Although the day before it felt as though the front would never move through, Friday morning the sun was shining and the sky was as clear as glass when we awoke . The wind was hardly noticeable. Encouraged by the weather's about- face, we headed north into Agnes. Agnes is a big, beautiful lake, but it quickly became apparent why we passed so many people COMING from Agnes rather than going with us. Although the weather was beautiful, the headwind picked up and we fought the rolling swells the whole way down. It seemed that most paddlers knew to travel Agnes northbound WITH the wind; we however were going the opposite way. The canoes held up surprisingly well going into the headwind, and we all dug down deep to power our way through the worst of it in Agnes's widest portion. We also hooked into a walleye while trolling a gold Rapala (thanks again, QueticoMike) which we lost while trying to land, but later hooked into a lake trout with the same lure which I cleaned for the evening's supper.

Agnes is a beautiful lake - so gorgeous and scenic - and probably my favorite of the trip. On a future Quetico trip, when I have more time, I'd like to base camp there and fish the northern area of the lake where the lake trout are apparently bountiful. The photogenic Louisa falls were roaring as we made our way to the southern tip of Agnes.

When we reached the Meadows portage, we really had no idea what we were into. By the time we had finished our exhausting double portages for the first leg and were on the shore of Meadows Lake, there were at least 3 groups of people waiting for us to clear out so they could move through into Agnes. We were too tired to be embarrassed. The real killer was from Meadows into Sunday...it was definitely the most physically demanding point of the trip, and several of our guys reached “breaking points” and needed help with the double portages...Totally understandable.

We decided to set up camp at the first available site we could find on Sunday Lake, and while trolling we caught another walleye and managed to land this one. All of the good campsites on Sunday were taken, so we found a buggy spot in the northwest corner. After sharing fried walleye and lake trout (I prefer the walleye although both were outstanding), we did a little fishing and caught a few smallies around camp before the swarms of mosquitos drove us into our tents. The bugs at this site were absolutely awful – not even standing directly in the smoke of the fire kept them off of our skin. Deet was futile. The roaring hum of mosquitos swarming around our tent all through the night was something out of a cheap horror movie.