July at Duck Lake

July began with an Independence Day weekend trip to the camp with Les, Trish & Magnolia. The fishing was pretty good, with some nice smallies in the 12-14 inch range, and a "lunker" 16.5 incher caught by Trish. Plenty of good footage was captured on the new video camera and resulted in the fine film Independence Day Weekend at Duck Lake. It was also on this trip that Les caught his coveted smallie on a flyrod (three in all, actually).

July ended with a family trip, celebrating my mother's birthday. Doug, Nikki and Autumn came up, as well as Charley, and me of course. The fishing was even better this time, with active smallies all over the lake, particularly around Grass Island. We also got into a school of very pretty, very hard-fighting (for their size) pumpkinseeds which produced some tasty fillets for a lunch fry on Monday. The white perch also made some appearences feeding on the surface during the evening hours. I took Charley out Monday evening for a troll, and watched her catch her first smallie, a scrappy 12 incher--definitely the highlight of my time at the camp. Charley, Autumn & I even got into some hornpout monday night off the dock. Doug took the trophy this time around, with a bruiser 16.5 inch smallie, followed closely by Nikki's 15.5 incher! Grass Island!