Well hello! We are in fact still camping and canoeing our little hearts out. We still go to the BWCA or Quetico annually (sometimes both!), with many smaller trips in between. It’s been a minute since I updated this site, though. Sean is away in Northern Wisconsin this week in the NHAL, meeting up with old friends and making friends with new fish. I am holding down the fort in Madison with our cat Billie, and preparing/dehydrating meals for our upcoming Quetico trip in early August. Sean’s in charge of packing all the gear, I’m in charge of the meals.
Over Memorial Day weekend, we headed to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to the Big Island Lake Wilderness. This small wilderness is in the Hiawatha National Forest. It’s comprised of a handful of small lakes, connected by portages, and most lakes have at least 1-2 nonreservable campsites on them. It’s a bit over 5 hours to get up there from Madison, and since we didn’t quite know what to expect we left early in the morning in order to have as much daylight as possible.
The parking lot for the wilderness has a few spots, but it’s not huge. We had taken our Subaru Outback because we weren’t sure of the road conditions, but our VW wagon would have been okay – the roads are mostly paved with some potholes, nothing too bad. There’s a handy latrine and an info board, and a short-ish and level walk to the landing. We noticed right away there there were a lot of insects, so we didn’t linger. Big Island Lake is, appropriately, home to a big island, and it became clear that the campsite there was occupied. We had already decided to go further in, though. We made the very short portage over to Mid Lake, which had quite a steep downward slope and a very mucky landing. After swearing a bit, we got going… and then realized that the portage we took was just around the corner from the real portage, which was much more level and actually had some infrastructure/stairs. Whoops. It became clear that there are all sorts of unofficial spots in this small area where people have blazed their own paths, and there are not really any official maps. Sean had printed a USGS map and marked it up. Luckily it’s also not a huge place, so it’s not super easy to get lost.
After noticing that the site on Mid Lake was unoccupied, we considered stopping there while a large bass circled warily on its bed, just off the site landing. However, it was pretty low and very buggy, so we decided to press on. The next lake, Coattail, had one site that was occupied, so we portaged on to McInnes, which also has one site. We figured we could turn around and go back to Mid if we had to.
The fully armed and operational bug shelter. Can definitely fit over a campsite picnic table, as we have done that (not here, though).
The site on McInnes was empty, and up on a small rise. We decided to make it our home for the night, and unloaded. As soon as we started moving around the site, it became clear that the blackflies and mosquitoes were incredibly terrible – and it was still full daylight. In all our years of camping, this was one of the worst swarms we have ever experienced. On a whim, I had purchased a bug shirt at Canoecopia in March. I put it on and looked like a weird astronaut, but I was so grateful to have it. Sean put on a bug net for his head and assembled our other new purchase, a Eureka bug tarp. This is one of those things that we always thought was a little too extra (c’mon, you’re going to have bugs when you’re camping! Suck it up!), but it has turned out to be a real game changer. It does great in moderate rain (possibly even heavy rain, we haven’t tried yet but I think it’d be fine), as a sun screen, and it’s awesome at being a bug shelter. We of course had to kill plenty of bugs that came in with us, but we could actually relax, play cards, read, and cook without being bombarded. We used to dive for cover in the tent around dusk to avoid the mosquitos, but with this we can actually hang out and avoid them.
The next day, we fished McInnes and didn’t have much luck. We eventually made it over to Klondike lake, where we saw that the site there was also taken. We were glad that we had been able to claim our McInnes site, since this little wilderness seems to get pretty busy. We were able to catch some bass and panfish just around the corner from the site, and spotted the next portage. We decided not to take it, but it was a nice day of fishing. So, although we didn’t quite make it through the entire wilderness, we enjoyed the parts we saw. The real challenge was the insects, but with the right gear it was tolerable.
After coming out on Monday morning, we drove around a bit to explore the various trailheads that lead to the small scattered lakes on the edge of the wilderness, and then pointed the car toward home. This was a fun little trip – I think this spot would be particularly lovely in the fall.
This is, I think, the latest time of year that we have gone for our annual long trip – we usually go the week of Labor Day, but it was on September 7th this year – the last possible date of Labor Day. We did a Sawbill trip one October, but this was a very distinctly fall-feeling trip. I inconveniently forgot my notebook, so this is composed from memory.
