We woke up in our jungle’y overgrown campsite, and made coffee for the fiends, and then came up with a game plan which involved upgrading from our current campsite. The plan was to split up into 3 groups. 1 group would stay at the camp, and get breakfast going, while cleaning up and packing things. The other group was going directly north on a mission to explore the 3 campsites we hadn’t checked out the day before. They brought my yellow CCS 10x12 to claim a sight in case they found an open one. The other group’s mission was to go directly east to the island campsite, a short 20-minute paddle, to see if its previous inhabitants were still there, then they’d come back and eat breakfast with us. We didn’t have a ton of faith that the site would be open, but thought it was worth checking out. As we’re packing at this grassy overgrown campsite, we start to put away my bugout tarp. I was folding up all of the skirts around the sides and using the little ties inside the tarp that drape down, to tie the skirt up. On the 3rd side I was going to tie up, I reached my hand inside and swear I saw the silhouette of a giant spider that I was about to grab and I pulled my hand out faster than the speed of light, screamed in one of the higher pitches of that entire trip, and proceeded to do the “oh god they’re all over me” thing. I delegated the rest of the task to my friend whom commented “There’s no spider in here”, bla bla bla. I believed him, maybe it was just my imagination. Bugout tarp is now put away. To our surprise, they came back and said the island site was open, and they grabbed some gear and raced off to claim it. We began packing too, everything, and we got on our way there. About 10 minutes into our paddle towards the island I realized it would be a mission in and of itself to retrieve my tarp if they had planted it somewhere. We got to the island, emotions were high, canoes were wobblily and an inexperienced canoeist at the bow lead to me falling in knee height water in my “dry” shoes. Something that pissed me right off. Anyways, 2 of the guys went to find the 1st group, and retrieve the tarp if they had planted it, while the 1st group went to the 1st site to get all the remaining gear. About 45 minutes later both groups got back to the island with us at the same time, tarps are all set up, we had home on one of the best sites on the lake!

   Here on our newfound campsite island that is also a paradise of open pine trees and walking paths that go on forever to each corner of the big island, we’re all set up, tents set up, tarps up, kitchen organized, and the guys even went so far as to drag out some fallen pine trees, cut them up and split them for firewood that night. One of the guys went swimming, he swam across the small bit of water in front of the campsite, to the small island in front of the kitchen, and back again. This of course got a few others involved and wanting to get in the water. The weather was perfect, the sun was out, and there were thick clouds just floating by occasionally. It was hilarious when Pike Guy went out nut-deep in the water only for a cloud to pass by in front of the sun for a solid 10 minutes. It was a good time for everyone to get in the water and scrub up if they wanted to. The water was brisk, but you couldn’t beat the quality of the bath at the time. I of course don’t smell at all when I’m camping, and in fact smell like roses the longer I go without a shower. When I went out to hang the bear bag ropes I have, there were tons of trees but none that really screamed perfection, the best spot had an ant hill directly under the landing, not ideal lol. The best spot ended up being a tree overhanging the front of the island, a sign to everyone else that this site is taken, a giant yellow carrot-shaped dry bag hanging high in a tree. Nice.

We were truly set, we just needed some fish on stringers laying in the water ready for dinner time. It’s about 3pm at this time and so we set out on our own fishing missions. 2 guys set out by canoe in one of our two mans, I could see them skimming the shore lines, fishing the usual pike and smallmouth tactics. The other 4 guys set out towards the back of the island to fish a small shallow weedy bay. I finished up some chores, mostly organizing my stuff, I like to pick up things as I go. Then I joined them in their bay for about 5 minutes before I realized this just wasn’t the spot to be in for what I was after. I walked back to the campsite, drank some water, and headed the opposite direction on foot out of camp out of curiosity, towards what Pike Guy had dubbed “Dead Crayfish Point” earlier that day. I walked out to “Dead Crayfish Point”, a solid 5-10 minute walk from camp, didn’t even bring a stringer, just my rod and was taking pictures of the woods as I walked there. Upon arrival I found a small rocky point that the wind was hitting at an angle so as to make a trail of bubbles along the shore that extended out from the point with the wind. The rocks looked like they shot down to at least 5 feet in as much of distance, so I started chucking my orange Jig. A few casts in I landed a solid 20” walleye that was around 3lbs. Few more casts and I got a few more, ran back to camp to get a stringer, and there were the guys from their bassy-bay, anxious to follow me to my productive point. The walleye were hot, together we must have landed another 6-8 fish on that point. My friend caught the biggest Walleye of the trip, around an inch bigger than mine and a little more girthy right on that same point. It was renamed “Bigass Walleye Point”. We filleted up a dozen walleye that night, a couple pike and a bass and cooked in various ways. Always fun to try and sample fish in all the different ways that you a cook fish. “If you’re not in the snag zone, you’re not in the strike zone!”

   The island campsite on Iron is amazing. It’s littered with a hundred pine trees, great shade, pine needle floor with trails that go on forever and tons to explore if you don’t want to get out in the boat. Peterson Bay was phenomenal, I wish I had gotten out there sooner and spent more time there. Iron Lake is the first lake I know I’ll for sure return to in the future, soon maybe at that. That night we cooked up and rehydrated my own homemade Chipotle Penne Pasta, along with fish, long grain wild rice, breaded fish, basically a buffet of food that became available as it was finished cooking. “Where’s your bowl!?”. We also had Summer sausage that day, pepperoni from a pepperoni stick. Water filters were full, had a great tree setup to facilitate the water filter hanging there. The tent pads were prefect and flat, we had to sweep away a ton of pinecones but that’s nothing. That evening listening to my NOAA radio we heard that there was a frost warning for that night, also a couple guys portaging out warned us of the frost warning as we were on our way in. No big deal I thought to myself. It did get damn cold that night, but I don’t think anyone was phased once in their sleeping bags. My quilt is rated at 36 degrees and I slept like a baby that night. Pike Guy slept in the bugout tarp and didn’t notice the cold at all.