Adventures... West of Quetico
by Bryan Whitehead
Day Three June 6, 1995
Again I awoke early and helped fix the big breakfast for the guys. A repeat of the day before, more calories for breakfast than I usually consumed in an entire day back in the City.
My older son Brent, who was working on his fishing merit badge for Boy Scouts was out on a rock by the beached canoes. One of the older boys was instructing him on the finer points of casting a buzzbait with a baitcasting reel. His first cast brought in a thrashing 24" Northern!
Today we were going on an adventure. No trip with my friend is complete without at least several brushes with death. Today the teams were heading over several lakes and this trip would involve some serious portaging. Several of the campers who were more experienced at camping with Steve than was I, wisely stayed behind. I looked skeptically at the aluminum thwart of the canoe (Yokes and pads were for sissies on this canoe) and stripped the bag off my Camptrails external framed backpack. These seasoned canoe campers looked at the bare Expedition frame lying in the bottom of the canoe and shrugged. Not how they traveled!
We headed off, roaring - or at least as close to roaring as you can get with small two cycle engines - across the lake under partly sunny skies and warming weather. We crossed into another lake and tried our hand at Walleye fishing. Bouncing leeches off the bottom produced only one large Walleye and a couple of Bass. A quick shore lunch was prepared and the fish were fried up and quickly consumed.
