June 2017: Northern Highland American Legion State Forest

We took a bunch of weekend trips this month, two of which were camping trips to the NHAL. The earlier weekend, we camped on our usual site on the Manitowish River, and the second weekend we camped at the Starrett Lake campground next door to Sean’s brother and his family.

Our first weekend was June 2/3. The Manitowish was actually a little bit busy when we were there, with sites 14 and 15 occupied. We headed for our favorite site and found it empty (save for a beaver who had just then felled a tree at the site and went charging into the water when we startled him!), so we set up camp for the night. I was a bit concerned about the forecast of rainy weather and thunderstorms for Saturday, but we only got a short drizzle in the morning while we were fishing for crappie and then a really brief storm in the afternoon that made for great napping weather in the tent. The crappie were mostly only active in the early morning, and we caught a few on our micro-perch rapala lures. They seemed to be more interested in the fire tiger pattern, not too surprising in that dark stained water. We had visitors in the form of a flock of about seven trumpeter swans, who Sean once said sound like middle school band practice. We also saw the tiniest snapping turtle near our fire ring, whose shell was only about the size of a quarter. On Saturday morning we saw a pair of otters swim by as well. It’s a fun stretch of river where you can see a lot of wildlife.

The next day I was really feeling the urge to catch a whole pile of panfish, so I suggested that we go check out Frank Lake. We had shore-fished from the landing the year before and had a lot of fun with small bluegills. Frank is a very pretty, larger lake with no development on it, and only electric motors are allowed. Its parking area is uphill from the beach landing and there’s no way to drive all the way to the landing, but it’s a very easy portage to the shore from the car. Because of this and it being fairly tucked away, we’ve not seen too much traffic on it. Frank Lake was FULL of spawning beds when we got out on it, but I think we were a few days too late and they were all abandoned. However, we decided to try our luck, and started exploring since we had never been on Frank with Old Ironsides before. I was casting along the shore with a worm and bobber, when something much bigger than a bluegill hit hard! It ended up being the largest smallmouth I had ever boated, so that was pretty fun! Sean was casting wacky-rigged soft bait worms for smallmouth and ended up with a very nice keeper-sized walleye, which we decided would be coming back with us. So, we never did end up with those panfish, but we had a pretty fun couple of hours out on Frank.

The next weekend, June 17/18, we were car camping at the Starrett Lake campground. We brought some extra luxury stuff that we don’t normally bring, like our big comfy folding chairs and the big cooler. We were in walk-in site #10, which is smaller, but nice and isolated from the main camp and has a spot right on Starrett Lake to park your canoe. My in-laws and family took #9, which is their favorite. Site 11 was overgrown with knee-high grass and no lake view. We were blanked on Starrett during our morning fishing jaunt on Saturday, but we have had good luck there in the past catching northern pike with spoons. After breakfast, we decided to head over to Frank Lake again, because it’s right next door to Starrett. We ended up having it to ourselves and a family of loons the whole day, and it was beautiful weather with only a light breeze. The loon pair on Frank Lake had chicks, which was amazing! We did accidentally get between them when the adults swam under our canoe – they let us know how much they did not like that, and we worked fast to get out of the way! We fished in the morning and caught both largemouth and smallmouth bass on soft baits, and then found a good spot to eat a shore lunch. Clearly there are a couple of spots where locals frequent. Since it was getting kind of warm, we grabbed our snorkeling gear from the car and explored a bit under the water. Lots of fun sights to see under there!

We had hot dogs for dinner and tried fishing out at the Plum Lake pier, but a rainstorm started coming in and the wind got nasty, so we gave up fast. The whole night stayed rainy and then it stayed gloomy and rainy the next morning as well, so we went into Boulder Junction for breakfast at the Granary (very busy, but good food). It didn’t clear up, so we decided to pack up wet and hit the road.

A classic Wisconsin photo of a man and his boat and his fish.

Photos by Sean, full album here.

November 5-6: Overnighter to Partridge Lake

We took advantage of a really beautiful late fall weekend to explore Partridge Lake, which is in the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest in Vilas County, WI. It’s a small lake with one private property on it, and one campsite.

There is a boat landing on this lake, but it would take some skill to back even a modestly-sized motorboat into this lake due to the tight turns. The landing is sandy and muddy, and very shallow. We saw a jon boat coming out and it looked manageable. If you are going to trailer load or if it’s a cold day, don’t forget your waterproof boots. We got on the water at about 2:00 in the afternoon and made our way over the campsite to unload. The site is not too difficult to get to, but the landing there again is pretty swampy. It does not seem to be a site that sees a whole lot of use – the grass was pretty tall. There are a few spots to put the tent, but the grass does hide a lot of rooty, uneven ground. With the swampy ground near this site, it may be a bit on the buggy side in the summer.

The campsite does not have the standard metal fire ring + grate set-up that we have seen in all other NHAL campsites, but it does have a fire pit with a stone circle. After a quick investigation into the location of the latrine, and then after a longer search, we couldn’t find it. The forest about fifty feet back from the site had clearly been logged pretty recently, so our theory is that the latrine had been destroyed during that process. It made for a little more rustic experience, but we survived. Having a camping trowel handy helped!

The swampy landing did require a little bit of finessing (we had to walk out to the far end of the canoe to get our cooking water, for example), but it was a good site altogether. Very quiet with only the one other property on the lake, but it does seem to be a moderately popular spot for duck hunters and anglers.

We spotted a few loons – one juvenile and one or two adults, and heard coyotes nearby in the evening. The lake itself is moderately clear but pretty shallow and weedy. Even the deeper hole is not overly deep. We fished in the deepest hole of the lake and caught a few perch, which will be added to a fish fry tonight. Good stuff!

Photo credit to Sean. See the full album here.

