At about 4:30am I'm awoken by what I believe to be the sound of a breaking branch. It's still drizzling out and I listen intently to make sure I heard what I did. Sure enough, it's something trudging through the forest. I quietly get out of my sleeping bag and peer out of the small mesh opening in the front of the tent, being careful not to step on anyone. The lake is to my right and the forest to my left. I look at Kid to see him looking back at me with wide eyes, Dag is still passed out unmoving. We both know each others thoughts...bear. Just as we thought, out of the woods rumbles a medium sized black bear, sniffing around curiously. I nod and whisper "bear" to Kid, and he grabs his 4" paraframe with a white knuckled grip, and I realize we have a bag trail mix in the tent. The rest of the camp was bare as we cleaned up everything before going to bed. Our food pack is suspended about 12' in the air, 5' below the branch, and 6' from the trunk. But after a minute or so of finding nothing, and surprisingly not even concerned with our food pack or our tent, he moves on back into the woods down the trail toward the other campsite, where I saw their food pack suspended what I believed to be about 25' up. The whole incident was pretty innocent, and seeing a black bear was pretty darn cool, nerve racking, but cool nonetheless. I try my best to go back to bed and we're all up by 7:30am.

It's still an on and off misty drizzle with light gray clouds across the whole lake, which is almost like glass on this much calmer day. I like days like this, very serene. We cook a quick breakfast of Dino Eggs oatmeal (YUM) and pack up camp. We're much more efficient at this point and camp is broken in less than an hour. We wave good bye to our neighbors down the shoreline who tell us they're headed out for a full day of fishing, which makes me even more eager to find our campsite and do the same. It's not until later in the day that I realize I probably should have mentioned the bear to them.

We find an empty campsite on the west end of the lake not a 15 minute paddle from our makeshift one, but this one is small and not very appealing, yet we don't know what all is taken, so Dag stays behind and Kid and I head out looking for a better one. After combing what we believe to be the rest of the lake for all campsites with no avail, we head back to the one Dag is waiting at. Just as we turn around, rain hits us. Just a slight drizzle but enough to get us pretty wet. This is when I realize that a $5 vinyl rain poncho doesn't hold up very well as it rips straight down the middle the first time I put it on. So Kid and I paddle in the rain. To be honest it was kind of exhilarating, and it felt great to have someone in the bow for the first time this trip, I missed having the extra power up front. So Kid and I are hauling it back to the camp site in the rain, but both of us have pretty wide grins on, this is definitely cool. We approach the campsite and get out and are ready to unload, I'm going over the map one more time and realize there is a campsite directly across the lake from us that we never checked. So I make sure the other guys have a radio and push off solo to check it out, it's only about 5 minutes from our spot, and I troll with a deep diving tail dancer, but no luck The campsite is located on the other side of a small peninsula, and as I approach, I see a huge bald eagle perched on a branch just above the campsite, which incidentally was open. I manage to get about 25 ft from him before he flew off. I take this as a good sign from the fish gods. The campsite is fantastic! Wide, spacious, plenty of tent spots. So I radio back to the guys and tell them to head on over. As I'm scouting more of the site, I over hear on my walkie another group. They are saying they landed at the campsite that was just across the bay from us last night and we find out what all the whistling, banging and yelling was for. I hear one guy talking to another that the previous group had left a note. Rather than make this story any longer than it already is, you can read this thread about what actually happened. I'm fairly confident that this yogi was the same one trudging through our campsite at dawn this morning.

The guys paddle over and approve of the site. After camp is set up we take to the waters to catch fish! But no go. We fished all day, and all night, all I got was a small smallie and a rock bass on a skitter pop. Mid day we head back to camp and go searching for wood. We end up splitting a fair amount of logs and only using about half of that, with the intent on leaving a nice, big, dry pile of logs for the next group who stumbles upon is awesome site, someone has also left a small blue candle next to fire grate, which we light. All this to appease the fish gods. Apparently it wasn't enough. Pretty sure the recent mayfly hatch dropped fishing down to nil. Dag and I walleye fish across the lake in as many bays as we could find until sunset with not even a single bite on the leeches, and then paddle back across a glassy Disappointment. The sunset is gorgeous from the boat. As the day comes to a close, we sit back and enjoy a few cups of hot chocolate before retiring.