This is also the first trip where we decided to get a tow to American Point. This was pretty convenient for us because we were able to stay with friends who recently moved to Duluth, so we could jet on up the Gunflint in about 3.5 hours or so and get a good night’s sleep before going in. We have often camped near our put-in the night before which has not leant itself to good sleep – too excited and too many unpacking/repacking logistics! Also, due to the pandemic we were able to skip the in-person permit pick-up requirement and that saved us some time, too. Hopefully, we’ll be back to normal life by this time next year!
Day 1: From the Gunflint Trail to Ashdick Lake
Our drop-off by American Point
So, we heard from Seagull Outfitters that they wanted us to be as early as possible (30-45 minutes early) for our 9AM tow. We jetted out of Duluth pretty fast and got there around 8:15, so they were pretty happy that we didn’t put them behind schedule. They were having a really busy season and were pretty parked up, but we managed to find a spot in their lot after unloading the car. Since Seagull Outfitter is (surprise!) on Seagull Lake and we were heading out on Saganaga, they loaded us in a truck and trailer and took us a couple minutes up the road to the county boat launch on 81 (near the Chik-wauk Museum and Nature Center). We were not 100% sure how the car parking stuff would work; we normally park at the Trail’s End campground lot, but since our car was over on another lake we would need to portage through that area in order to get back on the correct lake to finish our trip (we were getting a tow out, but not a tow back). The outfitter gave us a heads up that there is a portage near the Trail’s End campground that will go back to Seagull Lake. (This will become annoying later.) Our tow driver, Dylan, got us to our drop-off spot by American Point and unloaded us, and we spent a little time re-combobulating before setting off from American Point around 9:30. Our ultimate goal was to get to the northern campsite on Ashdick Lake – we had been to this lake a couple of times for day trips and had good fishing, and the north site is the nicer of the two on that lake.
For how busy we knew it was, we didn’t see any occupied campsites in the Saganaga bays. It was a really beautiful, sunny day in the high 60’s, and we made good time from American Point through the bays and over the little Swamp portage and to Monument Portage. Monument brush and trees have been very cut back from the trail since we were last there, and you can actually see people ahead of you for quite a ways. Not sure why – it was definitely the most heavily groomed portage I’d seen – maybe managing invasive plants? On the Ottertrack side of the Monument portage, we ran into a large group of men who decided to take up the entire end of the portage while taking their lunch break. I don’t think they could have tried to be more in the way – four canoes scattered every which way. This is a popular lunch stop – for good reason, it’s a nice place – but portages are really, really bad lunch stops! If you gotta have a quick snack, have it to the side and out of the way of people who are trying to come through.
Boiling water with the trusty Emberlit and having some morning coffee on Ashdick Lake
We then paddled a little bit of Ottertrack and did the Ottertrack-Ester lake portage, which is probably the toughest portage we did on the whole trip. It’s not the longest, but maybe the steepest. (It’s really not terrible, though!) The BWCA is experiencing a drought this year, so the portages were not nearly as muddy as we have experienced in the past. Water levels were about a foot down but portages were much easier… yay? We then paddled through Ester (which I really love, it’s a beautiful lake with tall cliffs and super clear blue water) and over to the Ashdick portage. This is a pretty rocky portage where you have to watch your footing, but it’s pretty level overall and not very long.
Sunset on Ashdick Lake
We carried the packs over to the other end and were reasonably confident that we could see the southern site on Ashdick lake, and that it wasn’t occupied. So, we decided that we could at least end the day at the south site if our preferred one was taken. The north site is high up on a rock pile and the tent pads are back in the trees, so it’s really hard to tell if the site is occupied unless something is obviously set up. But we got to the north site, and it was empty! Hooray! We were tired after three decent (and one short) portages and were ready to kick back for a couple of nights. We set up our stuff, and noticed later that is IS indeed difficult to see from the water if the site is occupied. We went fishing that evening and caught a few decent northern (I had a 32″ catch, which I think was the biggest northern we caught on this trip) as well as a few smallmouth and perch. We have also caught largemouth on this lake in previous years, which is a fairly rare BWCA fish for us. Ashdick also granted us a really nice sunset.
Day 2: Ashdick Lake
The day got off to a pretty good start, though it was pretty windy. We started trolling the lake near the campsite and wanted to experiment with our drift sock (which we keep bringing and then not using! This was the year, dangit!) We got almost to the southern campsite when we started hearing thunder above the wind. We had seen some rather dark clouds to the north, but they didn’t seem very close. But they were sure close enough to hear that thunder! We booked it back to camp and listened to a fairly dramatic sounding storm that must have been pretty unpleasant to the north of us, but it was all show for us! No rain.
