A first.- chicken breast with mashed potatoes and gravy for breakfast. We didn’t need to pack much for than a few snack bars and some gorp for the rest of the day..

We tripped through Cattyman and Gibson Lakes to fish Ashigan and Ensign Lakes. I slipped and fell while carrying the canoe into Gibson Lake as the path down was solid rock and was slick from the overnight moisture. In retrospect it could have been bad but was pretty funny because I had just asked Jeff to take a picture of me carrying the canoe down to the lake (you know, big time portager) and the resulting shot shows me on my ass with the canoe across my lap.

I felt that Ashigan was the prettiest lake we were on the whole trip. It is completely surrounded by trees and has an island. It’s also the first lake I stayed on in the BWCA. The last trip there we tied into some small mouth action but had nothing this day.

The portage from Ashigan to Ensign was very busy but really a pretty easy walk. When we got to Ensign we were shocked to find the water was green. We figured some kind of algae bloom but it was really surprising compared to the crystal clear lakes that we had been on and had been taking drinking water from! While exploring the lake I had some small mouth action while trolling a rattle trap lure.

It was a fun day and the weather cooperated nicely but we ran into a lot of people at the portages on the way back to camp. This was not an off t he beaten path trip but it was awful nice to be back and revisiting some places we had been before while finding some new adventures.

. We had a blow out night when it came to eating we prepared Beef Stroganoff with Spam and spuds for supper There was plenty of food and we tried some new dishes, some by design and others by experimentation. Somehow it seemed like the thing to do. As it turned out we were going to need all the energy we could muster the next day so our indulgence was more like “carbo-ing up” before a marathon. . It was a neat evening in camp as we had a ruffed grouse come poking around along with a chipmunk and a pine squirrel.