This page was last updated on: December 23, 2022
Geo and the guys packing the trailer. This usually takes about an hour if everyone has their gear ready to go. Fortunately, we had no issues this trip.
The Crew. John, Geo, Dave, Eddie, Wayne, and Caleb. This was a GREAT group. I'd go with them on ANY trip in the future.
Loading up, getting ready to head out.
Geo and Gadget in the canoe.
My new CCS tarp. Man, this is a GREAT piece of equipment and I wish I would have purchased it earlier. This thing is the BOMB. It withstood 60mph winds on this trip.
Gadget and a nice walleye. We caught quite a few walleye, and were able to eat fish 2-3 nights.
Gadget and a nice smallie.
Wayne and a nice northern pike.
Eddie with a whitefish.......I think. We've caught 2 or three of these in the past. I've never cleaned one, but I'm thinking I might try.
Geo with a nice smallie.
Eddie with a really nice smallie. We managed to catch quite a few of these 2 lb smallies on this trip. It was GREAT. this was Eddie's first trip. I'm sure he will be back on many future trips.
Geo, Gadget and Caleb kicking back after dinner. This is not the greatest site, but it was adequate and got the job done.
Gadget shooting the Bull.
Caleb not beliving the Bull that Gadget is shooting.
Gadget enjoying a smoke. Notice my Jacobson chair. This is a great chair, and only weighs 3 lbs. NOT bad for a chair. I'm not too sure I will take this on all my trips, but I will definitely take it on my base camp trips.
Geo and Eddie blackening some fish for dinner. We used olive oil on this trip too........That definitely added some flavor. And I will definitely be taking my table on future trips. It worked GREAT.
Geo enjoying some food........Gadget writing in his journal. Probably LIES.
Wayne enjoying a smoke. Wayne has been asked every year for 10 years. This year, he retired, and finally said YES. He was a great camp companion and we will definitely take trips in the future.
Eddie enjoying a good cigar. Bugs were not bad, but I think they smoked them to keep the bugs down :) :) .
Geo with one of many desserts that we take. This particular dessert is a peanutbutter pie. I replace the crust with Oreo cookies........MM GOOD.
John with a really nice Northern. I think I need to take one of these in the future and clean and cook it. I hear they are GREAT to eat. Some say it is as good as walleye and definitely better than bass. I'm going to have to try it sometime.
John and Eddie "up and over" portaging the RED BEAST. This canoe has made many trips in the past. Since I now own a kevlar boundary waters canoe, I let John and Eddie use the BEAST.
Eddie wishing they would have rented kevlar, instead of taking my beast.
John with a really nice 4lb smallie. Im not too sure how many BIG smallies we caught, but we caught a bunch.
Geo with a nice largemouth. This was caught in the shallows of North Bay. I like them just as much as the Smallies. We found an area where we pounded the largemouth on the beds......BOOM.....
Eddie with a nice smallie.
Caleb hammering back some steak and veggies.
Geo cooking the steaks. On this trip, we took MONSTER Steaks as normal.......Instead of baked potatoes and caramelized onions, we chose to take frozen veggies instead. THOSE worked out perfectly, and will be going on future trips.
What a STUNNING late evening sunset. I love these. The clouds are prefectly mirrored on the water.
Eddie repairing his flyrod. He didn't use it too much on this trip. Good thing, because he broke the tip off of it on the second or third day. We managed to fix it pretty good, and when we returned home, he sent it back for a full replacement. Gotta love LIFETIME Warranties. EXCELLENT.
Caleb with a nice Late evening smallie.
Gadget with a really nice, beautiful early morning smallie. We managed to catch quite a few decent smallies on this submerged reef. It came up into about 10 - 12 feet of water, out of 40 feet of water, so it afforded excellent smallie habitat.
Wayne with a nice smallie. Don't break that pole buddy....
Wayne with another decent smallie.
Geo with a decent northern pike. I really need to try to clean a snot rocket again. I tried a few years ago, and the bones turned everyone off. I have since learned a few other techiniques, but have not tried them. Hopefully on a trip in the future.
Eddie with a largemouth. We caught quite a few of these on this trip too. It is a nice change of pace...
Wayne with a decent smallie. Like I said earlier, we caught a ton of 2 lb fish....quite a few 3 lb fish and some over 4, and pushing 5. It was a better than average trip, but most of the fish were done, and off the nest.
John with a nice smallie.
Gadget with a really, really small perch. I'd love to get into a nice mess of these........EATING SIZE. I've done that in the past on fisher lake but I've not done it recently.
Eagle. We saw quite a few of these on this trip.
Nice smallie that John caught. NICE.
I don't know what these are, but they are pretty. I've seen them in the past, but I don't know that I've identified them. Lady something, I think.
A couple smallies on the nest.
Some more smallies on the nest. I actually think these might be largemouth, but I cannot tell from the pic. I don't believe we stuck these, since we can clearly see them.......Maybe though.