After it was clear the storm had passed, we fished the rest of the day. We caught a decent number of northern and smallmouth for the day, and got bitten off by what we think was the same northern in the same spot, three times! There are some really good northern pike in Ashdick.
Note: Those who know this area might wonder why we did three portages on Day 1 when we could have done the Swamp to Ashdick portage and just done it in one more direct portage. Answer: We hiked the Swamp-Ashdick portage for exploration purposes a couple of years ago and it suuuuucks. It is long, there is a decent amount of up-and-down, it’s knee-deep mud in some parts, and I vowed that I would rather do three shorter easier portages than this one. That said – day 2 we did hear a group come through the Swamp-Ashdick portage and head toward Ester.
Day 3: Ashdick to Hanson Lake
This is the day we really started getting a weather change, with temps dropping quite a bit. The highs were in the mid-50’s, and though it was sunny the fishing turned off pretty dramatically. I’m guessing the pressure was high. Sean had his fish finder wired up, and he said everything was hanging pretty deep.
Hanson Lake Site
We decided that we wanted to perhaps try for trout on Hanson (Which Sean’s fishfinder says is about 110′ deep) or Cherry Lake. The Hanson-Cherry portage is another one that isn’t supposed to be super fun (we haven’t done it before), but we were also kind of curious to check out the South Arm of Knife Lake, and then maybe swing up through the Cherry chain. We’ve been on Knife before, but it’s a huge lake and not that piece of it. So, we did the portage back on to Ester and headed south toward Hanson Lake. We kind of like having our own private lake, so we considered going over a short portage to Clam Lake on the south end of Hanson. However, once we got there we realized that it’s quite a steep upward climb of a little portage, with not much of a landing. I said I’d rather stay at the campsite on Hanson nearby, so that’s what we ended up doing.
There were a couple of least chipmunks hanging out at this site who had clearly been fed quite a bit. They were fearlessly mugging for treats, which is cute but it always makes me sad. It really is disconcerting to see a wild animal act fearlessly among humans, and these guys are not likely to survive.
We finally used one of our packed in items too – we usually snorkel on our BWCA trips, but one look at the weather and I knew that I was not going to be doing that. Sean ordered a wet suit, though, and he popped into the water for a few minutes in the afternoon while I boiled some hot water for tea to warm him up later. He saw a snapping turtle, but not too much else. We also tried deep jigging for trout that afternoon, but didn’t get any takers and it was starting to get pretty cold. We decided to go to bed to get an early start on the next day, which would be another three-portage traveling day.
Day 4: Hanson to South Arm Knife to Amoeber
The Hanson to South Arm Knife portage is longish, but it’s relatively level and is really a lovely one. There’s a beaver pond in the middle of it that the trail skirts, that feeds a really lovely waterfall and stream. There’s a nice spot by the waterfall under a giant cedar tree that looks like is a popular little photo-op/snack spot. There was one leaning tree that was a little tricky, but overall it was a really fun place to get out of the canoe. Not long after we left the portage I got a really big hit on my deep running rapela. After playing the fish for a while (I assumed it was a big pike because it kept running when it saw the boat), Sean got a good look at it – it was a lake trout! My very first one! And a decent size!
My very first laker!
You better believe we kept that laker, and we ate that laker. We brought a little plastic bottle of the finest Sutter Home pinot grigio, a dehydrated lemon, a little snack cup of olives, and some dehydrated zucchini. So it was 90% of the way to lake trout Provençal, except I forgot the dehydrated tomatoes. Whatever, it was awesome.
The laker, before being devoured.
The other two portages were relatively fine, though the short-ish South Arm to South Arm portage that whacked off some time had a nice fresh fallen pine in the middle of the trail that required some creative work to get around. This was also the muddiest portage – apparently Sean went in up to his knees in muck on the south end when I had already gone up the trail, and the other end was pretty muddy as well. These landings could have been a pain because the water was about a foot lower than normal. The South Arm Knife to Cherry portage was okay, too – a short climb at the beginning and a rocky landing on Amoeber, though. We ran into another couple on the Amoeber end of the portage who were heading in on their way to Cherry.
