This morning we woke up as the sun was rising, so that we could get to paddling and get our favorite campsite on Knife Lake. We headed south past the guys who had wished me a happy fathers day. On the South side of the island we noticed that there were a couple other groups camping at these campsites as well. Quickly we were making our way through the narrow channel that flows between Ester and Hanson Lakes. Hanson Lake was nice and quiet, we didn't see another soul on this lake (it was still VERY early). We made it to the Knife Lake portage, which was our only portage for the day, and I believe it was the longest of the trip. It started out by going up a steep uphill climb, however was downhill most of the rest of the portage. About 3/4 of the way through this 120 rod portage there was a beautiful waterfall we stopped and took a few pictures at. This was a mistake....The mosquitoes hadn't been an issue all trip until now. They were swarming us like a flock of angry birds. We quickly made our way to Knife Lake and back one more time through the minefield of robin sized mosquitoes. The guys asked if we wanted to go back to the falls and get a group picture, we all decided that we'd rather paddle up to our campsite and come back at a later time and check out the waterfall. We made it around the first campsite and point and were excited to see that our site was still vacant. We quickly raced to this site and unloaded our belongings, setting up camp, eager to return to the bay near the portage for some walleye fishing. We had brought a bucket of leeches from Grand Marais and were eager to try our luck. Slick and Jones made their way back to our “secret walleye hole” while Craig and I decided to try and go find some firewood, since all of the wood at our campsite was wet and nearly unusable. Craig and I paddled up past the portage to Toe Lake and around the point to the next two campsites to discover that the one directly behind the island was occupied. We then stopped at the other campsite to see if we could find anything of value, however we quickly decided that this was also a lost cause. We started to fish our way back to our campsite since the wind was at our back. Craig and I both caught our fair share of Smallmouth Bass and small Northern Pike. Craig even found some old wood that had been cut up by a beaver some time ago, it ended up being great for firewood. We threw all of our fish back, in hopes of Slick and Jones returning with a stringer of Walleye. When we made it back to camp, Slick and Jones were still across the lake, so we hoped that meant they were having luck. Craig and I built the fire up and enjoyed the call of a couple of loons that were visiting us. Shortly thereafter Slick and Jones returned with one Walleye and a Smallmouth. We cooked them up and ate a good lunch. After lunch Craig and I made our way back to the waterfall and decided to climb up in the falls to take a “shower”. Later in the evening we tried our luck for Walleye and caught our fair share. We had a good meal of Walleye tonight for dinner.

Totals: 3 Lakes (Ester, Hanson, South Arm Knife) - 120 rods