We went up to Heather's cottage on the lake on Tuesday night, and had fun getting the water system hooked up. The pipe leading down to the lake had some air pockets in it, and one of the copper pipes underneath the house had obviously frozen over the winter, and had bent at a joint with a plastic pipe section, so that all needed to be re-tightened. Heather was very pleased that we managed to get it done however, as normally her boyfriend Kent would have done it and made a big fuss about it.



I tried a bit of fishing that night, and the next morning, but nothing biting. Kent's son Kurt arrived later on Weds. - his wife Gaelene is just about to give birth, and he's just finished his degree, so he had a small window in which to get up to the cottage and do some fishing. Unfortunately it had started raining by the time he got there, but we still went out on the docks to fish, hiding under the fir trees when the raindrops got too big. We were getting no bites at all, until suddenly, I had a pike on the line, and hardly noticed it as the fish wasn't putting up much of a fight. Kurt put this down to the fact that the water was still very cold after the winter.



Anyway, we continued to try our luck the rest of the afternoon, with no results. I still had a worm on my line when we decided to head back and pack it in, so I left the rod propped up behind the railing on the dock, to see if anything would take the bait overnight. We then headed down the road to pick up a canoe from a neighbours cottage, having decided that the only way to find the fish was to paddle to them.



The next morning I checked the line, and it had got caught up under the dock. Sure enough, there was a small rock bass on the end, trying to hide away in the shadows. I reeled the line in a bit to untangle it, and went back up to the house to inform Kurt that there were some more fish in the lake after all. On my return however, another shock: a big pike had come up and swallowed the rock bass! So there was the bass, having swallowed the bait and hook so efficiently that the only option was to cut the line, and now the pike had swallowed the whole bass, so in the end I unhooked the hook and sinker from the leader, and decided to let the pike go.



For the rest of the day, Kurt and I paddled around the lake trying to find fish. Apart from an encounter with another pike, however, we didn't get a single bite. Moreover, there were no signs of the little minnows that normally inhabit the margins of the lake, nor of the crayfish that feed off the plant debris that covers the lake bed. Maybe the pike had overpopulated the lake and eaten all the smaller fish? Or maybe pollution from nearby industrial sites had caused acid rain to fall, preventing the smaller fish from spawning this year.



In any case, it was a pleasure simply being up at the cottage, away from the traffic and bustle of the city. Kurt left on Thursday night, and Heather and I stayed until Friday just after lunch.



Heather has some old friends staying at the moment, a missionary couple who live in Pakistan, so they've been out meeting their church supporters most of the time, but it's made logistics harder as they have the house keys and Heather's car. We spent most of the weekend up at Aunty Olive's, as Arthur and his family were down from Elgin. I must admit, I'm getting a bit overwhelmed by these large family gatherings - I don't know whether it's because I'm used to a lot of time on my own, or whether it's the Lone Atheist Syndrome. Recently, when I've had a chance to get onto my laptop, I've logged straight into Vanguard to escape - hence the week-long blog silence. I should really set aside a small time each day just to write a bit.



And last but not least - congratulations to Mr & Mrs Cook on their new baby girl! Raise your glass (or cup, or whatever) to Martha Rose.

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