Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

First BWCA Trip
by bdeck37

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 08/02/2016
Entry Point: Angleworm Lake (EP 20)
Exit Point: Mudro Lake (EP 23)  
Number of Days: 5
Group Size: 2
Day 4 of 5
Friday, August 05, 2016 After a great night sleep and Pepe no where to be found, we woke up fairly early, ate breakfast and packed up camp. It was moving day. We had to be at the Mudro exit the next day by noon so we knew that we should head south and get closer to the exit point, so we could enjoy our last day. We figured we would stay in the Gun/Boot Lake area. Quickly portaging from Beartrap to Thunder to Mudhole to Gull, we decided we had moved fast enough to fish for a while. I must say that I really enjoy the portage into Gull from Mudhole.
Gull had a considerable amount of traffic compared to when we had been through here just two days before. These were the first people we had seen since Home Lake two days prior. We fished the weeds about 9 ft. deep along the west side of the lake and round to the south side. We caught quite a few pike on this lake, and by "we" I mean Ron. After an hour we decided it was time to move on even though we didn't have to much more ground to cover, or so we thought. I should have taken the high traffic on a lake like Gull as a sign. We headed over to the portage, or so what we thought was the portage without checking the map. Well it turned out not to be the portage but instead just a open spot people were hanging out. They looked at us kind of funny when we started to get out of the canoe. That was at least until we asked them if that was the portage. They laughed, said no, and pointed us in the right direction. It was off to Gun Lake now. We thought about staying on Gun Lake but that was a no-go after paddling around. We did our usual of stopping on a rock in the middle of a lake for lunch. We made sandwiches and ate some jerky. (Zup's, absolutely fantastic!!)
We fished on the rock until I got snagged so then we hopped into the canoe, got myself unsnagged and moved on to Fairy. Fairy was a really nice lake but again the campsite was full. On to Boot Lake. This is where the day starts to slide a little down hill. I made a rookie mistake and pass a site on Boot because it looked like it was a mosquito haven and hadn't been used in a while. (Yes, it was a registered site and had a fire grate.) So after a quick look of disapproval from Ron, we moved on with Ron being very quiet. We moved into Fourtown fairly quickly because the portage is short and easy.
(Remember this photo for my next trip report coming soon. This is now a must take for every one of our trips.) We started looking for a campsite on Fourtown. I'll sum this up. We went south, we went east and then eventually north. We checked every campsite and same result, TAKEN. We were now in a race against time and another group to make it to check the last two spots on the lake. We had been paddling for roughly an hour and half or better around this lake already, just so you have an idea. We hit a new gear trying to reach it to the last spots. The other group made it before us the the first of two sites which was open, lucky for them. We rounded the bend into the bay east of the Moosecamp River, and to our delight it was open. We quickly unloaded the canoe and set up camp. I really enjoyed this spot, just wish the fishing was better. After dinner we did a bit of fishing and I caught two small walleye. Both fished were released. When we got back to camp we washed up and relaxed by the fire before wandering off to the tent to rest after the long and tiring day.