First of all thanks for reading this email and being interested in helping out.  It's people like you that read emails like this that makes this a great place.

I'm going to be taking a father (59) & son (35) to Iron. The father has been fighting cancer and this will probably be his last trip. I'm going up the 3rd week of July and I was wondering if you would be kind enough to share some info on Iron Lake.

We will be coming in via Bottle Portage and will have some help getting accross.  Our plan is to base camp on Iron and we will have permits and fishing licenses for both the "Q" and the BWCA which will allow us to be very flexible in choosing campsites and fishing locations.

Specifically some advice on where you would recommend to fish & camp and if you have a map showing campsites, fishing locations, etc. that would be great. Live bait (US Only) vs. artificials, etc.

I know this is asking a lot but I need to pull out all the stops on this one as this trip needs to be a special one for obvious reasons.

Thanks in advance!

I have a question. How did you manage to secure permits that will allow you "flexibility" for choosing campsites in BOTH Quetico and BWCA?
If I understand the rules, you could stay in Quetico for the first part of the trip and then move to BWCA to camp but then you would not be able to go back to Canada until you checked in with customs again.

You are correct.  

At the time I wrote the email I was unaware of the situation.  Obviously, for the reasons you mentioned, we will not be as flexible as I stated.

Hopefully with input from you and others advising me I will be able to make an intelligent choice of where to camp.  As you say it's either / or but not both.

Thanks for the input.