blowing stuff up.
For many years the demolition of Ripple Rock was listed as the largest non-nuclear explosion in history, but I doubt that this is still true.
Soon I see a sign for the Blackwater Main logging road. I have already made JPG screen captures from Google earth, and saved PDF images of maps showing roads and lakes and streams, so I stop and check my little computer as I head down the road. The road is not bad for a boat & trailer if I go slow, up to 30K. The remaining old growth timber is all logged off now, and the forest is growing back as dense, tall second growth. Soon I come upon Mud Lake, and the Edhaus School which is beside it. In 1971 this was a prison – a youth detention center. There is a story from 1971 about the old prison gate on the road to the AdC lakes that I will not tell here in the blogoshpere. Past the school to road gets bumpier – used only by loggers and hunter/fishermen past here – but is still reasonably well graded. Only moments past the school I come upon a Cedar Lake visible thru the trees.
The map shows the main road skirting the lake, but I soon come upon a fork, and a pickup with camper the other way. We squeeze by each other, and stop to talk. He says he has not been in here since 1975. “Well, I have not been in here since 1971!” He says the old Blackwater Main was de-activated when the took out the bridge below Farewell Lake. But if you keep driving down the old mainline you come to nice campsites at Cedar Lake.
And he is right! There are 2 beautiful campsites beside the lake. Free! The kind you hardly see in N America any more. There is no boat launch here, but it is easy access to launch a pontoon or cartopper. I toy with the idea of finagling the Bullship into the lake and decide not. Instead I park beside the road at the lake outlet, launch the pontoon, and relax.
There is nothing rising on the lake. In the evening I go for a paddle in the pontoon. Beautiful lake, clear green water, lots of weed beds. Looks very fishy, and the 2 other tourists I have met tell me it is a very good lake for cutts. But they must all be holding in the deeps right now during the dog days of August. I camp in my tent, and go for a larger excursion the next morn. The outlet of this lake was raised a few feet when the built a logging road across it. This flooded the timber around the edge of the lake, so there are lots of snags and drift logs. A superb lake with wonderful free waterfront campsites!
Before leaving I drive further down the old Blackwater Main. About 1K further along you come to Muskeg Lake, where there is a trail (86 paces) to carry a boat in.
Then a couple more Ks and you come to Farewell Lake. Used to be a road across Amor dC Creek here where it flows out of the lake. But the bridge rotted out and the mainline road was shifted over to the E. I think this road may continue back out to the hwy. Must check some day. Anyway, Farewell is another fishy looking lake (there were even some rises here.) right beside the road. There is a beautiful picinic site beside the lake, but no level ground here to pitch a tent on.
Then I hitch back up to the Bullship and head back out onto the new mainline. Want to find the Chain Lakes, which I think is where we might have fished so long ago. (Turns out I was wrong.) Further down the new Blackwater Main, at the 6K sign, is an old road leading off into the woods. Looks like, and is, the old Blackwater Main. Can't haul the Bullship down this old pair of ruts, so I unhitch and head on. There is a pullout, and I can walk down to some water. This is the very top end of Blackwater Lake.
Top end Blackwater Lake, looking upstream
Looking down to main lake
Further on is a little side road that my map tells me should lead in to the Chain Lakes. Suddenly it ends in a concrete ba rrier, and I get out to look around. I had totally forgotten that I still had the pontoon on top the car. Happned to stop right where I did. One more second and I would have destroyed the pontoon boat.
I thank Allah, Jesus, and Zorgon, god of the forest gnomes, for my good fortune. The old logging road is just a trail from here on.
The old road is still clear enough to allow you to carry a canoe, or even a pontoon. After a 10 minute walk you come to the Chain Lakes.
These are a cluster of small lakes, little jewels scattered among the 2nd growth, probably chock full of wild native cutthroat, maybe never stocked with hatchery fish, and seldom fished by anglers nowadays. Must get in here some time with the pontoon and camping gear! The first lake connects thru a little channel into a larger pond to the E.
Another minutes walk brings you to the 2nd lake.
Gorgeous spot, but I have a boatel along, and I want to use it. Back out to the mainline, which soon runs along beside the Blackwater Lake. There is a beautiful sand campsite here. This is where we assembled our M&B raft years ago.
Lots of freshwater mussels in the bottom of this clear (not black!) water lake. One of the great unanswered mysteries of the universe is why most bivalve molluscs are content to stay in one spot, like the large clusters of mussels in this lake, while an odd few are overtaken by wanderlust and go meandering on long aimless explorations thru the slime and bottom muck. What are they seeking, while there comrades sit rooted into complacency? Are they trying to find some long lost trout fishing lake?
Wandering bivalve. You can see its trail, and the top of the shell protruding from the mud.
I picked the mussel out, had it pose for a pic, and watched it burrow back in.
On now to the big lake, named after the big guy himself. Amor de Cosmos Lake flows out into AdC Creek thru a shallow channel, and there is a good boat launch at the end. There is a great free campsite here too, if you are a member of that lowly landlubbing class who do not enjoy the luxury of owning a boatel. Soon I have the Bullship, loaded with the boatel, in the water.
Out onto the lake. This lake is very clear, and has many arms. It was used to transport and store logs in the old days, so be careful speeding around in a boat. Don't run into one of those many deadheads!
Out into the main lake and about 2K down to the S end there is a pretty little beach. This is the Mr Canoehead Recreation Site.
(For those Basstravaganza readers who are not Canadian, Mr Canoehead is a famous Canadian superhero. Had the misfortune, while on a long portage in N Ontario, of getting hit by a bolt of lighting that welded his 17 ft Grumman aluminum canoe directly onto his skull. Which is an advantage in certain circumstances – like when a villain is trying to hit you on the head – but a disadvantage in others – like when you try to turn around in a department store. Crash!) Anyway, there is a nice (FREE!) campsite here made from chainsaw milled trees.
A trail leads on 2 minute walk to – SURPRISE! - another lake. The other lake is called Surprise Lake, and it has an even nicer campground, with wooden platforms to pitch your tent on.
I continue on exploring around the lake. On the E side are a cluster of little islets. After the retreat of the most recent Ice Age the little islands, with their stunted and runted trees and bushes, were home to the zorzonians – a race of tiny forest gnomes who were only about 10 cm (about 3 ½ “) tall. Nowadays the Comox Paddlers have developed tasteful (FREE!) campsites on a number of islets. Complete with tent sites, fire pits, fish cleaning stations and toilet pits.
"My" islet is on the left.
I pick out a nice island and dump off my stuff, then gather some driftwood for a fire.
Then start throwing a roostertail spinner around. I catch a nice 12” cutt right away. Gets off just as I am taking its pic. Then never get another bite. I explore around most of the lake. Looks superb for trout – many gravelly points, rock humps, deep weedbeds and dropoffs. But the cutties, RBs, dolly vardens and kokanees that are supposed to live here are conspicuous by their absence.
On the trail in to Chain Lakes I found a few chanterelle mushrooms. All the other food I have with me is a half stick of pepperoni and a bag of ramen noodles. So I slowly sautee the sausage and shrooms over the campfire. Yum!
Time to set up the boatel. This time I assemble everything in the boat, on the water, just for practice. Never know, I may have to do this in for real some day, as darkness is falling in the Amazon, or under NATO attack in some oil-rich country, or under attack from mosquitos on the Wisconsin R.
And this time, I do NOT fall into the lake when I get up the next morn.
PS: Notice that the boatel concept has already been stolen and usurped for the enjoyment of the idle rich globalist elite:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028454/London-2012-Olympics-Boat-hotel-hoisted-Thames.html
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