Thursday was our last full day in Sylvania, and we planned to make the most of it with another day of looping through some of the nearby lakes while exploring and fishing. Our first destination were the Bear Lakes. We spent a short time in East Bear and caught some small bluegills, but we were looking forward to hitting the "hot spot" from our previous visit to West Bear and made our way into that lake by mid-morning. We were hoping for a repeat of Tuesday's bluegill fishing results, and while we caught endless amounts of bluegill and small bass, we had only boated 2 keepers after about an hour. We released those fish and moved on into Kerr Lake.

Kerr was another boggy type lake, fairly dark stained with lily pads and other emergent vegetation spread around much of the lake. We set our bobbers shallow and fished some of the weedy pockets, but could not hook anything. Time after time the bobbers would nudge down, but whatever fish was doing it remained elusive. After paying attention more to the bites, I took off the bobber and just held the line with my fingers.. Nudge, nudge, tap, nudge, tap. As soon as I felt that, some random misfire of fishing neurons connected the message my hands were trying to interpret, and a picture formed in my head. I knew exactly what I was dealing with now- PERCH! Once we figured out how to actually hook them, we ended up catching 7 or 8 small perch, none bigger than 6 inches. It was a fun break from bass and gills and added another fish species to our list that had been caught that week.

Our bellies had already been rumbling when we arrived on Kerr, so we pushed on and ate our trail mix and sandwiches on the shore of High Lake. High Lake is as clear of a lake I have ever seen. Its eerie to look down through 20 feet of water and be able to see as clearly as looking through a window. We explored a bit, made a few casts here and there with no results, and just took in the beauty of lake like no other I have visited. We stayed for a short while but soon headed to the last portage of the day. On that High to Crooked portage, I convinced Jaden it was time for him to carry the canoe for his first time ever. It was a fairly rocky and uphill first few steps, but the rest of the short 20 something rod portage was easy. Jaden handled it like a champ, and was able get the canoe into the water on the other side with only a little help. Hopefully I'll be able to get more help on portage in the future, now that he knows its something he can handle!

As the day moved into the middle of the afternoon, we slowly made our way through Crooked Lake, stopping here and there at various weed beds to make a few casts. We saw quite a few people out fishing the narrower areas of the lake, with most seemingly focused on panfishing of some sort. Jaden did catch one small pike, our only one of the trip, before we headed back into Mountain Lake for some much needed time out of the canoe.

After an early dinner, we decided to finally explore our private lake. We took the "long way" by entering the unnamed boggy lake off of small channel from Mountain Lake, then found another channel that connected that boggy area to Lillius. The fish in both little lakes were eager to please, with a good mix of bass and bluegills to be found almost everywhere we cast. The biggest bluegill of the trip at around 9 1/2 inches was caught there, and we know if we had put in the time we could have had a very nice basket of fish. Our only lost item of the trip also occurred back in Lillius, as Jaden knocked his sunglasses off his hat on a purposely over animated hookset, only to watch them slowly sink into the black abyss. He almost tipped the canoe over trying to reach for them, and felt pretty sour about it for some time since they were Mom's sunglasses and she had specifically told him to make sure they came back in one piece. Oh well. They are still in one piece if she needs them back, right?

We finished our long day of fishing and exploration with one last campfire, with Jaden turning in fairly early to do a bit of reading. I did some stargazing, watching a completely clear sky slowly get covered with wispy clouds, which we later found out were mostly caused by wildfire smoke to the northwest in the Boundary Waters where we had originally intended to be. It was a somber reminder of all that was going on in that area. With camp packed up in preparation for a bit of morning rain before our departure, I thouroughly enjoyed one last great sleep in the wilderness.