Here's another A. atlantis.
Another photo.
Yet another.
On August 9th I worked a forest road in western Ontario near the town of Lowther. I found a couple of atlantis and then further down the road I hit this stand of Canadian Thistle that was just full of A. aphrodite. This first photo shows dozens on the thistle right at a turn in the road.
The next 5 photos show closer shots of the A. aphrodite.
Another A. aphrodite.
Another A. aphrodite.
Another A. aphrodite.
Another A. aphrodite.
I found a few H. leonardus at the same location.
Here's another photo.
Another A. aphrodite.
Another A. aphrodite.
This photo shows a mating pair with the female just recently emerged as you can tell from the not quite fully developed wings. Both aphrodite and leonardus are at an edge of their range.
These next three photos show the road on Manitoba 6 just south of the town of Grand Rapids.
One with my truck.
Now looking in the other direction.
At the junction of Manitoba 6 and 60 headed north to Thompson.
I like to photo the bullfrog king on every trip, this is just north of Grand Rapids.
And this shows 2 wolves standing guard along the highway.
I'm now just north of Buffalo Lake. This is about a 10 mile road that leads to Lake Winnipeg. I'm at the start of the road.
Ready for a day of collecting Polygonia faunus.
Here's one that I spooked into a nearby tree.
And here's one that's puddling on the road.
A. atlantis and B. chariclea were quite common along this road.
Here's B. chariclea.
Another pair.
And another B. chariclea.
A single, vibrant blue greater fringed gentian (Gentianopsis crinita) wildflower in full bloom. Its four flared petals feature beautifully delicate, thread-like fringes along their outer margins and side borders surrounding a soft yellowish-white center.
Here's another faunus.
A detailed macro view of a single marsh grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia palustris) wildflower. The elegant creamy-white bloom exhibits delicate translucent green venation across its five smooth petals, alternating with prominent gland-tipped sterile staminodes that glisten like nectar drops around the central greenish ovary.
Now at the end of the road. This little cabin sits on a bay that's immediately adjacent to Lake Winnipeg.
Here's another faunus.
Here's a P. progne. These are rather uncommon this far north. I would see one other on this day. This specimen was spooked off the road and it flew into a nearby bush. It's interesting that these preferentially choose to perch on the bark of a tree whereas faunus preferentially perches on the leaves of a tree. The ventral surface of progne resembles tree bark in that it's more striated than that of faunus, whereas faunus has somewhat more green markings on its ventral surface and that may be why it perches preferentially on leaves, as a means of crypsis.
I'm now headed north later in the day and I just crossed the 54th parallel.
And probably about 75 or 80 miles later I crossed the 55th parallel.
This is a boat launch on Settlement Lake. I stopped that evening to take a bird bath.
Now I am west of Thompson. It's August 11th and I'm stopping at the Hughes River for two day. I hope to catch some walleye. This vegetation mystified me for several hours as it looked like something swimming in the water but it was merely the weeds swaying in the current.
There's a large parking area on the southeast side of the river or I'd spend the next two nights.
The bridge crosses over a series of rapids and I fished just above and below the rapids for walleye.
On August 13th I started to make my way to Kinoosao. I spent a little time along the access road to Hughes Lake where I managed to photograph this one faunus.
Later in the afternoon I drove through the town at Lynn Lake and made my way on to Manitoba 394 which will eventually take me to Kinoosao. The first 50 kilometers all the way to Vanderckhove Lake were badly burned from a recent forest fire.
Now I've made it to the Vanderckhove Lake and river junction where I'll spend the night.
My rig is parked right at the sign for the river.
An open subarctic fen landscape carpeted with a dense layer of yellowish-green sedges and peat mosses. Stunted black spruce trees and small tamarack larches line the flat horizon under a bright sky with scattered cumulus clouds.
Another faunus.
And one puddling along the road.
Late in the afternoon I made it to Kinoosao. The road to the town is literally 1 km. This town is a landlocked town surrounded completely by Manitoba on the east and Reindeer Lake on the west.
Here's a shot of the inlet bay just to the north of the sign.
On Saturday morning August 15th I was anxious to go fishing and so I took my boat about a mile south of town to a bay that I'd fished previously and caught a lot of northern and lake trout. I was having trouble with my motor as the idle was set too high and as a result when I shifted into gear from the idle position at too high of a idle I broke a shear pin on the outboard and the motor wouldn't run. In a matter of minutes one of the oar mounts on the side of the boat broke and I couldn't row the boat. Fortunately I saw this coming and had made my way close to land and was able to paddle over to the shore.