May 6 – 8, 2016: Northern Highland American Legion State Forest

Camped at: Starrett Lake Campground

Friday:

We left Madison at about 4:30 PM, hitting some slow traffic due to intermittent road construction all the way to Minocqua. The traffic cleared up after Portage, but slowed down every time we hit a construction zone. Although the weather was supposed to be pretty clear, it became apparent by the black skies and lightening on the horizon that we were driving right into a thunderstorm that was over Minocqua. A quick check of the phone confirmed that hail-producing thunderstorms were blowing through just then, so we decided to take shelter in the Minoqua Wal-Mart. I had forgotten to grab my fleece jacket on my way out the door, so I took the opportunity to snag a sweatshirt. It’s blue and says “Minocqua” on it, and I am absolutely not worried about it getting trashed.

We set up in the rain, which isn’t ideal but something we’ve done a time or two before. We are planning a trip to the BWCA near the end of June, so we’re using these weekend NHAL trips to knock off the rust. And wow, we have a lot of rust to remove. We forgot: My fleece, one of my prescriptions, the precious Bailey’s Irish cream for my coffee (NOOO), and a drying cloth for dishes. None of these were catastrophic, but all could have been avoided had I not been rushing around grabbing a few things at the last minute.

Happily, we slept pretty well as it was warmer out. The peepers were out and peeping, and we saw about 20 frogs hanging out at the edge of the water by the lights of our flashlights.

Saturday:

We breakfasted on coffee, oatmeal, and dried fruit, which is one of my favorite camp breakfasts. Not only is it nice and warm on a cold morning, it’s filling and really gets things going, if you know what I mean. I think I’ll add some cashews or almonds to oatmeal in the future for more protein.

Nobody was at the Manitowish River, where we put in above the dam. We bought minnows in Minocqua the night before, and I caught a crappie with those within about 10 minutes. We decided to head to Manitowish River Site 13, which is a favorite of ours as it’s relatively farther away from the first three campsites above the dam. The downside is that there are some cabins across the river from site 13, but they’ve generally been pretty quiet. Sean went ahead and cleaned the crappie and iced it while I put lunch together. We had taco mac and cheese, which I think I’ll try making with boxed mac ‘n’ cheese in the future. (I had to cheat a little and use penne and powdered cheese which was edible but not amazing.) We poked around the site just a little to see if we could find any morels, but nothing showed up. We put the crappie head and guts into Sean’s new crawfish trap to see if we could get anything in that, but ended up empty at the end of the day when we picked it up on the way home.

The wind really picked up in the afternoon, and we were unfortunately reminded of a big problem this flowage has in the spring: when the weeds haven’t grown in , you can’t see the channel very well. This flowage was created when the Manitowish River was dammed, and the flooded area includes a lot of stump fields, many of which are just out of sight under water. Those, plus the wind, meant we had a couple of pretty dicey moments of being hung up on stumps. Undaunted, we pressed on to try and find Manitowish River Site 12, which we had not yet been able to find. Across from our lunch spot at site 13 is a small channel that leads to the upper part of the flowage, and the very nice site 12 is all by itself up there. No development, either! On the way to 12, we saw seven trumpeter swans farther up the river. They took off when we got closer, and we watched them gain altitude over the water for some time. They are enormous birds, and I’m glad to admire them from a distance.

After stopping for a quick break at site 12, we decided to turn around and head back. The wind was pretty chilly, and we weren’t having any luck fishing other than the one morning crappie. We had some dinner and warmed up at Aqualand, which serves pretty decent pizza and has a good brewpub. After that, we headed over to Blueberry Lake, which Sean assures me is “full of panfish.” I have not yet caught a single panfish in that little lake, and this time was no exception. So, we decided to check out Emerald Lake, which is within walking distance from the Firefly campground but relatively unknown and generally good largemouth territory for us. Our intrepid Honda Accord bounced its way down the fire road to the walk-in trail for that lake, but we found that it was occupied by some teenagers hauling out a jon boat. Not wanting to fight our way past each other, we decided to put the canoe on Firefly, which we didn’t have any luck in. By this time I was pretty chilly, so we decided to pack it in for the day and go build ourselves a nice warm fire at camp.

The temps got all the way down to the high 30’s that night, which is about my limit. Sean can pretty much sleep at any temperature.

Sunday

We slept a little late, so fishing early didn’t quite happen. After our same breakfast of (black! ARGH!) coffee and oatmeal + dried fruit, we broke camp. I noticed that we need to replace the interior tarp in our tent, as it’s starting to smell a little funky. One of the most helpful things we ever did to keep our tent dry was to line the interior of the tent with a plastic painter’s tarp. Any moisture that wicks in from the outside is stopped by that tarp; it just needs some replacing once in a while.

We decided to try going back to Emerald Lake, and found it empty of teenagers and jon boats. We could see largemouth cruising around from the shore, and decided that we’d bring in the canoe and try our luck. With bobbers and worms, we caught several smaller largemouth, as well as a couple of nice sized pumpkinseeds, which we put on the stringer. Sean tried out his topwater frog lure, which is fun and got some hits, but it doesn’t have a great hook rate. We decided to paddle troll back to the landing, and were almost back when Sean hooked into the biggest fish of the trip – a 13.5″ largemouth, which struck on a 4″ rappela. That seems to be about the bigger end of the size in this lake – not a ton of monster bass, but a good number of fun mid-sized ones.

We ate lunch at the Firefly Lake picnic area, where we re-hydrated some beef, instant rice, and ratatouille, which was my attempt to combine and get rid of a few things. It ended up being kind of bland, but we had grabbed some season salt for any possible crawfish prep and we jazzed it up a little bit with that. And by 4:30, we were on the road home.

Till next time, NHAL! ❤