At sunrise (or just before) the 11 year old and I hit the water for some fishing while everyone else slept in. The boy caught his first walleye to the southeast of the site, along the peninsula on the other side of the lake. Weather was overcast and we didn't get too much action; however, I did manage to haul in my very first lake trout. It was about in 25 feet of water, along the south side of the peninsula near our Alder camp site. It was a (very) small spoon that did the deed, and I was just bouncing it off the bottom as I reeled it in, casting out from the canoe about 20 feet off the shore. We released both fish.

We had decided to move on from Alder and find a nice spot for a two-night stay, so, after a breakfast of eggs and bacon, we packed up with an eye toward snagging the site on Little Caribou, or, failing that, somewhere on Pine.

From Alder we portaged into Canoe Lake, and then took on the Canoe-Pine portage. The hell of that portage is the straight up beginning, it goes on pretty much forever. Once you get past the up it is relatively flat before the down at the end. The aforementioned Tuscarora portage tends to beat one down by it's seemingly unending ups and downs, it's muddy parts, and what I like to call it's "false endings", where it "feels" like you're about to reach the end, and then you find that, no, you've got more to go. At least this one isn't tricky. It's just an up and down butt kicker.

While waiting for some of our double portagers (we were not able to do portages in one go), we sent a canoe ahead to scout out Little Caribou and snag the site if it was open. This group was successful, and the whole group was in camp and eating some PB&J on tortilla right around lunch time. (as I said this was a pretty easy trip).

My only mistake at this point was asking the group whether they wanted the rest of the trip to go through Pine, which would require an additional two portages in the 200+ rod range, or to just go over to Clearwater which would only be one long portage left. Given our day to that point, everyone opted for the shorter trip. Oh well.

The site on Little Caribou is, as reported elsewhere on the forum, a very nice site. Its the only site on Little Caribou (much to the chagrin of some groups passing us by later in the day and the next), and is on a point. It has a great little area with a drop off so that you can run and jump into the lake (not a cliff-jumping rock - it's only two feet or so). Bugs were slightly better than Alder but it was still a little overcast. The following day the wind would pick up and sun would come out, and then the mosquitoes went away during the day, except for back in the woods by the latrine.

This site had a couple of turtles nesting on the rock shelfs by the campsite and there were also several resident snakes (perhaps waiting for a turtle egg meal?). I've never seen so many snakes in one place in the BW before. Needless to say, thanks to my 8 year old, my SD card has more than it's fair share of snake and turtle picks.

Fishing that PM did not go well at all. The lake only gets to about 20 feet deep.

Canoe Lake, Pine Lake, Little Caribou Lake