Saturday, June 09, 2018 By Saturday morning we were ready to move on and see some new country. We made another large pancake for breakfast and added just enough maple syrup to make sure we didn’t run out before the end of the trip. We had a long paddle ahead of us down Cairngorm lake, a series of short river/ponds to paddle and portage, and another long paddle ½ way down the 30km shoreline of Steel Lake. 

After paddling a couple of hours we reached our first portage of the day, which would bring us to Esker Lake. Although we did not fish it, this lake allegedly holds a small population of brook trout. The north end of the lake is sort of marshy and covered in labrador tea, making it a little difficult to find the outlet. A brief paddle downstream brought us to another portage through the burn area, which bypasses a large waterfall. Oddly enough, there is a fire-road crossing the river here, although it is rarely travelled. I fully expected this to mean we would finally have a clear and easy portage trail to follow, but sadly this was not true. The north ½ of the trail was somewhat hard to find through the maze of trees crippled by last winter’s snow, and the end of the trail abruptly descends 10m to another section of river. The river beyond this portage was criss-crossed by downed cedar trees (sweepers). We had to carefully proceed downriver without letting the current carry us into a tangle of trees and deep water. In some areas the risk of this is more serious than it might sound, as either you or your canoe would hit the branches or trees at a pretty high velocity. 

 

After clearing one final portage, we were ready to paddle a short section of the Steel River, into Steel Lake. Before taking off however, Bobs decided to cast a jighead into the rapid at the end of the portage. In short time he had pulled in several walleyes, keeping a few for dinner once we landed at Steel Lake. After the slow fishing on Cairngorm, it was encouraging to see the fishing pick up. 

We still had a couple hour’s paddle to our preferred campsite on Steel lake, so we rigged up our rods to troll for walleye and headed off. We caught a couple of blue walleye on the lake, and from here on out most of the walleye would be blue, rather than the gold/green that you normally see. Parts of the fish were truly a deep turquoise color and their eyes looked a little strange. We now had a large feast of walleye to dine on so we pulled in the rods and paddled quickly through the 75 degree heat to the campsite, so we could get the fish cleaned in time.  Along the way we heard a few waterfalls pouring into the lake from various inlets, and it was hard not to check them out and fish in front of them, as moving water often makes for easy walleyes. 

Today’s campsite was another beach-site, but it was a little more used then the previous sites on this trip. One thing you see almost universally in Ontario are aluminum boats cached on nearly every lake, and Steel Lake had a lot of cached boats due to being somewhat proximate to a gravel fire-access road. Nonetheless, it must take considerable effort to get these boats there. Unfortunately, with boat use comes campsite trash. Aside from the mess, this was a fairly nice site that could accommodate many tents or hammocks. There is no firepit (jackpines), but there is plenty of room on the beach for a safe fire.

We were pretty beat by the time we had our fish filleted and camp setup. It was a little hot and the bugs were a bit worse than the last couple of sites. This would not put a damper on our feast of walleye and hashbrowns which we absolutely stuffed ourselves with. It was nearly dark by the time we finished up with dishes, but we had a small campfire on the beach, and prepared for a long paddle the next day.