Quetico Provincial Park 6-28 to 7-3

So for my bachelor party, my two brothers, my cousin and myself decided to do a week in Quetico Park in southern Ontario of fishing and paddling. We paddled and portaged our way through The Man Chain, a series of lakes bearing the names: That Man Lake, No Man Lake, This Man Lake and Other Man Lake. Oh yeah, we had fun!

First, we stopped in a small town in northeast Iowa called Gunder. We ate at the Irish Shanti which is the home of the Gunderburger. It is a full pound of beef served with a garnishment of a hamburger bun. It was awesome!!



Now that we're full for the next two days... On to the trip!
We stopped in Ely for some last minute tackle and info that we couldn't get ad Cabelas on the way up.



My older brother pretty much took care of the planning so my little brother took care of finding us our companions we would be accompanied by...



The "Before" pic:



Day 1:
We were dropped off at the boat launch and paddled up to check into the border post and pay our dues for camping and fishing.
Here's me and my two brothers...
"We're in Canada now, eh?"



We then paddled through Birch Lake on the US/Canada boarder and after a short portage, we were in Carp Lake. We dropped our stuff at our first camp site and paddled out to get down to business!



My cousin Dustin and I start working an island and a rocky point with some success. Here he is with his first smallie of the trip, a nice 18 incher.



My brothers are in the other canoe and they start getting into some standard size smallies and northern pike





Our first night's dinner was steaks on the grill!



As we're setting up camp, my little bro shows us our other travel companions....



Day 2:
The next morning we hit Carp Lake for some more small mouth and pike action. My older brother is trying really hard for walleye, but they just weren't biting it seems...



Little bro with a nice smallie



Saw a few of these beauties through the week...



Me with a early morning smallie that fell to a spinner




Northern Pike have to be one of the funnest fish I've ever caught! I've been catching them for years and they never stop amazing me at just how crazy they can be!



After a morning of fishing, breakfast is bacon and potatoes. This is followed by frying up our morning catch. We had plenty to eat!



We broke camp, paddled and portaged to Sheriden Lake, then paddled through Sheriden Lake and into That Man Lake. The portage into That Man Lake was our longest. It was around 145 rods(canoe lengths) which was at least 600 yards when looking at a map. needless to say it was tiring!





Once in That Man Lake we paddled to our campsite on a nice little island. We found some wild blueberries but we were about a couple weeks early and most of them weren't quite ready yet.







After setting up camp and having dinner... more fishing...



This lake seemed to have a LOT of small smallmouth with a few nice sized ones here and there. They were very aggressive though which made things fun.

That night we broke out the scotch and cigars, saw the northern lights, the International Space Station and howled at the moon to our hearts content. We saw only two other canoe parties the whole time in Quetico so we had these lakes to ourselves!


Day 3:
More morning fishing...
We had a nice high pressure system at this point so not a cloud to be seen! This made for a pretty early awakening from the sun... wow that hurt!





Here's a shot of our island we camped on...





Breakfast was pan-fried biscuits and gravy



And more fish...



Staying fresh by rinsing off in the water... It was pretty crazy how clear it was.



We broke camp after eating and moved on to the next lake. We paddled, portaged, paddled some more, portaged again....



Our next stop was This Man Lake. We dropped our gear at our next island campsite and headed out to check out the fishing in this lake...








More to come...

looks like your last days of freedom were well spent

nice trip and pics!

Waiting to hear about the other bachelor party companions to accidentally show up in another camp next to ya, wearing nothing but high heels and bikini's.    

Another nice trip.

Well done Jeff!

WOW!  It doesn't get much better than that.
Thanks for the installment.  I can't wait to see the next!

-Spot-

Waiting to hear about the other bachelor party companions to accidentally show up in another camp next to ya, wearing nothing but high heels and bikini's.    

Those are in Vancouver.


Looks like a great trip man!

That is my kinda bachelor party.  Man I miss the BWCA; thanks for refreshing my memories!  I can't wait to see the next installment as well.

great report and amazing documentation. truly inspiring work
thank you

This is most certainly shaping up to be my least prompt and expeditious report. 

Day 4:
Woke up early to get to the morning bite and as soon as we got on the water we were getting this…



This did get the bite to pick up quite a bit and we had a good morning of fishing. My older brother, Andy, finally got his walleyes; one of them went about 7 lbs. and the other was in the 5 lb range. My cousin, Dustin, caught a 32” pike, and my little brother, Nick, and I managed a good take of smallmouth. I also managed a feisty pike at around 29” which sure was a blast on a light bass setup!



Once we had enough of the rain, we came in to warm up and see if it would give soon. “Who cares if it’s before noon, break out some scotch!”



The rain did let up soon, but we were pretty hungry so we decided to get started with our epic lunch. The total count of fish kept for the morning fish fry was 1 large pike, the two walleye my brother caught and about six smallies.





The fillets from the larger walleye looked pretty much identical to those from a mid-twenty inch ling, what a great fish!



After we almost put ourselves into a Crisco & fish induced coma, we packed up some lunch and our swim trunks and headed over to Other Man Lake for the afternoon and see what it had to offer.




We found a really nice campsite on a big island in the lake and decided to hang out there for a little bit.



