We trolled down Malberg to the Louse River outlet. Paddled up the long finger of Frond, including lifting over a nice beaver dam near the bottom. Libby noted flora galore: lilies, joe-pye weed relative, goldenrod, purple aster, something like St. John’s wort, evening primrose, and a white flower like mountain mint or boneset. The end of the last portage into Trail was especially stunning.

We noticed fresh moose poop on one portage, still hoping to spot one.

I threw out the Zulu rig as we came into the larger western end of Frond Lake, and soon hit a snag, which broke the line. Oh no, I only brought one! We paddled back, turned around and had just about given up when we spotted the lure floating in the water and retrieved it. Telltale curly line made me think my knot had been shoddy, but I lucked out this time. From now on, I will ALWAYS check knots. If I remember.

I then put on a topwater pop-r type lure, and soon had a nice pike (I know I should be cool and say Northern but just am not there yet) hooked. Libby did her “take it to shore” routine and paddled the canoe to the nearest point, across the lake, from the front of the boat. She is VERY good at this! Once there I hopped out and pulled the fish onto land and jumped on it, having learned my lesson the previous day. Landing this way was especially important as the fish had the lure well into its mouth and I could see the open mouth and teeth precariously close to the line as Libby pulled us, keeping tension on the line.

We stopped at the campsite coming into Boze Lake -- beautiful -- to have lunch and eat the fish. Without any supplemental fish the previous day I was getting a bit hungry, and this also avoided carrying the fish through the upcoming portages. We had just finished cooking the fish and settling in to lunch when we heard canoes on the nearby portage. Given that there were only two sites on Trail, and that we needed one of them, we wolfed down our food and hopped in the canoe. By the time we got to the portage out of Boze, they weren’t in the water yet so we knew we were going to be OK since we were single portaging.

Libby noted that the lower Louse was “beautiful and remote … narrow, beaver-filled, flower-filled, scat of otter, mink, muskrat”. We saw a dead muskrat skin (well, it sure seemed like it was dead) turned inside out and scraped clean except for the skin and tail. It was near an obvious otter hangout, but would an otter do that?

We arrived at Trail relatively early -- around 3:30. The site near the portage looked nice with an unusually high view, so we walked up and used the binocs to check out the northern site. We weren’t feeling particularly energetic and our site seemed better anyway so we set up camp. After setting up we explored the northern part of the lake and a pike hit the Whopper Plopper just as we were finishing a clockwise loop around the northern island. I was just starting to reel in, thinking I was going to get caught on some lily pads. Libby did the ‘head for land’ routine, paddling us to the other campsite where I jumped out and grabbed the nice sized fish.

I discovered a sweet jumping rock just across the little cove from our campsite and had a nice swim. Libby watched a beaver swim all the way across the lake with a peeled log, and was entertained by two birds right behind her cooking spot, finding worms on the birch tree, as well as a cute little mouse (who of course would cease to be cute once in a bear bag).

By the way, we carried two Ursacks -- kevlar “bear-proof” bags, that allowed us to skip the whole bag-hanging routine. Each night we would tie them securely to a tree a fair distance from camp. They not only protected against bears, but probably more importantly proved to be squirrel, chipmunk, and even mouse proof.

To cap off this great day, we had our first campfire, which provided a nice escape from the swarms of mosquitoes that were having us for dinner as we were eating ours down on a rock by the water.

The site was truly beautiful, with a memorable, winding path through birches and evergreens to the privy.

For the day: 9 portages, 334 rods, 5.1 miles paddling