Monday, July 10, 2006
Even with several hours of napping yesterday afternoon, we all slept till almost 9am because of the shade on our site. While we were eating breakfast we spotted the boy scout troop in the distance and realized we needed to hustle if we were gonna beat them to the short portage into Malberg. We loaded the canoes in a hurry and paddled as fast as we could. We only beat them to the portage by a few minutes but that was all we needed. They were loud and rowdy, yelling at each other and came crashing into the portage when we were still unloading our boats. Fortunately we single tripped and were in the water before they even crossed.
Today we paddled from Malberg to the west into the Kawishiwi River and north to Beaver Lake. I had stopped here before on my first trip. We had planned to continue on to Adams Lake but after eating lunch on the amazing campsite, we decided to stay on Beaver instead. The bugs were pretty bad, but a fire and some bug spray was all that was needed.

We stayed on the eastern campsite. It has a smooth rock landing that slopes to the lake. Great spot to relax and sit in the sun. It also proved to be the best fishing spot on the lake. The site was very shaded by evergreens. It rose to rocky outcroppings 15 feet above the water. We jumped off into the water to keep cool and it was great for picture taking. There was plenty of firewood and most of all quiet. We saw 1 group of 2 canoes around noon and they were heading back out. They were the last people we saw for 2.5 days. In the evening we paddled all over this lake in search of walleyes, but no luck. We caught more smallies than you could shake a stick at. Mostly on leeches, but some on crawlers too. This lake is very deep. Just off shore of our campsite it was 25+ feet deep.
We had a poor sunset for pictures, but the moonrise was amazing. The bugs were not too bad so we stayed up taking pictures.

Malberg Lake, Beaver Lake