A pesky loon

After looking at the maps, the stocking reports, the google earth, more maps, and then some more maps, I finally decided to go for it. Forty-eight miles one way from home down some fairly rough forest roads is where I ended up. A put and take trout lake. At twenty-one acres and a mean depth of only nine feet, I suppose it is more of a pond than a lake. I wanted some alone time and an adventure into the unknown, so this trip filled the bill. I half expected to find that the lake had winterkilled, or the other half expectation was that there would be a circus of Yahoos plugging up the whole lake.

But I went for it anyhow and on arrival, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was all alone. Except for the loon! I have been around a lot of loons. Boated, paddled, fished around em. Shit, I even built a loon nesting platform at the home place. There have been plenty of times that a loon has checked me out - dived under the kayak, swam a couple circles around to check things out, and then off they would go.  Not this loon.
This thing dogged me. Twenty feet behind the boat it followed. But when I put up the camera.....Dive! Then it would pop up twenty feet in front of me. Camera.......... Dive!

This went on for the better part of an hour and I was not going to fish, for fear of hooking this crazy bird. I could just picture this thing bagging my streamer and then towing me around the pond. I should have been able to get some great close up shots, but no, this bird would not hold still for a photo. After a while, and I was getting pretty annoyed by then, it finally headed over to the other side of the pond. At last I could finally start flingin the flies.

I caught a few fish, gut the loon was never very far away - I had more half thoughts that he might come zooming in and bag a struggling trout on the end of the line. But that never happened.

Instead the frogs sang their heads off, the wild plums bloomed like madness, and the Piscator had another Beauty May day.