Wednesday, June 06, 2012.Conmee to Kett. 15 miles. It did rain last night, for all of 5 minutes! I wake up refreshed, again at dawn. After my usual breakfast of coffee and a bagel, I’m off. It’s clear and calm once again. I pass a dandy camp site on my way to the portage…again I wish I had spent more time researching campsites. I console myself with the fact that it wouldn’t have caught much breeze so blackflies would have been an issue.

There are two portages on the way to Brent. The first is a liftover, followed by a short paddle on a small pond. The next is a pleasant portage through a red pine grove. I double-portage the first section, carrying my pack to the top of the first hill.

Brent is a beauty. There is a recent burn on the south shore, but that only adds to the wild feeling. My goal is a lake trout for lunch, so I tie on my go- to laker lure, a silver and black Rapala Taildancer. I don’t even get out of the first bay and I hook a fish which fights hard and stays deep. It turns out to be a nice 4 pound laker. I stop to clean it on an island at true gem of a site, with a lovely fire ring perched high above the lake. Alas, it’s far too early to stop. So I putter my way downlake, keeping to the north shore. Another rain cloud appears to be sliding past me. I catch a lee from some islands, which were burnt in the forest fire. Gentle south wind again! The next lake is McIntyre, which is also a clear water beauty. Much of the shoreline in the northern part is covered with red pine forests with little understory. I paddle slowly and savor the scenery. I pull up for lunch at the campsite near the entrance to the bay that contains the lake’s outflow. It’s another 5 star site with big pines, a cedar grove in back, and a seemingly endless shallow-sloping ledge rock “beach”. Lunch is poached lake trout dipped in butter, and mashed potatoes. That will hold me! I elect to take McIntyre creek, a little used route that isn’t even marked on my Fisher map. The start of the first portage is not difficult to find, and the faint trail leads through an open forest of red pine. Oddly, there are a number of whitetail buck “scrapes” on the trail. Not the kind of place that makes you think of deer. There is a nasty blowdown to negotiate when the trail drops into the creek bottom, and I then put in on the creek, which once must have had much higher water level because of a beaver dam. Perhaps this route was used more back when the pond was full of water. Even with the difficulties, the creek is gorgeous, with clear water and a rare hard sand bottom. I negotiate it easily until I come to the defunct beaver dam, and with some effort I’m able to find a portage on the left. It’s brushy and faint, but passable. Eventually, it comes to another beaver pond which appears more recent. I launch at that point since this new beaver pond has flooded the portage trail. I’m actually able to stay float to Robinson Lake.

My goal now is to reach Kett Lake. This will put me in position to cross Basswood in the morning. Given that it is now afternoon, I push on through beautiful Robinson. The next two portages, into a pond and then into Nub lake, present no real problem. The problems start from Nub to Kett. Fisher shows two possible routes to Kett. First, a portage to a vase-shaped pond and thence to Kett, and it also shows a portage from a carrot shaped pond to Kett, but no portage from this pond to Nub. So I start looking for the portage to the first pond. I even have notes written on my map stating that the portage starts 50 yards south of the creek, and I find a blaze there, but no portage trail. I travel back and forth thinking perhaps the landing is hidden by a blowdown, and finally, I land and bushwhack a semicircle through the dense brush, finding no sign of a trail. I’m stumped. I give up and head over to the tiny creek that flows in from the carrot pond, thinking that perhaps I can bushwhack up there, when lo and behold there is a portage landing. So Fisher was wrong. I kicked myself later when I opened up my Christmar map and see that the only portages out of Kett are through the carrot pond. Next trip, I am comparing the two maps and adding all the missing detail to the fisher. A person could navigate fine with the Christmar…it’s just that I’d have to put on my glasses to see the detail.

The portage up to the carrot pond is steep. The pond turns out to be a lovely tarn with clear water. Small largemouth bass patrol the shallows. The portage down to Kett is steep as well, but not long. By now what was going to be an early stop and a leisurely evening turns out to be a late stop. I paddle south on Kett to a beautiful campsite on a point—for once I get the nicest campsite on the lake. The campsite appears to have a lot of use, and I wonder if this is a popular fishing destination, relatively speaking.