Hal just returned from a trip, I believe his 10th, to the Boundary Waters of Canada. His guide service dropped him off with his canoe, fishing equipment and packs. He had to paddle and portage the canoe and etc. to his campsite on one of the myriad of lakes in the area. Keep in mind he had a quadruple bypass less than a year ago.  The fish were mostly smallmouth, or brownies. You can see in the photo the reason for the name.

There are some of these devils with plenty of teeth up there also. The second is a walleye which is good in the skillet.

Your hooks have to be barbless, which makes catching an acrobatic smallmouth rather difficult. The visibility was around 20 feet which made fishing a blast. One of the best baits was a Ribbit frog. With a smaller mouth and no barb on the hook, you can imagine how hard it was to catch a fish. Hal took 24 Ribbits and only returned with 2. Since a Ribbit is my favorite bait to fish with ,I was extremely jealous of all that action. A spinnerbait and a plastic craw were his other most productive baits. One day he caught 70 fish. Three of the smallmouth weighed 5 pounds or better. There were only two largemouth out of all the fish he caught. The scenery was pretty good too.

Click on the second photo and you can see the small horns on the young moose.

The last photo is of a gorgeous smallmouth. He has it laid out on a paddle which is a great way to photo a fish when you are by yourself. I think I’ll copy that idea if I ever catch another one worth taking a picture of.