This was the last full day of our trip, we’d be leaving on Day 6. The plan today was to wake up, pack everything up and head back to Stuart Lake to put some distance behind us in anticipation for leaving. The first portage from Iron to Rush lake felt so much harder than any portage over the whole trip, it definitely woke me up and reminded me that I’m out of shape. Everything went smoothly until we got to the Fox/Stuart. Coming up to the portage there were several aluminum canoes in the way, a patient person was tying all of them up out of the way, we floated around and gave them time to do what they needed to do then we saw them, about 20 boy scouts, or boys from a church group or something. They had all the same packs, probably from an outfitter though I didn’t recognize the letters on the front. We got out and packed up out stuff, there were at least 3 other groups of guys coming and going out from this portage, was hard to tell which direction everyone was going. I think the group of boy scouts was headed in, and everyone else was headed out. The looks on those kids’ faces, they didn’t look like they were having a very great time. We were the only group single portaging so we quickly left everyone in the dust once we got started. THIS PORTAGE SUCKS. The next time I go out to Iron lake, I will seriously consider staying on Stuart or Fox, and just clearing this portage out with some friends with the silky saw, if it isn’t already done by the time I get out there next. Getting to the other end of the portage we found all the backpacks the kids had yet to grab, about 15 more backpacks perfectly lined up and just ready to be carried over the miserably difficult portage.

   Getting to Stuart we realized there were a lot more people there than we had seen earlier in the week. Right away we could see at least once of the sites was taken and we knew there were at least 2 other groups coming out of the portage and potentially looking for a site. We paddled towards the island site, one group of guys sat on the nearby site to the south of the portage incase the island site was taken. 2 canoes got back to the island, one came back to us to signal that it was open, and we hopped in our 3 man and went on to join them at the site we had previously stayed at earlier in the week. The weather was still holding out for us, the sun hadn’t changed, still had big puffy clouds floating across the sky, only difference was that today the wind had picked up more usual and was downright nasty at points. We got to our island site, set up for the last time, and now you could really tell that everyone was starting to feel pretty tired. We were all moving a little more slower than usual, a little more lazy than usual, it was clear we were ready for our beds at home and nice warm sheets. This day is a rite of passage, you have to earn feeling this worn out and ready to go home, and when you get to this point you know you did your trip right. We strung out some gear on the nearby flat rock to dry it out from portaging. I did food inventory, emptied out the food bags into the bear vaults and put them away in my backpack, no more need to hang the bear rope! We passed around the last off the cliff bars, saved enough for the next day out, passed out some of the candies, saved a few, and did an inventory of what we’d need to eat that night. The rest of the Chipotle Penne Pasta, one last bag of mashed potatoes with turkey gravy, Medic guy gave me a good idea and next year I’ll be adding dehydrated corn to my mashed potatoes.

While one of the guys who’s been super helpful this trip volunteers to set up the bugout tarp once we get to camp, and about 5 minutes into the task he yells out “Wow that’s a big spider!” and then comments that it was dead, and fell out of the tarp as he was setting it up. The tarp had been set up and put away a couple times since I had last seen this spider, so he had to be in rough shape if not dead. Anyways, so the giant spider that almost ate my arm off when I was just trying to tie up the skirts of my bugout tarp wasn’t just my overactive arachnaphobic imagination. Like I said earlier, you can usually tell the quality of a campsite by the size of the spiders that decide to take up residence in your gear, and that one buggy-ass campsite on Iron Lake was a terrible campsite in my opinion. Maybe a 1/5 or 2/5 stars, 2/5 only because it is such a bad campsite, it’s usually open compared to all of the other slices of paradise on Iron lake!

Our stomach’s growling, we knew we wanted more food than I had provided, so we were going to need some more fish. “Back to Many-Walleye-Falls” medic guy said. The guys made their way to the falls, Wisconsin guy rode with me and we putted around for a few more minutes before we made the decision to park the boat and fish from shore at the waterfalls as well, the wind was just too brutal and wasn’t giving us a nice evening of fishing like it had the night before.

