~Low 40s overnight. Calm and sunny to start the day with temperatures in the upper 70s during the day. The wind kicked up quicker today and was in the 10-15 mph range for a good portion of the day, calming down in the evening like normal during the summer.

It was a beautiful day in the BWCA. We got some breakfast and got out fishing for the day. I took Jud in my canoe, and we went out fishing for some topwater Smallmouth action. We went and explored the expansive bays to the East with our whopper ploppers. We had a few hours of incredibly fun action catching around 50 Smallmouth between the 2 of us and a few decent pike, with one in the upper 30s. There was so much water to cover, and we explored as much as we could in our tour around. On the way as we circled back to camp, we found an underwater shelf and picked up 5 walleyes in short order. We filed this away to potentially return to for an evening fishing as we had struggled so far in finding quality walleye fishing in the evenings.

We made our way back to camp and had our fish fry shore lunch with wild rice and veggies as sides. The group enjoyed our fine fresh dining on walleye. We relaxed around camp for a while taking care of some camp chores, swimming, and resting.

We went out fishing again in the evening around the various islands and points near camp. A few of our party made a token effort after the lake trout as well and marked a lot of fish that they thought were probably trout but were not able to entice any to bite. 3 out of the 4 canoes had depth finders. We brought 4 units but one of them stopped working the first day so that was unfortunately the unit for my canoe. This hampered my ability to find structure throughout the trip and caused me to have more difficulty finding those sweet spots. 3 of the canoes stayed around camp while Jud and I traveled South to explore Lady Boot Bay area. We tried for trout in the deep area towards the top of the boot vertically jigging lipless crank baits and spoons. We did not have a depth finder, so this inhibited our ability to find those “correct” depths for trout as well as walleye too throughout the trip. The evening was decent for the 2 of us minus us striking out on the trout. We picked up some really nice bass (2 over 20”) and a few walleyes but did not find any of those sweet spots. We even tried trolling all the way back to camp and did not pick up any fish doing that which was shocking. It sounded like it was a slower night for the rest of the group again as well.

When we got back to camp, we had our salami and cheese bagel sandwiches, fruit, and some snacks and hung out with our friends and talked around the fire. An owl decided to join us from the trees above for our late-night conversations.