It had some really nice rocks to jump off of so we got some swimming in and some fishing after that…









The fishing in Other Man was pretty much the same as the other lakes. There were definitely bass and we tried drifting for some walleye but only ended up with pike.

Day 5:
The morning consisted of paddling and portaging back through the Man Chain Lakes to an island campsite on the boarder in Birch Lake.





The bummer about this week was that whenever we were moving from one campsite to another, we were paddling against the wind the ENTIRE time!  We had winds out of the northeast on our way into the chain of lakes, and when the weather system changed on day 4, the winds had shifted and were coming out of the southwest for the rest of the trip.

So we got to our last campsite in Birch Lake and broke out some lunch.  Before we even started setting up camp, we decided nap time was in order since we were pretty much dead from paddling against the wind and portaging all morning.  This is when we discovered what we had been missing for the trip… the black flies.  These things were CRAZY!!  The change in weather and the recent rain must have brought them on. They pretty much didn’t give a crap about deet.  We would spray that stuff on and even at 100% deet, they would still land on you and try to bite you!  They were very aggressive and impossible to swat and kill.  This made taking a nap almost impossible.  After an hour or so, my older brother and I gave up and decided to hit the canoe to see what this lake had to offer. 

We paddled out against the wind into three foot wind waves to get to the lee-ward side of the lake.  After only managing a few small bass in a few hours, we headed back to our island.  This lake was on the boarder so no remote border crossing permit or Canadian camping fees are required on the Minnesota side of the lake.  On this side, pretty much every campsite was full of Boyscouts or people simply on a canoe trip.  We seemed to be the only ones staying on the Canadian side of the lake as well as the only ones who cared about fishing (or everyone knew there weren’t any fish in the lake and they weren’t wasting their time!). 

Time for a NWKA plug pic!



After dinner, Andy went down to the water to rinse something off and yelled back up, “GUYS!! Come quick! You’ve got to see this!”
We come barreling down to the water and he points out a massive snapping turtle that has come to check out the shoreline as if it knows that campers rinse off their dishes here after dinner.  I get my camera on video mode and dunk it in the water right in front of it and start filming.  It seems very interested in the camera and comes right up to it.





I keep trying to back up or move to a different angle so the camera can focus, but the turtle keeps coming right up to the camera to check it out.  I grab my x-shot extender arm so I can keep my hands at a safe distance.  I end up having to bump it in the nose with the camera to get it to back up! The video is pretty dark so I’ll try to work on lightening it and post it up later.

As soon as the sun went down, the black flies disappeared.  Then, however, came the mosquitoes!   We had encountered plenty of these so far… or so we thought.  They were VERY thick this evening.  You couldn’t keep your headlight on or you would soon realize you were a magnet for these things and be enveloped by a cloud of them.  It seemed like we were taking turns standing in the smoke from the fire to get relief from them. 

Day 6:
One of the coolest things about this trip was that every evening as we were going to bed and every morning when we woke up, it was dead quiet except for one sound… Loons.  Their calls are beautiful, haunting, soothing and very bizarre all at the same time.  I started my video camera inside the tent when I woke up randomly at 3:30 am just so I could get some loon calls on tape. 

After the loons woke us up on our last day, it started raining a little.  I shared a tent with Andy and he practically leaped out of the tent when he heard it to get one last try for some walleye.  I opted to hang back and take in the slightly rainy sunrise and the loons.  Nick and Dustin slept in a little bit.



He worked the shore of the lake right across the small channel that separated our island from the mainland.  I was videotaping a sunrise I hope I will not soon forget.  It started to rain a little more and I saw a couple lightening strikes next to the sunrise that stayed up in the clouds and sounded pretty far away.  Then a bright spike ripped through the sky and seemed to hit the top of the hill about a half-mile away, then…
KKAAAAAABBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!
I dusted off my jaw as I picked it up off the ground and worked my way back into my skin.  I was pretty stoked at this point that I at least got the sound on tape!  I looked across the water to the shore where Andy was fishing a couple hundred yards away and noticed he was tucked very tightly against the shore underneath an overhanging tree.    That was the last of the lightening and rain, thankfully.



We packed up camp for the last time and said good bye to Canada.  It was Saturday, July 3rd which was painfully obvious given how many Boyscout troops in canoes we passed on our way back. 

This last leg of our trip was by far the toughest paddling conditions we had experienced the whole week.  The winds must have been gusting into the 20 mph range.  We made good time though and were back at the boat ramp an hour early.

We paddled a total round trip of over fifty miles just in getting from camp to camp.  Throwing in daily fishing outings would put our total miles paddled to around 70 miles for the six days.  The fishing was great but the company was better!
The “after” picture…



After getting back to Ely, we headed straight to Dairy Queen (the only fast food burger joint in town) and got some greasy, spicy, ½ pound bacon cheeseburgers! The trip was now appropriately book-ended with epic burgers!



Our outfitters were Gene & Jane Ott of Packsack Canoe Trips & Log Cabins and they did an outstanding job at an amazing rate!
www.packsackcanoetrips.com

Cheers!

equally kick ass follow-up. strong work and thanks again

Nice job on that sweet trip of a lifetime!  Of course once that wedding ring equalizes temperature with your wife to be's finger, this kinda a trip will be harder to pull off in the future.   

Just kidding, you'll probably get to do it again.....only this time with the four of ya, and the 4 wive's tagging along.