   We poked around and took some pictures of the waterfall; the weather was perfect as it had been the entire trip. The little waterfall on Stuart is really cool, you can walk around in much more than you think the portage walks right by it, there’s really a lot of cool stuff to check out. There were a handful of lady slipper flowers on the trail that the guys got some pictures of, the weather was great and picturesque with rays of sunshine being blotted out by the occasional cloud, the weather was moving through really fast and the clouds were just flying across the sky. We got lots of pictures on my cell phone, kind of a risky move as the weather was a little crazy and definitely a “butt puckering” type of paddle.

Fishing the waterfall tonight was slow, we didn’t do as well as we did the first time we were out there. Wisconsin guy and I looked around the waterfall for a bit, we took some pictures of things and everyone enjoyed the sun and then we started fishing. The fishing was slow. Wisconsin guy pulled a little walleye out of what seemed to be 2 feet of water in the moving water, we threw him back. Knowing the fish had to be in there somewhere I got at it, tried my jigs with the “Zman Scented Shadz” that Quetico Mike talks all damn day about, they were killing it for me so far on the trip but not that evening. I tried on a drop-shot hook with a small 3/16 oz drop shot, and put a leech on the hook, a new method to me this year but one of my favorite methods of all time thus far, and right away I caught a walleye right off the bottom from casting out. The drop shot set up is really nice in that it’s a lot harder to snag on a rock, the weight easily sips up and over rocks making it easy to fish the bottom of really rocky spots. Only caught a few before a couple hours went by. Looking out unto the lake I could tell the wind was going to really suck once we rounded the corner from our little bay. WI Guy and I got a head start and paddled out, the wind was so bad we got out onto the shore at the corner of the bay to assess how bad it really was. As we were relieving ourselves, and admiring the make-shift fire ring made by someone who needed a campsite badly at one point and made one on this point, a strong gust of wind yanked our light weight Kevlar canoe off the rocks we had set it on and whipped it out into the bay. I yelled across the bay at the other guys, I could see it took them a few minutes to figure out what was going on, and just as I finished my sentence the wind whipped the canoe back at us. Wisconsin guy sprang through the thick woods like a rabbit-on-crack and somehow jumped out the dangerous rocky outcrop without getting wet, and caught the boat with his arm. I know who I’ll be asking first if they want to come the next time around. So we get in our boat after the shock of being stranded wears off, more so shock that my St Croix rod in the back of the boat would get caught on a tree and fall out. We’re sitting in the canoe and I’m actually worried. The wind was so bad it would have easily flipped a canoe if you weren’t paddling into the wind. Luckily the wind was perpendicular to our campsite allowing us to paddle into the wind, and then get out of the wind quickly once we passed the point that our island was on. About 20 minutes of hard paddling, and a poorly sung sea-shanty we were back out of the wind, and actually getting blown down wind to our campsite.

Cooking was a slow endeavor that night, I had busted out the solo stove lite and was more having fun burning stuff in it than I was actually cooking stuff on it, I started cooking after a little while of burning some pine cones, little sticks, I learned that Jack Pine pinecones work great for cooking on the Solo Stove, they burn for a while and don’t flare up really hot. We didn’t catch a ton of fish, and we all wish that we had more, and also that we had busted out the Zataran’s Cajun breading sooner than the last day, because the guys really thought that was their favorite breading and way of cooking fish, we really dialed in the Ghee on the last day too because we ended up using more of it, and being a little “wasteful” compared to using it previously. I made up the rest of the Chipotle Penne pasta and the chili, and mashed potatoes with gravy, and it was a great night eating, we all definitely felt full as we hit the hay. The night kind of fizzled out fast as we finished eating and cooking, everyone was pretty tired and looking forward to heading home the next day. We got to bed early it seemed.