Use a bunch of plastic bags for keeping your stuff clean and dry, and then put them all in any non-waterproof piece of luggage that you don’t ever plan on using again. The water will enter and keep everything cold, the weight will keep it under water, and the bags will keep everything clean.
Clarification: Any piece of CHEAP luggage – backpack, duffel bag, whatever
Keeve I think you’ve got it.
Net bags, any bag really, is going to be problematic as it will get caught up on the rocky bottom of the lake on retrieval.
I will be miles and miles from any electric or ice. Blue packs will only last a day or two, so would be more trouble than they are worth.
I do recognize that the lake won’t be as good as an icebox, but since it’s all I have available I’m looking to exploit it to my advantage. I’m not looking to store mayo for weeks, maybe a day or two tops. It’s a big lake, and it quite far north (north of North Bay, not much help to non Canadians, I know.), it will definitely be cooler than just leaving things in the tent or whatever.
If I could make it work, I could keep a few things that I could have brought in, (I do have occasional stocks being delivered to camp site!), frozen, for a few days, instead of having to consume them all in the first day. Also it would be great for leftovers.
An old piece of hard luggage would work I think. Hard enough to bounce off any rocks without damage, the water would seep in and cool, rope easily attached.
Thanks for the suggestion I’m definitely going to consider it.
For mayo, specifically, get the little packets from your favorite fast food restaurant or, if you really love mayo, Costco or Sam’s Club. They don’t have to be refrigerated. I do this for camping even with a cooler, 'cause…why not? Packets are lightweight and don’t take up valuable beer space in your cooler.
You don’t want to put your food in the water, you want to cool your food by getting rid of the water.
ding ding ding ding ding
We have a winner folks! Now…where do you get one of those things in Canada?
Also…don’t they require a specific humidity in order to work well?
No way will you keep anything frozen by sinking it in a lake.
This has worked for us on extended camping trips (week to 10 days) It will allow steaks etc. to still be frozen after 4-5 days and still cool and safe for another day or two beyond that:
Freeze your cache very hard. A “real” chest type freezer is often 10 degrees or more colder than the freezer/fridge combo.
Obtain some dry ice. Pack cache and dry ice into the smallest “real” cooler it will fit into. Make sure the cooler has an insulated lid and seals pretty well. NOT an igloo playmate, and not one of those flexible coolers. If you have left over space, add more dry ice. Read online reviews, as some coolers have poor insulation, and the ones with good insulation don’t cost very much more.
Now wrap it completely in cling film, 2-3 layers thick. This adds a little insulation, but makes it almost air tight (the CO2 will still escape), which prevents heat loss from air infiltration due to diuranal pumping etc. But I think the most important factor is that it keeps the curious from opening the lid until it is time to unseal the cache. It may also allow an oxygen free atmosphere after the dry ice is gone.
This means you have to take another cooler for the beginning of the trip, so you don’t open the cache cooler until you are ready to consume it’s contents in the next day or two.
Keep the cooler out of the sun and out of hot tents etc. Wrap it in an old sleeping bag if you want to stretch the dry ice out for an extra couple of days.
I’m not trying to keep it frozen, I’m trying to keep it edible for a day or two past the day it arrives, and store leftovers.
Dry ice will do for a week - ten days, but not two months. Plus, it sounds like too much work.
I favour things that are simple and elegant, but it’s a good suggestion, for the right kind of person, who’s into stuff like that.
If you do the dry ice thing with an old metal cooler - the kind with a good seal and a solid latch (we never wrapped it in plastic wrap, just froze the stuff and used dry ice instead of water ice or coldpacks) only…instead of the meat, your goddaughter puts the fruit inside that cooler by mistake and then you drive for 11 hours to your destination, you end up with carbonated fruit. Which is all kinds of awesome in its own way (especially carbonated cherries), but unexpected! 
Will bears be an issue? If so, you might want something a bit more claw resistant than nylon and cardboard.
Eggs don’t even need refrigerating - they’ll keep for weeks at ordinary temperatures (for example, in a shady place)
What you want to do is to have an insulated cooler with ice in it, and keep it in a cool environment. The insulation will slow the loss of cold (or intrusion of heat; it amounts to the same thing), and the cool environment will slow it further. If this isn’t enough to keep your food cold for long enough, then nothing will be.
Or under chickens 
Yeah, but you probably don’t want to cook with the kind of egg that stays good under a chicken.
yeah i too was searching thank you for the link…
I really don’t get it. On one hand the OP says he only wants to keep the food edible for a day or two, which is exactly what blue ice gives you. (Been there, done that.) On the other hand blue ice isn’t good because it only lasts a day or two.
What gives? An attempt to obtain a revolutionary water cooled camping device through a collective mind effort?
(IMNSHO the zeer is the only viable option and from experience it does not need to be clay. Sure the efficiency will be somewhat reduced but even so it’ll give a week of fresh meat instead of two if one uses plastic bins. Been there done that too.)
You make one with two different sizes of terracotta plant pot and some sand
They work better the lower the humidity. I don’t know what this is like in Canada (I do know the lowest humidity in the world is in Antarctica, though, trivia fans)
To be fair though, there’s probably not a tremendous need for an evaporative cooler in Antarctica…
I will be there for a couple of months, with no way to refreeze the blue packs, they would be useless after they thawed. I can get fresh/frozen food brought in, and it’d be nice to not have to eat it all in two days.
Get it?