View Photo
Gallery
Our trip to Wet Lake was the first time my wife and I camped in
Algonquin with just the two of us in the party. We also purchased a
canoe over the winter months and a new vehicle to strap it to, so
we were super pumped for this trip.
We decided to leave at 5:00 am Friday morning. It started
raining lightly as we loaded the gear into the vehicle. In the time
it took us to grab breakfast, the rain turned from a light drizzle
to a down pour. The next 9 hours were spent driving in some of
the worst weather I have ever driven in. Visibility was terrible,
rain was pouring down, roads were flooding and traffic slowed to a
crawl. Diana and I kept a positive attitude though; we had our rain
gear packed so turning back never crossed our minds. As my
neighbor Tony says "rain only gets as deep as the skin".
Imagine our surprise when the weather cleared to a bright sunny
day as we neared Petawawa, Ontario. Everything was bone dry there,
not a drop of rain had fallen. This was the town nearest to our
access point, perfect!
Our Arrival: Friday 3:15 pm
There are two routes
you can take to reach the campsite on Wet Lake from access point
20. One is to hike directly from the access point on foot, the
other is to canoe through Sec Lake, portage over to Wet Lake then
row a short distance to the site. This was our first trip with the
new canoe so of course we chose to canoe and portage.
With calm winds and water, our paddle was effortless. The two of
us were excited to have arrived and liked the idea of setting up
camp so there was no messing around. We rowed straight from the
access point to the portage and from the other end of the portage
straight to camp.
The portage from Sec Lake to Wet Lake is 890 m in length with a
slight decrease in elevation from start to finish. It was fairly
well maintained but had a downed tree blocking the path at one
point. There are a few small hills to climb with some rocky
sections along the way but that's the worst of it. Here's the
elevation profile of my walk from Sec to Wet.
We travelled a total distance of 4.9 km in 1 hour 25 minutes
moving at an average speed of 3.4 km/hour. Click here to view
our trip arrival on EveryTrail.
The Campsite
Wet Lake has a single campsite available. We
pre-booked our trip well in advance to make sure we secured a
foothold on the lake. When we arrived it came as a surprise that
the campsite doubles as a portage up to Norm's Lake and back to
Sec. Sec Lake was heavily populated with campers so we were
expecting some traffic to come and go through camp. As it turned
out, we only saw one other party the entire weekend, and they
entered/exited using the portage across the lake.
The campsite itself was average. Its canoe landing was pretty
difficult, especially when loading and unloading gear. It was only
possible to enter and exit the canoe from the side, so we made use
of a downed tree to act as a dock. This helped quite a bit. Site
amenities such as the fire pit, privy toilette and available tent
space were all acceptable.
The Fishing
Early
Saturday afternoon Diana and I loaded up the canoe for our first
round of fishing. We rowed around looking for submerged weeds and
lily pads. I was using a black plastic worm and Diana was using a
soft plastic minnow. The two of us were catching a mix of
Smallmouth and Largemouth Bass fairly consistently. We had a count
of 14 fish caught (and released) at the time we decided to head in
for dinner.
While eating Diana and I got talking about my favorite method
for catching bass, using a lure that you fish on the surface of the
water, top water fishing. This is an exciting way to catch fish
because it's so visual. When a fish takes your bait, you see it
strike the surface of the water. One moment your lure is resting
calmly on the surface. The next is an explosion of splashing water
and thrashing fish as it attacks the bait. Diana had never
fished top water lures before so I was hoping we'd have some
luck.
With
dinner over it was time for us to head back out on the water. The
first hour was much slower than earlier in the day. And then the
sun dipped to just above the tree line. From this point until dark
we caught fish using top water lures non stop. It almost felt like
cheating, the last fish count we could remember was in the 30s and
we continued to catch fish long after we lost count.
We took most of the day Sunday to just relax around camp and
enjoy each other's company. We didn't fish during the day but had
plans to head out for sunset. Sunday evening fishing was exactly
the same as the night before. The bite was on and the top water
fishing was fantastic.
We had a visitor for most of Sunday evening.
This turtle was so into us I swear it wanted in the canoe. It was
following us to every location we fished. At one point it started
to chase the fish on the end of our lines as we reeled them in.
Moving locations didn't help, the stalker turtle always showed up
about 10 minutes later.
Notable Happenings
Swimming from the Canoe: On Saturday we thought
it would be fun to row out to the middle of the lake and go
swimming off the canoe. Neither of us had ever tried to get into a
canoe from the water so we knew it was going to be interesting. It
took a few attempts but we managed to get ourselves back into the
canoe. Di suffered a bit of bruising on the back of her leg but was
fine.
The Leeching: As we arrived back to shore from
swimming in the lake, I made the mistake of asking Di "What's that
on the back of your leg?" as she was getting out of the canoe. The
next few minutes were a blur of panic, an abandoned canoe, salt and
a leech on a leg.
Best Nap Ever: Sunday afternoon we set our
chairs into a breeze and laid back listening to the wind in the
trees and the water sloshing ashore. We woke up about an hour and a
half later.
First Trip with the New GPS: This was my first
trip with my new Garmin GPSMap 62s handheld GPS. Loved it, it's
such a great tool for trip planning and movement tracking. Toys are
neat.
Our Departure: Monday 7:00 am
To exit, we took the reverse route that we came in on. We
travelled a total distance of 4.9 km in 1 hour 18 minutes moving at
an average speed of 3.7 km/hour. Click here to view our
trip departure on EveryTrail.
Final Comments
We couldn't have asked for a better first trip with just the two
of us. Wet lake was beautiful and ended up being ours alone for the
entire trip. We had so much fun fishing we'll never forget this
one.
View Photo
Gallery