We made it to Amoeber just as it started sprinkling, and noticed that the shore site was taken. As the rain started coming down more and as we took in how tired we were after 3 portages, we crossed our fingers pretty hard that the island site was available. The BWCA fates were with us though, and it was available! We unloaded our stuff and hopped to the next island over in order to fillet the laker (which was dead, we didn’t transport a live fish between lakes) and gather some firewood for the aforementioned feast. Reader, it was a lot of fish.
Day 4: Amoeber
We took it pretty easy on Day 4. We woke up to a foggy lake. After the fog burned off, it was a cool and breezy day. We decided to explore Amoeber lake and fish. Amoeber is very much shaped like an amoeba, with lots of long, skinny bays, islands, and lots of deep holes. We didn’t get much in the way of fishing except for another lake trout that we caught not far from the portage over to Topaz. We had enough aluminum foil left to cook this one over the fire as well, and we added it and some salami to a box of jambalaya for a tasty (and extremely filling!) dinner.
Day 6: Amoeber and Topaz
We decided to take a fishing trip over to Topaz lake, which is just one pretty easy portage away. We had only passed through this lake a few years ago when we hung out mostly on Cherry (one more lake over). We brought our stove, a pot, and a meal for lunch along with some snacks, and struck out.
View across from our lunch stop on Topaz Lake
Topaz is another oddly-shaped lake with back bays and islands, and it’s a pretty one. There is one camp site on this lake, though we didn’t go looking for it. Since it was the middle of the day we picked a spot on the shore instead of taking up the site in case someone was looking to camp there. We boiled up some mac and cheese and Sean’s fishfinder assured us there were some fish, but nothing much bit except for a few small bass. The cold front that settled in after day 2 really shut off the good fishing, but it was still a fun trip over to Topaz to check it out.
We decided to head back to Amoeber in the early afternoon so that we could take advantage of the nice sunny day to hang up our hammocks and chill out at camp.
This particular site faces west and has some really nice hammock trees, so we kicked back a bit and enjoyed the sunny day. We also decided to use our new Garmin Inreach Mini to get a detailed weather forecast and discovered that heavy rain was predicted for our exit day, Saturday. Based on that, we decided to get as far as possible (like American Point or farther) the next day so that our exit day would be a bit easier. We were not getting a tow on the way out, so we were going to be on our own steam.
Around dusk, we saw a bird swooping around camp but didn’t get a good look at it and didn’t think much of it. As it got darker, we could see and hear it still flying around a bit. I was sitting and talking to Sean when I finally got a good look at it – a saw-whet owl! It landed on the aerial tarp line just behind Sean’s shoulder. I was so surprised, I said something along the lines of “Holy shit, it’s an owl!” and didn’t give Sean quite enough warning, so when he turned it flew away. The owl hung out around camp for a while, we could hear it hunting. I have definitely heard owls before, but this was the first time I’d seen one up close from a few feet away.
That night, Sean went on a night dive on a circuit around the island. He always puts a light on shore in order to find his way out, but since it was a clear night I decided I’d wait for him while watching the stars come out. It was a really beautiful night, and there is really nothing like stargazing on a clear night in the BWCA.
Day 7: Amoeber, Little Knife, Ottertrack, Swamp, Saganaga to Long Island
Amoeber was very good to us overall, and I’d recommend the island site. Do be aware that if the wind is right and they’re being loud, you will hear the folks at the other site on the lake, though. That was the only downside. But now we had to pack up and say goodbye and onto another day of lots of paddling and some portages. It was a totally beautiful fall day, birches turning gold, and in the high 60’s and sunny.
This is actually South Arm Knife from Day 4, but you can see the birches starting to turn. Besides, you have not seen enough of the back of my head yet.
We packed up and headed toward the Amoeber to Little Knife portage, which we had done a few years before and remembered as being pretty simple. It is that overall, and has a nice little stream running alongside. In the main channel of Knife Lake near the campsites, Sean’s big lure got caught up in what he thought was maybe a fish, but it ended up being a huge length of wire, which took a minute to extricate!
We headed over the Little Knife portage into Ottertrack Lake. It’s a really easy little portage and it’s heavily used with a decent sized landing on the Knife side, where two guys had decided to unpack what was apparently their entire kayaks for a picnic. They were more or less to the side, but could have probably been more out of the way. We moved through pretty quick and didn’t chat much; we had a lot to do!
