We got going a bit slower than usual the next morning, and packed up camp. As we worked our way out of Russell, we saw a cow moose in the mouth of a small stream, only about 75 yards away.

After a few pictures, she turned and walked into the woods, and we were wondering if we would see a calf. We waited around a few more minutes, but it looked as if she was solo. We paddled back through the narrows and found the portage into Antoine Lake in a small northern bay. The Quetico park map that I had brought was awesome for getting us to portages accurately, and I was actually glad that I didn't have the big Mackenzie ones with us. In the future, I think that I will only make some blown-up copies of relevant parts of the official park map, and then bring the whole map as a backup in another pack. The narrows were pretty and again the water was calm:

The portage up into Antoine is about 185 rods, and pretty tough. It covers a fair amount of vertical feet both up and down, it has some boggy sections (with corduroy in various stages of repair) and some slippery rock sections. One disheartening thing is that about 4 rods in from the Sturgeon end, there is a waist-high deadfall that makes you pass the canoe either above or below it. You have just gotten all packed up and get going, and then you have to stop and negotiate that. It was hot and quite buggy, which only added to the fun, but we finally made it into Antoine. I had thought that Antoine would be pretty isolated from its location, but the opposite was true. We saw at least 4 different groups there, which was a disappointment, to be honest. One group was apparently geocaching and I think that they were from England based on their accents. We took the midlake island campsite which was somehow open, and began fishing in earnest. We caught a few smallies, but found a spot where the pike were feeding furiously. We had a few pike attacks on walleyes that we were reeling in, and then Brett tied again into a dandy pike on his ancient rod and reel. This time it was a 42" beauty with a girth about 17"--it was a real trophy (Mark Anderson told us later that it was the clubhouse leader in the contest at his outfitter). Since Antoine was the only lake on our route that we were sure held lakers, we geared up for some afternoon trolling. Steve was the lucky angler this time, and caught some nice lakers with his husky jerk. Those trout joined us for an early dinner, baked in foil with lemons and pepper. Good stuff!

We went out and fished a bit more, with only limited success. Where were the smallies? We made some Pita Bread Pizza's that we baked on our own wood-fired oven that were a big hit. The camp was a bit quieter that night as we realized that from that point on we were going to be working our way back out over water that we had already travelled.