Took a trip into Island Lake Forest and Barrens Provincial
Conservation Reserve on the Canada day long weekend of this year.What a great
trip. Weather really held out and it was hot and sunny the whole time.
Completed a loop that took us for one night into Wolf lake then up to the North
part of Island lake via portages through Dutton Lake. This Conservation Reserve
is 45 minutes north of Parry Sound and access is via Wahwashkesh Lake. Great
area, really good fishing and Wolf/Dutton Lakes are seldom ventured too. This
means rougher portages and campsites, but that’s all part of the adventure.

 The paddle up Farm creek was rather relaxing, but lengthy,
as it really takes 4-5 hours to complete. Really scenic though. We saw the
majority of people on the creek through most were just heading to the southern
end of Island to camp for the weekend. Finally got to Wolf Lake and there
wasn’t much in the way of campsites, just a few small, underused ones scattered
about. Really just evidence of old fire rings left. Great secluded spot, even
heard wolves that night! Next day we headed up through Dutton to the north of
Island and hit some rougher portages.

 Take caution when locating the portages between the small
lake north of Wolf towards Dutton and the longer portage from the small lake
East of Dutton into Island Lake.

 The first mentioned portage is easy at first (coming from
the Wolf side). Make sure you paddle across the small flooded beaver pond to
the next side (marked with flagging tape). It continues to follow and old
snowmobile trail that when I visited was covered in ferns up to 1m high in spots.
The first time we missed the trail all together and we bushwhacked through, the
2nd time I was able to locate the faint trail and took the canoe through which
just happened to be 200m from where I had stashed the gear. Some nice site on
Dutton and we saw a group of 3 canoes on this lake.

 The latter mentioned portage is riddled with multiple blazed
snowmobile and ATV trails, and there are about 5 portages blazed through here.
The most straight forward is flagged and spray-painted orange. NOTE: Take the
landing on the South-East side of the small lake and NOT the snowmobile opening
as it is longer and easier to get lost. (Found out the hard way). That one took
some time to navigate as I was following the snowmobile trial and it was
winding around the lake before I checked the GPS and compass to reveal I was
heading in the opposite direction! It’s a moderately easy portage if you can
follow the orange trail and stick to it!

 Took a small island site secluded int he north of Island
Lake that night and the only thing reminding me people were on the large lake
was a float plane buzzing by the next afternoon. We packed up and headed back
down Farm Creek the next day.

 Also fishing was good, but It was all about the ones that
got away. Mainly those darn fish just kept grabbing the line and jumped about
4-5 times before freeing themselves… so no fish dinner. Word of caution,
don’t go out promising your girlfriend a fish dinner and come back empty
handed….

As always I’ve posted a video on the trip, so subscribe for more if you’d like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWh_JAsIKQ4

Best watched in HD.

Happy paddling