Just as we passed through the sites on the south end of Ottertrack, I got a massive hit on the lure of the trip (a perch pattern deep running rap, which caught most of my fish). I hadn’t had a real great hit since the trout I caught on Day 4, so this was super exciting! Whatever it was, I thought it was acting a lot like a pike, running deep when it saw the boat. However, once it got high enough in the water we saw that it was a true chunk of a smallmouth – probably the largest one I have ever caught. He measured 20 inches from nose to tail and was quite the hefty fish!
The chonk smallmouth. I’m on the left.
And that’s the last fish we caught on Ottertrack in 2020. We popped back over the Monument Portage, got through the bays, and headed toward American Point. All of the sites we passed had been taken by this point in the day, so we pretty much had to continue until we found something. The perch rap came through one more time heading along the northern edge of American Point, where I caught one more trout, a nice eater size. Having no energy/means to cook it easily at this point, this trout was released.
All of the sites on the point were taken, and I was starting to run out of gas as the sun sank lower in the sky. We did not want to look for campsites in the dark, so we stopped chatting and got a little more serious about paddling. We headed toward the islands that are south of American Point, which have multiple sites on them, and after striking out on a couple we finally ended up on the western tip of Long Island. The site is super rocky, but it has a nice (person-constructed) beach. Level tent pads are not abundant, but we made it work.
I said it was rocky…
This site is right in the motor corridor, so we could hear a few folks night fishing, but otherwise it suited our needs just fine. We set up the tent, made some dinner and some tea, and went to bed early with the anticipation of rain overnight and into the next morning.
Day 8: Saganaga to Seagull
We did end up getting a little overnight rain, and the morning dawned kind of drizzly but nowhere near the downpour we feared. After a quick breakfast of coffee and oatmeal, we packed up the canoe and hit the road. I caught one more okay bass on the way to the Seagull River, but otherwise the fishing wasn’t great.
We usually end our trip at the Trail’s End campground, but this time our car was at the Seagull Outfitters on Seagull. If you’ll recall, the outfitter had advised us that we could travel to the campground and then take a short portage over to Seagull Lake. This might actually be a really easy little piece in a normal year, but since the water was low we discovered that the rapids by the campground were going to be Annoying. We watched a group walk their canoes downstream through it, and we weren’t really eager to roll our ankles going upstream. So darn it, we portaged through the parking lot. We might have tried to get to the real portage if we had been higher on energy.
Rapids of great annoyance, near the Trail’s End campground.
Once we got onto Seagull Lake, we were really pretty tired. Sean was the navigator, and we started moving into the main lake. It’s pretty developed in this area with a lot of houses and resorts. We eventually found our turn into the little bay where the Seagull Outfitter is perched, and Dylan the Tow Guy happened to be on the dock to say hi. The weather had held off for the most part, so we and our stuff were relatively dry except for the tent that had been rained on the night before.
Only a couple hours later, we pulled in to our friends’ driveway in Duluth, had long hot showers, and had bellies full of homemade chili and cold beer. Not a bad way to end a trip to the BWCA!
We left Madison’s West Towne Mall at 3:15 pm, and arrived at Duluth Pack in Canal Park, Duluth to pick up our permit at 8:15 pm. This was the first time we tried to pick up our permit the night before, and it worked out well and saved us a couple of hours in the morning. We camped at Gooseberry Falls State Park, but we caught some rain and thunderstorms as we were setting up in the dark that continued through the night and while we packed up the next morning, which delayed our morning start a bit. The park was really quiet, perhaps because it was rainy, and we had a quiet night in site 18. To note for next year – keep the packs in the back seat, not in the trunk, for easy access!
Sept 2: Gooseberry Falls to East Bay of Saganaga
Campsite: 336
Despite the delay in the early morning due to rain, we made it to Grand Marais for breakfast at the Blue Water Cafe. After a quick meal, we headed up the Gunflint Trail and were on the water by 9:45. I had a sore left shoulder that I was nursing. We were making really great progress until a stiff west wind blew up as we were crossing Saganaga to American Point, and we had to paddle hard against high waves and a strong headwind. By the time we made it to the first (eastern-most) bay, my shoulder was screaming for a break, I was wet from the waste down, and we were both hungry for lunch. We stopped at the first site in the bays, which was empty, and after lunch I was sore and ready to just camp there for the rest of the day. Lunch was dirty rice and beef, with a side of ibuprofen. Later in the afternoon we started hearing thunder, so we felt pretty good about deciding to stay where we were. After the thunder went away, we fished the bay and caught some smallmouth on rapelas. Went to bed early, intending on an early start and travel to Ester or Hansen lakes.
