•Awoke to clear blue skies and a beautiful fog above the water. One of the more beautiful mornings that I’ve experienced. •Again, what a difference the sun makes. •Hot water was prepared on the stove for another breakfast of coffee and oatmeal. •The plan today was to break camp and relocate to central Birch Lake in order to better position ourselves for a Tuesday morning pickup at the Birch/Sucker portage. •With no agenda for the day, we took our time and slowly fished our way out of Carp and into Birch. •We picked up several more pike trolling crankbaits and dad caught a nice smallmouth pitching a jig and grub. •As we paddled the pinch point around the small island just before the portage into Birch, we entered a sand bottomed shallow (4-6ft) section of water dotted with an occasional lilly pad. Dad and I both immediately spotted a few large smallmouth hanging out, almost as if they were sunbathing in the warmer water. •We both quickly and quietly grabbed our rods rigged with jig and grubs and, in stealth mode, casted in their direction. I hooked, but lost a nice hefty fish, but Dad hooked into a solid 3+ pounder that had a beautiful tiger pattern. Nothing beats sight fishing smallies! •While this was the latest I had fished the Q, the number of smallies caught in relatively shallow water surprised me. With the exception of a couple nice fish caught trolling taildancers, all smallmouth were in fairly shallow water (5-15 ft). •The lack of walleye is puzzling. I would have thought that we’d pick up at least a fish or two trolling 20ft and at times even 30ft taildancers in similar depths of water. Where were they? Deeper I guess, •We completed the portage into Birch where we had a short chat with two guys heading into Carp. The older of the two gents asked us if we were cold the night before. He said he was scraping frost off his vehicle this morning… •We continued down Birch to the island campsite located in the northern (Canadian) section of Birch about halfway across the lake. It was an elevated site with nice views of the southern shore, or as I reminded dad, views of the United States. Most importantly, this put us at less than a mile and a half from our pick up spot the next morning. •We had a quick lunch of PB&J and cheese and crackers before setting up the tent. No need for a rain tarp tonight, our last night. The skies were clear, but in the event of bad weather, we’d take shelter under the tent and its rainfly. •This was clearly a heavily used site, and consistent with heavily used island sites, there were a few TP landmines in the far western end of the island and there was absolutely zero firewood. •We agreed that we should go for a leisurely paddle to explore the adjacent island and look for wood. We needed a campfire for our last night in the wilderness. •The area behind the large adjacent island was interesting. It was filled with what appeared to be flooded or drowned out tree stumps. We wondered what sequence of events led to its appearance? •Given our location, deep in some of the thickest wooded country in North America, finding good firewood took more effort than one would have expected. Often, if it was somewhat dry, it was rotted. •We spotted a few pieces of washed up beaver wood here and there as well as a few pieces of driftwood before finding a large downed birch tree that was solid and dry. This specific tree would be the key ingredient to our final night’s campfire. •Dinner was homemade chowder with a side of stovetop stuffing and chocolate pudding for desert. •As dinner was being prepared, we heard chatter coming from near the canoe landing zone of the island. I walked over to take a look and found 2 playful otters swimming around our site. We enjoyed watching them for a minute or two before they headed to the other side (the U.S. side) of the lake. Consistent with my past experiences with otters, these guys seemed so curious as to what we were up to. •The moon illuminated the sky again while we enjoyed another nice campfire before calling it a night around 10:30.