Monday began about 8 a.m. with another sunny morning and plans to visit Iron Lake. But first: breakfast.

Today we fueled up with separately Zip Loc’d bags of Grape Nuts with dried milk powder mixed in. We each poured the contents of our bag into our bowl and added milk and some syrup leftover from the previous breakfast. Nothing special but great fuel for another day of paddling and portaging.

We cleaned up and loaded the canoes with fishing gear and cooking gear, with more hopeful plans to shorelunch on Iron.

I knew from my research that the generally accepted way to get to Iron from LLC was via Bottle Portage. However, we decided on the more direct route with less paddling.

So from our site we headed west toward the mouth of the Boulder River and toward the 68-rod portage that would get us over to the eastern part of LLC and primed for the big portage into Iron.

After some paddling around to find the 68-rod portage (we were in the wrong bay!) we found it and traversed it with little problem. That put us into a pretty boggy part of LLC near the Ranger house. A quick paddle (30 seconds) got us to another portage landing. And this is where I got confused.

The map shows no small lake (which we called the tree graveyard) with sunken stumps and a third portage into Iron. But we did portage three times and hit that tiny pond-like lake with all the dead trees and stumps and a really muddy portage landing. Anyway, the lowlight was the 327-rod portage into Iron itself.

Easily the worst portage of the trip. Uphill much of the way, awkward footing in a lot of areas (rocky, flimsy planks, etc), bugs everywhere and most of all: long. And I wasn’t even the one hauling the canoe. (Thanks, Lucas!) But when we arrived at Iron we could see our reward and I could tell immediately why it is legendary for fishing. It reminded me a lot of Mille Lacs, the walleye capital of the world. Rock shelves and humps and reefs everywhere. A walleye and smallmouth’s dream.

Needless to say we were pretty work out so rather than paddling long stretches right off we started fishing. The first wind of the trip reared its head and Lucas and I used it to drift over some rock piles and ledges.

Lucas got his first smallie pretty quick and I hooked a northern on a jig and Gulp leech. Both of us were hunting for walleyes but we were happy to have fish. The others were finding northern and smallies, and we ended with one walleye.

We settled on an island with a nice area to land three canoes and got set up for another shore lunch. That was put on hold briefly as a large gust blew Mike and BJ’s canoe out to sea. Troy and BJ hopped in another canoe and chased it down. The easy part was catching up to it, with the help of the wind.

The hard part of towing it back into a head/crosswind. But they succeeded. I cleaned the fish and Troy fried them up. We pumped more water and admired the beauty of Iron Lake. We didn’t see a soul on the lake other than us, which I was thankful for considering I learned after we were settled that we actually were in Canada and the other side of the island was in the US. We swear all the fish we caught were American, though. Less of an accent.

After lunch the plan was to visit Rebecca Falls. Lucas and I, recalling the long paddle and portage back to our base camp, forecasting the long paddle back to the entry point the next day and feeling the pain in our backs and shoulders, decided to split from the other four and paddle back to camp.

I was sad to miss the falls, which is something I was excited all trip to see. But my back was looking forward to a couple hours stretched out in the grass at camp.

So the other two canoes made for the falls while I – with the only real working camera after some water affected the other two – and Lucas headed back to the mammoth portage toward LLC.

On our own, we took our time as we had no one to hold up and as we had to be more careful. We reached the tree graveyard and had our first near-disaster of the trip. We were paddling our course through the visible stumps when we hit one that was just under the water and nearly tipped. I still wonder how the canoe stayed right-side-up, but I’m not arguing with the outcome. We would have been in trouble in that murky, weedy water with muck everywhere. And we would have lost valuable gear that we didn’t have secured as we usually did.

Disaster averted, we cruised the rest of the way back and stretched out at camp. I was thinking of the adventure the other four were on but I was pretty focused on laying down and giving the back and shoulders a rest, happy to be done with portaging and long paddles for the day. Lucas felt the same way and we spent an hour shooting the breeze, hydrating and figuring out a place to hit walleyes until we met up with the rest of the group.

He and I launched our canoe and headed toward the rock wall where we had the early success the day before, in search of walleyes. The wind was in our faces on the way north so we trolled up and then drifted back. We got a northern and a couple smallies and a few other strikes but nothing of note. I was sure we would have luck at dusk with crankbaits but we were shut out on the ‘eyes. But the consolation was having this large section of lake to ourselves. We couldn’t hear or see another person, for the first time because we were split up from our group.

We fished up until dark, always drifting or paddling our way toward base camp. We saw the others get back before us. They were hooting a bit so it was clear we had dinner.

Monday night was the first time in camp we were bothered by mosquitoes. And they were brutal. The breeze had died and it was a little warmer than the other nights. I was down by the water with the bounty of fish – I believe 14 total, mostly northern but a few walleyes and even a crappie.

That was the only time I remember grumping publicly about cleaning all the fish. I apologize to the group for complaining in the middle of a great trip. But I think the mosquitoes, which were much worse down by the water, heightened my agony. It was hard to concentrate on removing rib cages and Y bones with mosquitoes flying in my eyes and ears. The head net helped and I very much appreciated Mike coming down and asking to learn how to fillet a walleye.

Mike’s a foodie and you could tell he has worked with a knife before. He was a natural and took a few fish of my hands so I could get out of the mosquito swarm earlier and into a cocktail or two.

We had our fourth consecutive non-breakfast fish meal and stayed up on our final night to chat, sports trivia mostly. But we also worked on our astronomy degrees by identifying constellations and stars/planets. It was a great night but also sad. We knew we’d be breaking camp in the morning.