August 24

We wake, or stop prending to sleep. I crawl out and start the stove for coffee. Our planned meal is English muffins and cream cheese, but we also have this problem of an entire Indian curry dinner. Curry is always the heaviest meal to carry and is therefore always consumed on the first night. That is until last night. No one wants to carry it now, so we decide to have both. Mike calls this morning’s curry Bredinner (breakfast dinner). At first we are only going to eat half, but it is so good we decide to kill the entire meal. With everything soaked we are slow to get around. We do not get out of camp until about 10 am. As we hike, fishing reports become consistent – Island Lakes is where the action is. We are told by fly fishermen “Match the hatch to get the catch.” We are mostly fishing with spinners and I am pretty sure the local things hatching did not look like Mepps or Castmasters. Regardless, Island Lake here we come.

We stop for lunch at Little Seneca Lake. Andrew, Mike and Brian wet a line. In fact, Andrew is so determined to get to the fish that he wades out to the lakes island, but alas, returns with nothing. We enjoy BBQ beef ribs from a packet, squeezed on to bread, which Mike agrees is surprisingly good. We regret that the Fritos are buried deep in my bear canister at the bottom of my pack. We press on to Island Lake, with dark clouds looming, but so far not dumping. We quickly pick a campsite, set up tents, and start rehydrating ground turkey and peas for our shepherd/cottage pie meal. Andrew fills a bear can with lake water and starts filtering. Brian and Mike go fish. By the time I get down there Mike has caught a lunker rainbow trout. Apparently his fluorescent yellow spinner matched the hatch. Other hatches must have looked like a gold Castmaster because that is what I caught my lunker on. Mike cleans the fish while Brian and I prepare the cottage pie dinner. This was quite a day for food, including Mike frying the fish for our dessert.

I send a satellite message to my wife saying we had our first day without rain. Of course within 30 minutes a thunder and lightning storm rolls in and we hunker yet again in our tents. At least today we get dinner done before the down pour.

Tomorrow we will explore and fish our way into Titcomb Basin.