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“In the early Am (5:30?) Luna was awake so I let her out. I woke around 6:30 and lay in till 7:15. No hurry today as I’m only making 2 portages to Birch lake. When I come out of the tent Luna is nowhere to be found.I called and called again. No Luna. Oh boy…

I called louder and from the back I heard the faint jingling of her collar.She came trotting back down the trail and was happy to see me. I smelled something bad by her mouth and she must have been into something back there. I hope she wasn’t digging up someones poop or old food scraps.”

Down the back trail there’s a big clearing where I think a lot of campers go to do their business. I try to stay away from the obvious spots when I go to wash the dishes. Luna always comes with and sits and watches. I love the smell of the earth up here. It’s the best dirt on the planet. This is called a “cathole” and used for dishwater, food scraps - which I never have with a dog around, and human waste.

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It’s cloudy and still this morning. The skeeters are bothering me during breakfast. It’s gonna be warm around 83 degrees with a 20% chance of rain. It’s my last full day up here so I thought I’d do a beard check selfie.

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I’m still rigged for fishing so on the way out decide to hit some sunken reefs I could see in the middle of the lake just north of the big island. I thought for sure I could catch walleyes here but I had no luck.

I have trouble finding the portage out of emerald at the west end and it turns out my map has it marked in a different bay. The one marked is a very old un maintained portage. While looking for it I accidentally startled Luna when I bopped her on the head with my fishing rod. She just jumped out of the canoe. Boom! She was in the water. Luckily we were in a narrow bay so she could swim to shore. She found a nice flat rock by the shore to wait on as I swung the canoe around to pick her up. I had a good laugh at this one.

I did the 73 rod portage into Carp Lake and then it was a very long paddle down this twisting lake. I passed some sites with campers. Lots of activity around here. I’m getting closer to civilization for sure. At the east end of Carp I took a 45 rodder to Birch Lake where I planned to make my last camp. I met a couple here and the older man said it was his first time in Quetico. He really got on well with Luna. She just loves everybody.

At the Birch end of the portage I met two young guys taking a break. They had a Grumman Eagle canoe. This was the exact canoe that I got for my 23rd birthday back in 1983. One said he got it on Craigslist for $450. My girlfriend bought mine new for $650.

They were both newbies to canoe camping and they carried LOTS of stuff. Mounds of gear including full size giant tackle boxes. They’ll learn soon enough that they won’t use most of it.

I had an island site down near the far end of Birch marked at 3 stars. These are campsite evaluations made by other people who have used the site and usually found in trip reports on canoe camping websites. A little research goes a long way so I target this site and hope it’s unoccupied. Luna settles in for the ride.

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Island site dead ahead. No tents or tarps are seen. I’m happy as a pig in …

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The landing is around the right side and it’s not the best and I need to drag the boat up on land.

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The small island has a path running the length of it. Unfortunately there’s old toilet paper exposed in spots where campers didn’t bother to bury it. I think this place gets a fair amount of use but I like it. There’s lots of places for tents and I take one right out front. There’s a real nice bluff about 15 feet off the water to sit.

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The fireplace is not the best but with some decent log benches it could be just fine. I get set up and we go exploring. There’s a nice area to play Frisbee so we have a go at it. Here’s a compilation video of the times we played Frisbee on the trip. Luna is not a swimmer but she sure loves a good catch.

Quetico 2013 Luna Frisbee 0001 from Tom Basso on Vimeo.

The evening is perfectly still. There’s two loons out front that do some kind of dance together. They circle each other real close bobbing their heads then dive under together. It’s quite a show. At one point they flap their wings facing each other and then one of them storms off beating the water with its wings. I catch some of the aftermath of this on the video.

Quetico 2013 Birch Lake Tour 0001 from Tom Basso on Vimeo.

Later I sit and watch the water from the bluff sitting directly over the water. Soon I see 3 beavers in single file come swimming around from the side. They pass right under us and peer up to look. There’s no tail slaps as these guys must be very familiar with campers here.

The last one is the largest and he actually stops in front and floats while looking up at us. It’s hilarious as Luna is looking down on this chap probably wondering what on earth it could be. It finally ambles on to wherever they are going around the island.

This turns out to be a very magical night for us. A little while later as the sun sets we hear a rustling in the forest over on the near shore of the mainland. There’s a pause then we hear it again. Large branches breaking and crunching. Something big was walking through there near the shoreline. We went over closer but couldn't see it but it was there alright.

Luna, started to growl. Soon she let out one single loud bark. "RUFF!!" It echoed around the lake. Now, this is a dog who rarely barks but she was obviously concerned here. Well, it made its way away from the shore after that. I never saw whatever it was but did hear a high pitched bleating noise. My best guess is that it was a cow moose with a young calf.

In this pic you see the shore and Luna intently focusing on the sound.

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Now you’d think I would be hearing and seeing all this stuff deep in the interior of the park right? Well on this trip I didn’t see much wildlife. Lots of eagles and loons but not much else until our very last night and we were only a 2 ½ hour paddle from the outfitter. Go figure. Birch Lake is beautiful this night and now I remember why I come back up here year after year.

