Monday, June 23, 2008 I awake at 6:00 to a wet humid foggy morning. I prepare coffee and fish waiting for the others to wake. I immediately start catching walleye again! There is nothing like a good cup of coffee in the morning while sitting back and fishing at camp! Everything in camp is wet from the rain and the humidity, so it takes a while for things to dry out enough to pack. When everyone is up, I prepare a breakfast of Blueberry Pancakes with butter, honey, strawberry jam, and bacon! At 9:00 as we leave camp we have a group of Boy Scouts pass our camp headed for the same portage we are. We get there first, but since we are double portaging and they single they leave out on Slim Lake before us. The 173 rod was a unique one to say the least. I was the first across it and saw a fresh bear track from the night before… It was good sized, about the size of my hand! There are several trees down across the portage trail and I manage to scrape the back of my right leg on a stob sticking out on one as I cross it carrying the canoe and my other pack. There are also several tight turns when you are 6’5 and carrying an 18.5 foot long canoe. Slim Lake is a nice long fishy looking lake, but we are not fishing since we are traveling today! We see my friend Bill again and stop to talk to him for a few minutes before we paddle on. He tells me his stove has quit working, and since I have two plus an Esbit Stove, I give him one of mine which uses Coleman Fuel. He tells me he has plenty of fuel when I offer him some. I figured with his family along including two young girls it would be better for him to cook with a stove instead of a fire! After we say our goodbyes, we paddle on and catch up with the other canoe almost at the portage trail into Section 3 Pond. We portage quickly and paddle through Section 3 Pond and start the portage into South where we meet another group of two canoes headed the opposite way of us. Heath helps them carry some of their gear on the way across doing the right thing.

A quick paddle across South and we are at the 120 into Steep… Or should I say the steep portage into Steep! However, it is not as bad as I thought it might be and we are into Steep and filtering water as we paddle slowly looking around. It is a pretty little lake with only one campsite! Out destination for the day is Eugene, the next lake so we do the 35 rod portage into Eugene and split up to find an open site which was not a problem because they were all open! We choose the site by the narrows, a nice site with two maybe three tent pads, and a good view from on top of the hill. It was also breezy which helped with the bugs. It is 1:00 and decide to rest a while before we head to Fat to try for Lakers for dinner! So everyone heads to a hammock or a spot to rest until about 3:00 when we decide to go fish Fat. The portage trail was not very used, but not bad. It had a lot of wolf scat on it as did every trail we were on around Eugene! We put the canoe into Fat which has to be the clearest lake I have ever seen in the BWCA!! We paddle trying to find deeper water across the lake, the depth finder finally shows 30 ft and starts dropping. I drop a Krocodile Spoons down about 25 feet and see my first laker marked on the screen. We paddle a few more feet when I get a bite!! My first laker, about 2.5 pounds! Of course I have forgotten a stringer so I use a piece of rope I have in the canoe to tie it out with. We fish another 20 minutes and Heath catches one about 2 pounds. We have enough for dinner so we stop fishing and head back to camp where we fillet the Lakers and put them in foil with onions, butter, and Garlic to cook over the campfire. On the stove I prepare stovetop stuffing to go with them! It was great! After dinner we clean up the dishes and ourselves and then just sit around and talk for a while. No one wanted to go fishing, it seemed our emphasis on fishing was diminishing somewhat, and our need for relaxing taking over… Bedtime was 9:00 pm again…

An interesting note, during our afternoon rest, a turtle came into our camp and started digging a hole for laying her eggs in the dirt on top of the hill. In the morning there was no sign she had ever been there… nature at its best!