Margaret Lake is about a mile up a gravel logging road from the USFS dock in Marguerite Bay. I have been there many times before and readers of this blog may be tired of hearing about it. But it is one of my favorite places so I continue to go there.
Here's a map segment showing the route from Bar Harbor up into Behm Canal, and then into Traitors Cove, ending in Marguerite Bay. It's about 27 nm (nautical miles).
My crew for the trip this year was Ryan Gotelli and my grandson Bryan Bowles, age 8. Bryan was really jazzed about going on this trip. He told me about 2 weeks ago that he was already packed. And then every time I saw him after that he told me exactly how many days it was until the fishing trip. I was pretty excited about it too.
I worked until 11:30 AM and then headed for the boat. Ryan picked up Bryan from school and we were ready to rock and roll.
I apologize up front for not having as many pictures as I could and should have. I only have two excuses. First, I was having too much fun to remember to take pictures, or two, the weather was just too nasty and my camera is not waterproof.
We pulled out of Bar Harbor about 1:30 PM in sunny, warm weather, with a brisk NW breeze blowing.
My friends Ed and Linda Purvis built a homestead that they call Freedom Point. It is located near Moser Bay, overlooking Naha Bay and looking north into Behm Canal. I had been wanting to stop there for quite awhile, and this trip presented a good opportunity to do so. I must apologize for not getting pictures of them, but Ed was nice enough to send me a couple of pictures taken from the water.
We had a nice but all too short visit with Ed and Linda and their family.
I had made a hand routed name sign for their boat, the Arctic Bear, which I gave them during this visit.
We continued north in Behm Canal and then turned into Traitors Cove, dropping our shrimp pots and our crab pots before tying up to the USFS dock there at about 6 PM. We had the dock to ourselves.
Dinner was next on the agenda, and spaghetti was on the menu. The evening was so beautiful that I set up the propane cooker usually used for cooking crab and shrimp on the dock and used it to cook the spaghetti.
We had a couple of new additions to the boat for this trip, one of which was a metal fire pit that my wife got me for Christmas. We had fires both nights, (Ryan is very good at making fires, even when the woods are wet), and they added a whole new dimension to the trip. Bryan sure seemed to like them.
The second addition to the boat was a BB gun, a Daisy of course. I brought 4800 BB's so they wouldn't run out. Bryan had a great time shooting at Pepsi cans and orange juice bottles, when he could get the BB gun away from Ryan.
The sunset from the dock was stunning that evening. The photos don't do it justice.
The next morning we loaded up my cart with the motor, fuel, oars, life jackets, fishing gear, etc. etc. etc. and walked up the road to the lake. It's about a mile up the logging road, with some long up hill runs along the way.
Here's a shot of the lake with Bryan eager to catch some trout.
We got the skiff in the water and started across the lake. Along the way we saw a lone swan on the lake. He (she?) would take off and fly around a bit, but always ended up landing back on the lake.
A huge and wonderous bird. I'll bet the wing span was about 5 feet.
The lake is small and we just motored to the gravel bar at the inlet. I dropped Bryan and Ryan off for awhile and I fished from the skiff.
Here Bryan sits on the gravel bar waiting for a bite.
Here's the skiff we used for the day. It belongs to my boss and he lets me use it from time to time. Once I am retired I intend to get my own small skiff on the lake so we can fish whenever we want, except of course when it is frozen solid.
Here are the two Cutthroat trout that I took home for the day's fishing. The rules on this lake are the fish must be at least 11" long and can be no more than 22" long, and you can only keep 2 per day per person. These guys ran about 16".
I caught many more fish during the day but released them. Also hooked and lost quite a few more. It was a good day of trout fishing.
Here Ryan tries his luck near the inlet to the lake.
Bryan shows off his first, and only, catch of the day.
He did hook several that got away, as we all did.
He was a happy little kid.
Here's a view of the lake looking towards the bridge from the gravel bar.
Ryan had built a fire on the gravel bar, but it was struggle to keep it going. We had periods of sunny warm weather, interspersed with torrential rains, and strong wind. In other words, typical SE Alaska weather. He had hoped to bake a trout over the fire, but it just got too wet to keep a good fire going.
Ryan got this nice Cutthroat near the gravel bar.
After a good day of fishing we headed back down the road. We were so jazzed about the fishing we decided to leave the skiff set up so that we could fish again on Sunday. Bad decision. Sunday was really rainy, windy, and cold, but we still had to walk up the road to put the skiff away. That was not fun, and we all got pretty wet and cold, despite our rain gear.
Saturday night on the dock we had another stellar fire. We had run out and pulled and reset the crab pots. We got a few keepers which I cooked up on the dock while we enjoyed the fire in the fire pit.
The weather forecast for Behm Canal was pretty dismal for Sunday morning and early afternoon, but it was supposed to be calming down later in the day. I considered just staying the night and heading in early Monday morning, but in the end we decided to wait till later in the afternoon and then head in.
Ryan and Bryan killed some time making inventive targets for the BB gun and shooting at them. They tied an orange juice bottle to the dock with fishing line and shot at it as it bobbed in the waves. They drew targets on paper plates and then tied them to some branches on the beach and shot at them as the wind buffeted them.
We pulled out at 4 PM and pulled the crab pots first and then the shrimp pots. We got a few keeper crabs but not a lot of shrimp. While stowing the shrimp pots I discovered the reason. The fish and game regulations require that the pots have an escape mechanism in the webbing. A small section of the webbing is cut and then tied back together with cotton twine. The twine will deteriorate if it sits in salt water long enough. The idea is that you don't want an abandoned pot sitting on the bottom indefinitely just killing shrimp. The dead shrimp act as bait for new shrimp to come in. So the cotton thread breaks, the hole opens up, and the shrimp can get out. We did get about 25 shrimp. I figure they were the stupid ones, unable to find a gaping hole in the side of the pot. All 3 of my pots had the same issue. Time to buy more cotton thwine.
We were heading east on the way home, and so the sunset was to the west, behind us. While I piloted the boat from the flybridge helm, Ryan snapped a picture with his cell phone that capped out our trip.
We pulled into Bar Harbor in dead calm water at about 8:15 PM.
A pretty successful trout fishing trip I would say.
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