First BWCA sunset of the year, calm after a rough day of paddling.
Sept 3: East bay of Saganaga to Ester Lake
Campsite: 330
We slept in til 8:30 and lingered over breakfast, so we didn’t get on the road until about noon. We pulled in some more smallies on raps and a couple of northerns on buzzbaits, but lost a buzzbait in the Monument Portage bay of Swamp Lake when a northern bit it off. Note that they seem pretty excited about these – hope to bring a few more spares next year! We met a couple traveling back over the Monument from a fishing trip, and they had great luck – their highlight was bringing in a 40″ northern with a spoon. As usual, Monument portage was easy and in good shape, where Ottertrack to Ester portage was ankle-deep mud in some spots. We stopped at site 330 at around 3:15, which is right next to the Ashdick portage. It’s a rocky site, but we found a good tent pad and managed to pound in a good number of Sean’s secret-weapon titanium stakes. We managed to get set up just before getting hit with another rain storm, happily after we had gotten up the aerial tarp. We enjoyed some unstuffed peppers under the tarp, and opened our bottle of Rambling Red Outdoor Vino, from Naked Winery in Hood River, OR. We bought it when we visited Oregon earlier this summer, and it is really a tasty red wine – best of all, it comes in a plastic bottle so you don’t have to worry about illegal containers! Nothing beats eating a hot meal and drinking red wine while nice and dry under a tarp in a BWCA rainstorm. Because it was rainy and thunderstormy, we decided to pack in early again.
Unfortunately you can see (and sometimes hear) the sites in the island and point located to the south of our site at 330. We would probably not camp here again for this reason, although it proved to be a good base camp for getting to other places.
Sept 4: Ester Lake
Campsite: 330
Even though it rained a lot overnight, we stayed dry in our tent thanks to having our trusty painter’s tarp inside as a liner – we could see that the floor underneath had absorbed some water. The day started out windy and sunny, and only got windier throughout the day. We trolled the lake and caught yet more smallmouth, but it was difficult to control Old Ironsides and fish in all the wind. After lunch, we went back out and unfortunately got caught in a really bad wind and rainstorm that caught us a bit by surprise. We were lucky to not be on even bigger water, because we had a few moments of paddling back to shore where we couldn’t actually control the boat and it spun around.
We changed out of our soaked clothes and set them to dry on the line, and ate a dinner of spicy couscous, mushrooms, and beef. It warmed up enough for Sean to snorkel near our site, and he found an underwater cave across the shallow bay. He also noted steep drop-offs on the north-facing part of the island and shore next to our site.
Sept 5: Ester Lake
Life during the first couple days.
Campsite: 330
This was, happily, the last day where the weather was just annoying, windy, and wet. It was a windy and rainy night, and dawn brought a day with a constant NE wind that brought short bursts of rain with it throughout the entire day. We were mostly able to dry our wet stuff in the brief (15-30 minute) periods of wind and sun. Sean caught a nice 18″ smallie by the bay by our campsite, and we were able to fish around and caught many smallmouth. We hoped for better weather the next day, but we were able to clean and fry up a smallmouth and mix the meat with rehydrated salsa, which we spooned onto tortillas for fish tacos.
We headed up toward the long bay where the Ottertrack-Ester portage is to fish a bit, and saw a mink hanging out. He was very curious about us, and followed us a bit along the shore.
Ahab harpoons his whale.
Sept 6: Ester Lake, Ashdick Lake
Campsite: 330
The wind finally gave up during the night and we woke to a cloudy but calm morning. We saw our mink friend hanging around our shoreline in the morning. We wanted to go to Rabbit Lake, but while fishing our way over to the portage (more smallmouth!) saw a pair of canoes with a group of 4 guys heading that way too. We have been seeing quite a few people in the BWCA – more than we expected. Instead of heading to a possibly crowded lake, we decided to portage to Ashdick Lake instead. The portage from Ester to Ashdick was much the same as I remembered, with a couple of muddy patches but not too bad. There are two sites on Ashdick, one of which is really overgrown and doesn’t look used much. We headed to the northern one and discovered that it was taken, so we ate lunch on a rocky point nearby. While we were eating, I saw a long trail of bubbles in the water and we were able to see a huge snapping turtle trundling along. We finally caught some not-smallmouth: a couple of northern (including a nicer 28″ one for Sean in the water near the northern site), AND Sean’s white whale was obtained – a nice largemouth bass that struck on a buzzbait. I also caught a small northern and a nice-sized smallmouth. So, a three species day! Somehow, we did not catch any walleye this trip. We tried to use the tips in Craig Zarley’s book, but it was so windy we just had a hard time with jigging. We saw some small perch in the shallow end of Ashdick as well.