Gadget with a really nice smallie.......This is off the same reef that we caught probably 30 or 40 fish throughout the trip. It was a GREAT spot. When we were done catching the active fish, we would pull off deeper and catch larger fish. EXCELLENT.
Caleb with a nice smallie. Did I mention that this was one of the warmest trips I've been on.....and this was Memorial Day. WOW.
Eddie with a nice smallie.
WIND Hell. You cannot tell from the pic, but John and I are over on the far bank, tucked into a small bay and we really could not tell how bad the wind was. I'm GLAD that we chose to stay and wait it out. This was one of the microbursts that pounded this area. The wind blew probably 60-70 mph.
Another Wind Hell pic. John and I finally left our secluded spot. Fortunately the wind had dramatically died down. I could see another front blowing in so we POUNDED the paddles for 30 minutes, trying to get back to camp. Once we arrived in camp the wind started to roar again.
Gadget relaxing AFTER the storm. Notice the jacket. The stormfront brought in a 20 degree change in temps.
Beautiful Sunset
Another simply fantastic sunset.
I love this one.........The clouds are mirrored perfectly in the photo.
Caleb enjoying the park. The sunsets in the boundary waters are simply fantastic. They always ARE.
Wayne and Calebs rented Penobscot on the shore.....with another sunset picture.
Another sunset.
And another with lots of colors.......
Geo with a cherry cheesecake dessert. The guys were simply amazed that you could make this type of food in the Boundary Waters. NO CARDBOARD for me.......no sir. I've been taking better andb better food for every trip.
Pollen. This didn't cause issues with the fishing, but it DEFINITELY did a number on my gravity filters. After about 100 litres for each filter, I had to back flush them. That was not a big deal....Simply turn the dirty bag over, and back flush.......SIMPLE.
Eddie paying his last respects for his g. Loomis IMX medium rod and Symetre spinning reel. He managed to knock it off his knee while fishing......And LOST IT.......oops. It would not be the only rod lost on this trip.
Portaging over a beaver dam, headed to another lake. On our basecamp trips, it is nothing to paddle 20 - 30 miles round trip to fish. THIS is a fishing trip.....so we FISH.
Now THAT'S a beaver dam. We managed to portage over this one without getting wet..excellent........I'm not too sure the fishing was worth it on this particular day. We did catch fish, but not nearly the size we had been catching on previous days.
Gadget and a nice largemouth.
Running water. ALWAYS fish the running water. In some places, we've simply POUNDED the fish in running water. some of the greatest number days and size days have been around areas with running water.
I believe this is the smallest smallmouth bass ever caught in our group. I suspect had this been a real crawfish, the smallmouth would have died.
The guys enjoying a cigar on the portages getting back from Ranger Bay. The 4 guys managed to catch quite a few fish, with Gadget and Caleb catching over 150 and Eddie and John breaking 100. NOT a bad day at all. Wayne and I stayed back and laker fished.
Eddie with a nice smallie.
Wayne with a couple SERIOUS lakers. The larger one is nearly 9lbs. Wayne had never caught anything nearly that big. Normally I'd not clean a laker that big, but it was warm, and the fish would not have made it. No matter, it tasted GREAT.
My camp table. This worked out GREAT. I'd definitely take it on future trips. It weighs a little at 7lbs, but I'd gladly leave something else to take the table.......
Caleb with a nice smallie. Beautiful colors.
John smoochin a fish.
John with another NICE smallie.
Geo baking some bread. I've taken my reflector oven on multiple trips in the past. This trip was no different. It does take quite a bit of time, and some wood but it was not too bad.
rocks.......
The guys kicking back around the fire.
Beautiful Moon shot. I've tried in the past to take these types of pictures, but this is the first time I've had a camera good enough to actually take one. FULL MOON....gotta love it.
BACON.....everything tastes better with bacon. This is shelf stable that we used with pancakes. Eddie found out that if you add some oil while warming it up, it crisps just like regular bacon....It was GREAT.
Wayne and Gadget sitting around......This was a GREAT trip. Wayne will definitely be going on future trips.
My well used reflector oven.
My water system. These clean stream gravity filters are the BEST water system I've ever used. We kept the 2.5 gallon and the 5 gallon jugs pretty much filled all the time. I could filter 8 liters of water in 10 minutes or less wtih these gravity filters.
My micro smallmouth. I think the fish that Eddie caught was smaller though.
Geo with a nice smallie.
Sitting around camp. Trying to stay dry. It only rained a couple times. The weather shifted the last few days. This day, was significantly cooler......probably 20 degrees.
Smallie fishing on the Garbage Barge.......Still sticking them.
Another eagle.
Waiting on the tow.
Ah.......the tow back to civilization......
Locked and Loaded.......
The group. Eddie, John, Gadget, Geo, Wayne and Caleb. This was a GREAT GROUP, and I'd go with any of them again.
Boundary Waters/Quetico Spring Trip for 2010

May 21st - May 29th, 2010