Thursday morning we were up at 7am and packed all of our gear into the rented packs and got our canoes and tent. Before heading out, we got a large hot breakfast at the lodge. 

Our travel to get to our campsite involved a short paddle, then a long portage, then a fairly long paddle. We were aiming to get one of the eastern campsites on Caribou Lake. The portage was over 200 rods, but the first 75 rods were terrible. It was rocky, muddy and there was constantly unavoidable standing water that was ankle deep.

After our portage, we canoed to the opposite side of Caribou to search for a campsite. We had 3 in mind that we were aiming for. Upon arriving at the first site, we loved it and found it was available. Good tent pad, fire grate right near the water, and a cool small island right across from it. We liked it so much that we didn't bother checking out the other 2 sites. That was our home for 4 days.

After unpacking and setting up the tarp and tent, we headed out into the lake to see what kind of fish we could catch. We were not disappointed. None of us are expert fisherman and most of our fishing consisted of a slip bobber, split shot, hook and live leech. That was all we needed. We focused our efforts on the shoreline opposite the campsite because that is where others on this great site said to fish. We quickly found out that the smallmouth were in abundance right on the shoreline in 4 to 8 feet of water. Then, even though it was 4pm on a calm day, we started catching walleyes. We didn't get a lot, but we got enough for a good walleye dinner. Because we had steaks ready to be eaten that night, we filleted the walleyes and put the fillets in water filled ziplocks and submerged it in the lake to keep cool. This worked well to keep the fillets good until dinner on Friday.

After cooking up our steaks back at camp, it was late evening and we decided to paddle to the small island in front of our site and fish from the island. Not only was the smallmouth bite hot and heavy, but the sizes were impressive. One of the guys in our group caught a couple that measured at 20 inches. Here is one that he caught.

While on the island we came across this loon egg. Loons had been hanging out close to the island the whole time we were there and now we knew why. Every other time we had passed by the island, the loon had been sitting on the egg protecting it, but this particular time it was left alone.