Tuesday, May 30, 2017 Day 4, our last day in the BWCA. We knew that our exit point was not that far away so we took our time getting packed up that morning, made ourselves some breakfast and packed the canoe before heading up river to fish some of our hotspots from the previous two days. The rapids by the short portage produced zero fish, by the way. Then we headed back towards our portage. We worked the same system we had the previous days with casting. We went into a small bay and Ryan started catching some smallies with his top water puppy and as we were pulling out of the bay, I told him that he should cast against that rock along the point. He through the puppy out there and the biggest smallie I have ever seen jumped out the water and nailed that puppy. I scrambled for the net and he fought in the bass – we landed it and I knew it was a big smallie… biggest one I’ve ever seen landed. He agreed he had never caught anything that big. We did some measurements and estimated the bass at about 19 to 20 inches – he went on the stringer until we decided what we wanted to do with it. We worked our way to the portage the remaining of the day. We each caught a handful of bass and northern. Sure enough, only 100 yards from our portage, Ryan put the puppy out on a point again and pulled another bass out the same size as the other one! So we put that one on the stringer too! We portaged out and called for our ride. Everyone agreed that we had some trophy smallies on our hands so we decided to keep them and mount them together as a souvenir from our trip. They ended up being 19.5 and 20 inch small mouth bass weighing 3.2 and 3.7 pounds. We packed really light and we were glad we didn’t pack in things that we didn’t need. The only few things that I wish that I had that I didn’t – a back rest for the canoe or at least something for camp to lean against – all that sitting is hard on your back. A book for the day that Ryan was out of commission and I didn’t have a lot to do. A longer rope and bigger tarp would have been handy, but we got by with what we had. Our experience in the BWCA was a little bit of everything… good fishing, bad fishing, good days, bad days but the two of us had a lot of fun and we both agreed we would be back. Our maiden voyage into the BWCA was complete.