The temps the night before dipped down to 30 degrees, so it was a chilly morning. We decided to stay on Ogish today, and after a nice breakfast, tried trolling for lakers going N from the campsite and across the points and around islands. We marked fish at all of the likely locations, but could not muster much of a bite. After a slow morning, we had lunch back at camp, and headed for the southern part of the lake. Again, we focused on points and around and between the islands. We caught a few fish, including a laker on a jig and leech, and a few more smallies on the Husky Jerks. Again, marking fish at points and on the bottom anywhere from 10-20 feet. No walleye today.

Today we headed for SAK, making the 4 portages and arriving around noon of a nicely overcast day. We caught a northern and a smallie or two on the way at Jenny Lake, and thought we might fish there on the way back if time permitted. We fished around Eddy Falls a bit, catching Some nice sized smallies on Husky Jerks and on jigs with leeches, including the biggest SM of the trip: a fat female bursting with eggs. Water was around 58 degrees here. We ventured out to the bay leading to Toe Lake, and went into Toe for a try at some smallies. Toe was warmer, a hair over 60 degrees, and we could not find a smallie, but did get into several largemouth, along with a northern here and there.

We moved back out into SAK and fished reefs, points, and back in the bays. We managed some more smallies on the Husky Jerks, and my son caught the biggest walleye of the trip off of a point using a 3.5 inch Tube Bait (Pumpkin+Red/Green flakes) and 1/4 oz Tube Jig.

Although it would have been a great eating fish, he wanted to release it for another day, and so he did. This became his favorite lure for the rest of the trip. Back in the bays, we marked lots of fish typically on or near the bottom, but not very active.

After a couple more fish at Eddy Falls, we made our way back toward camp for dinner, where we had lake trout for dinner (and no walleye). On the way back through Eddy Lake, we noted the sound of rapids at the portage into Kekekabic Ponds.

Being our last day on Ogish, we decided to give Jenny Lake a try since we had gotten a little action there yesterday. With a nice grey sky above, we headed over, and immediately found scores of fish on the bottom at about 25 feet, just west of the narrows leading into the main part of the lake from the portage from Annie. They all hovered on or near the bottom, and would not hit anything we threw at them, including the new-found favorite tube jig. Water was around 58 degrees. We marked even more fish off of the adjacent shore at the bottom of a 70 foot hole. We made our way to the SW corner of the lake, where the wind wanted to blow us anyway. We marked goods numbers of fish in less than 10 feet of water, but again could not get much of a bite going.

We went up to the Eddy lake portage and ate lunch there. One canoe went into Eddy and caught smallies at the inlet from Kekekabic Ponds noted a day earlier. Our canoe stayed in the bay by the portage on Jenny where we caught numerous northern while trolling black+silver Shad Raps. We then made our way to the NE bay hoping for more active fish. We found them right away again, this time off of the S shore line, in big numbers all around the bottom at 10-15 feet. No action here, and we barely marked another fish in this bay.

We headed back toward our camp, figuring we would fish the falls below Mueller one more time, as we would be packing out tomorrow. We did catch more smallies (all females, all holding eggs) using the tube jig, and Husky Jerks/XRaps.

Had some fun with that, and enjoyed a nice sunset as we headed back to the island camp for dinner.

Today we moved out of Ogish with plans to spend the last night on Alpine. We would either fish it or Seagull on the way out of the BW in the morning. We decided we would spend a little time on Kingfisher where the inlet comes from Ogish. Our canoe got there first, and within 5 minutes I had a nice smallie on a black+silver F11 Rapala. We stayed there for about an hour catching smallies below the rapids, and then made our way on to Alpine.

Upon portaging into Alpine, we figured we should fish at below the falls coming in from Jasper, since most of our fish thus far had been taken at inlets. We marked some fish but there was not much action, except for a gigantic northern that tried to take a smallie off of one of our other canoes' stringer that was tied off of the bow. The head came out of the water and revealed itself as the biggest northern any of us had seen. After the excitement wore off, we moved on seeking a campsite at the N end of the lake which we were told had not been affected by the recent burn. That sate was occupied, so we worked our way around to the W side of the island across from the Seagull portage. This site was short on trees, but was comfortable enough for two tents. We watch an eagle watching us from the next island over, as we fried up a few fish for our last fish of the trip (almost).

Our last day in the BW was a beautiful sunny day, and we decided to move directly across the portage to Seagull and spend some time fishing there before heading up to our exit. We went directly to the short portage inlet from Alpine to see what it held. There we found 3-6 feet of water, and not much action. Then my son pulled in the big fish of the trip, a good-sized northern that barely fit into our folding net. Not as big as the monster we saw yesterday, but the biggest fish he ever caught.

After he was released, we moved down the river, and caught a couple of smallies along the bank leading out to the bay (Black+Silver XRap and F11). We marked a lot fish in the opening to the bay and took a couple more smallies there. Then we decide to cast up against the rock wall in the SE corner of the bay, which was about 61 degrees, and there and around the first point with a campsite, we caught 12 or more smallies on our favorite black+silver Rapalas again. This, we said, was the kind of fishing we were looking for all week, and it capped off a good trip for smallies.

When it got to be that time, we had our last lunch at campsite #455 on the point looking over the main body of Seagull, then paddled our way across and up to Blankenberg. Got there at 3:40 despite an east wind, and shortly before 7:00 we were at Trail Center for the last fish fry of the trip (all you can eat!).