Now I'm connected by land back to the town and I could have walked through the forest but it's somewhat dense and I would have got nicked up so rather than walk back I used my Garmin InReach rescue device and called for help. I was in contact with the RCMP for about the next two hours and they radioed into town and asked a woman to come and rescue me, again it was only about a mile away.
A little while later I saw a boat looking for me on the far shore about half a mile away and I started waving my fishing net as best I could and eventually they saw me and came over to my side.
And here she's about 100 yards away This was Shirley Olson who towed me back to town. Her husband Otto fixed my outboard.
On Monday August 17th I fished in the morning basically straight behind me along the shore that's shown in this photo. I caught these 3 northern with the one on the left of the photo being about 7 or 8 lbs. That one had a large sucker of about 8 inches in it's gut, which I made note of.
Tuesday August 18th Shirley and Otto set a net to trap walleye, whitefish, and northern pike. Wednesday Andrew and I went with them to get the fish. First, we had to find the net, marked by this stick. Took us about 10 minutes to find.
Andrew and Otto began to harvest the fish, tossing the suckers back. This Herring Gull had a feast!
One bin filled with walleye and whitefish, all nice size, between 4-6 lbs.
Another view.
Back at the Olson's, we had 3 bins full of fish. Mine are on the left. Took me 5 hours to clean, but was well worth it, as I had now limits of walleye and whitefish, both delicious.
A nice whitefish. Took 5 hours to clean my share of the fish.
Here's a photo of Shirley on her ATV.
On Thursday August 20th Andrew Sandstone and I went fishing about four or five miles north of town. Andrew is from the town of Norman House, and he has a pretty nice boat and a 30 horsepower motor so we got here pretty quick. Here's a little island that we fished around for Grayling in the afternoon with no success.
And here's another shot of that island and the island to the right.
That day we saw a barge being towed back to the Reindeer Lake lodge. The lodge had just closed that week for the year and they had to take a lot of gear from the island lodge back to land.
Here's another view that shows a boat on each side of the barge.
On Friday August 21st Andrew and I went out again, both in the morning and the afternoon. It was very windy and a little rough and we first went directly west of town and a little bit to the south of town, not too far only a mile or two. We only caught 1 lake trout in the morning, the one that Andrew's holding.
So we came back around noon and had lunch and after lunch I went around and took a few photos. This one shows where I parked for the week.
This is directly behind my rig, there were about 15 to 20 cars. These are folks that live either in Manitoba or somewhere on one of the islands in a fishing camp. This is directly to the side of the Co-op.
The harbor regulations. This harbor gets very active particularly when the local residents are netting fish, for commercial purposes.
This is one of the buildings that they use to process the fish.
These generators are on the other side of the building. Otto, Shirley's husband, worked on these generators for about two days, and with the help of a local contractor, eventually got them running. The locals would start netting their fish and bringing them in for processing next Monday.
And this shows the docks next to the processing building. My boat is visible in the right side of the photo.
Another view of the dock.
This shows the conveyor belt that they use to transport fish into and out of the building.
This sign was right above the conveyor belt entrance.
My boat and my gear. I was using primarily the trolling motor to get around as the 3.5 horsepower outboard motor that I had was idling too high and it was difficult to control. In addition it would stall when I would travel at less than 2 1/2 mph, a speed that was too fast for trolling for fish.
This is my fourth visit to the town. The first visit was in 2014 and they were able to sell me gas from this pump. But in my 2017 and 2023 visits they did not have gas nor did they have gas on this visit, although Shirley said that they occasionally do sell gas here. As I noted there's a lot of fishermen that come to this town in the two weeks when they are commercial fishing and so there's a need to have gas. I did speak to a woman on my 2017 visit and she said that the supplier did not want to make the 75 kilometer ride from town just to deliver their gas and that's why they didn't have gas those other two years when I visited.
It's Friday afternoon and Andrew and I are back out. This time we went about 10 miles north of town and we were trolling in very deep water, approximately 90 to 100 feet deep. We would go back and forth over the same spot drifting with the wind and the current at a very slow speed bouncing our lures off the bottom.
A few scenery shots.
Another.
End of Part D, click here for Part E.
