We woke up at 6 a.m. (ugh) my dad is the ultimate morning person, I'm not. His argument — hey, it's 7 a.m. back home. We broke camp quickly, then the rain started. We headed out and found my "lucky" Mepps spinner, which I had snagged on a rock the night before, then fished our way through Gabbro. The island campsite we had seen earlier was still open, so we grabbed it. We set up the tarp and tent in a sprinkle, then it rained harder and harder for the next half an hour. So we went fishing.

We headed back to the fast water where we had caught some fish the day before, but for some reason, couldn't get the canoe to sit right in the water. Every time we dropped our anchor, we'd spin backward. We even switched spots in the canoe, but to no avail. So instead, we beached the canoe and sat on a rocky outcropping and tossed our leaches into the moving water. This netted us a few walleyes.

It was around noon and we had just loaded up a bunch of dead wood in our canoe, since there wasn't much to be found around our campsite. We decided to take a few more casts, and I'm glad we did.

The current was sweeping my line past the point where we were sitting when it suddenly stopped. I reeled up the slack and set the hook, and was rewarded by a jarring head-shake by something big on the other end.

I fought the fish for a few moments, then it decided to take matters into its own hands. It peeled almost all the line off my spinning reel before I could turn it around. I was sure I had hooked into a big pike, which was one of my goals for the trip. After several more exhilarating minutes, I saw the splitshot emerge from the stained water. Moments later, I saw the fish, and it wasn't a pike, but a huge walleye! We had a net along, so I called frantically for my dad, and he came over and slipped the net under the huge fish and hauled it up onto the rocks. I couldn't even wrap my hand around the back of its head, it was so thick, so instead I slipped a finger in its gill and lifted it out of the net. We measured it at 29 inches — my second-longest walleye ever and certainly the thickest. This thing was battered and scarred all over its head. We got one quick picture, but before we could get another it started thrashing around, so I quickly got it back in the water. It took a few minutes, but the majestic fish eventually freshened up and slipped away into the depths.

After all that excitement, we headed back to camp and enjoyed a lunch of fried walleye and black beans and rice (only half the box this time). The wind was howling, so after lunch, we enjoyed a lazy afternoon reading, napping, and playing rummy.

We fished off the back side of the island our camp was situated on and had one big pike come up and slam my Yo-Zuri right by shore, but I wasn't able to hook into it.

For dinner, we made BWCA pizzas, which were a fantastic change of pace.

As it began to get dark and the wind continued to howl, we heard the banging of paddles on canoes and headed down to the water to see a group of 8 coming along the shoreline toward us. This was a tired group of dads and kids that had gotten a late start to the day and were looking desperately for a campsite. We didn't have much help to offer them, since we hadn't been far enough that day to check any other sites. They pushed on, and soon after, we got back in our canoe and did some exploring and fishing before heading back to camp for a beautiful campfire and cigars before heading to bed.