7:30am Matt, Ben, and Jeff out to go fishing, one bass got off, no other bites. We went back to camp to make the rest of the pancakes. Pancakes with some blueberries were another hit meal for the trip. We finished up a late/lazy breakfast trying to decide what to do for the day. We saw a mink run through our campsite. The kids, Matt, and Julie were going to play hide and seek, Dankia was going to read and others were going to relax around camp. For lunch was PBJ, tortilla, cookies, and MilkyWay/3Musketeer bars. Tara and I grabbed some protein bars for lunch and fish cleaning stuff and headed to the Hustler portage to do a little hiking and fishing over at Hustler. We portaged the canoe to the Sioux-Hustler trail, where we dropped it and the fishing stuff and headed north on the trail. We didn’t get very far before we came to the creek coming out of Weeny Lake and could not cross without getting seriously wet. So we back tracked and decided to head south toward Emerald Lake. The hike quickly became a blueberry harvesting trip. I told my wife if I knew that we were going to just pick blueberries and not hike I wouldn’t have come, but I helped pick otherwise we wouldn’t have got anywhere. As we were on the trail we saw lots of signs of bears and moose. We saw multiple piles of moose scat. Bear prints in the mud, blueberries scattered on the trail, and claw marks on the roots of the trees on the trails. I saw what I am pretty sure was a Turkey scurry across the ground, it was to big to be grouse. We picked our blueberries and made our way to Emerald Lake. I wanted to see the campsite, but also wanted to get back to fish Hustler. We hiked back to the canoe launched and before I could get my line in the water Tara caught a SMB. We paddled past our campsite on the north central part of the lake and Tara caught a perfect eater sized pike right in front of it. She was fishing with a black and gold HJ-14. She caught 3 more bass and I caught a 25” fat pike on a big wood silver stick bait. Clouds looked like they were getting darker over Oyster and we both just realized we forgot our rain gear for the first time in BWCA…. We filleted the pike and headed back to the portage. Not far along the portage and it started lightly raining, and we were fine with that, then the thunder boomed, and it opened up on us. We made it to the end of the portage and radioed back to camp to let them know we were okay and we would just have to wait it out here. We got drenched, but luckily it wasn’t cold, but the rain came and came. So Tara and I went back to the beaver pond on the portage and found a raspberry patch and pick raspberries. Once the thunder stopped and the rain lightened up we canoed back to camp in the light rain and began cooking the pike for the group. Since we had fish we decided to make out MH Chili Mac & Beef as we only had 10 serv of that meal. The fish was really good as was the chili mac. Again the MH meal was another hit. After dinner Matt, Jeff, and Ben went back out to try for lake trout again, but no success. One more group joined us on the lake, and a few groups passed through. But to this point we have seen relatively very few people this whole trip. For dessert we had a couple of jiffy pops and opened the pack of twizzles and jolly ranchers. We had a nice sunset after the rain and took some family pictures. With the fishing being poor on Oyster we decided to portage to Agnes for our last night to get a little closer to our exit and in hope to catch some walleye before we left.

~Oyster Lake, Emerald Lake, Hustler Lake