Out of curiosity, we checked out the Ashdick end of the Swamp-Ashdick portage, just to see if it was as awful as its reputation. It looks like a big storm hit it earlier this summer, and there are a lot of fresh blow-downs that it looks like the forest service cleared out of the way. However, there are still several long stretches of deep mud, due to the fact that it quite literally goes straight through a boggy swamp.
While we were preparing to leave Ashdick, we heard some people heading through the Ester-Ashdick portage. We fished and waited for them to come through – they were loudly astonished that we were there. I guess they probably camped at the untaked crappy southern site, because we didn’t see them come back again – or they decided to brave the Ashdick-Swamp portage!
We were pumped after a really nice, calm, peaceful day of good fishing on Ashdick, and had a yummy dinner of taco mac ‘n’ cheese. We watched a family of five grebes hop up onto a low rock in our shallow bay for some evening preening and a nap. We planned to go to Zephyr Lake the next day, but were worried about the high number of people we had seen and thought we might not count on being able to camp there.
Sept 7: Ester Lake to Saganaga Lake (Bay 3/Westernmost Bay), with a side-trip to Zephyr Lake
My big smallmouth on Zephyr
Site: 339
We got up early and were able to get ourselves on the way around 9:00, and easily portaged from Ester back over to Ottertrack and then over the Monument portage to Swamp. We saw a lot of people heading to the Monument portage, and again were surprised by how busy it was. At the Swamp portage, we waited for a group to cross over from the other direction. They said that they had come from Zephyr Lake, so we were briefly excited – but they then said they were just out on a day trip. They didn’t seem to be very comfortable with portaging and when I commented that I love the site on Zephyr Lake they didn’t seem so enthusiastic about it, so maybe they weren’t having a good time. Alas.
Knowing that Zephyr was taken, we decided to head into the Saganaga bays to see if there would be a site open. The site right across from the Swamp portage was taken, but the next one in was open. Since it was still early in the day, we decided to portage into Zephyr and go fishing. First, we ate a really tasty lunch of tomato mac and cheese (Sean says it’s a keeper!). The weather was gorgeous again, with nice fluffy clouds and sun, with a very light breeze. We trolled around the lake and picked up several 13-14″ smallmouth (they seem to like the perch pattern rapela), including a 16″ for Sean and a massive 18″ for me. Sean also picked up a small northern. We have caught walleye on Zephyr before, but not this time. I was sad not to be able to camp there, but happy that we were able to visit. After a dinner of couscous, beef, and tomato, we had a relaxing night back at camp.
Sept 8: Saganaga Lake to Trail’s End
Morning fog
We woke up to a very foggy morning, so we took our time eating breakfast and packing up. By the time the fog cleared, it was a beautiful, sunny, calm day. We saw some otters playing as we worked our way through the bays, and had another northern strike but not land. We caught another 12″ smallie on the way out for good measure. It was definitely a trip dominated by smallmouth bass. We had a really easy paddle across Saganaga from American Point to the islands, and just really enjoyed the nice weather. We made a quick stop for a snack of the rest of our landjäger sausages and some granola bars, and made good time. We left around 12:30 or so from Trail’s end and got to our hotel in Grand Marais. We had an awesome dinner at the Gunflint Tavern and wandered around Grand Marais. Sean bought a piece of art for his office (a painting of a fire), and on the way home we overheard the announcer for the high school football game and decided to go for a bit. We fell asleep watching the Canadian news channel.
Secrets and Learnings: This trip, I cracked the code of the Aeropress. For the best morning coffee, use espresso ground beans, 2.5 TB per cup (or 1 Aeropress scoop). Fill to full with water, press down slightly and pull back up slightly to create a vacuum, and let sit for 10 seconds. Stir, plunge the press, and top off with water for an americano. Boom!
Looking fly in my rainpants, exploring the Ashdick-Swamp portage.
We took a bunch of weekend trips this month, two of which were camping trips to the NHAL. The earlier weekend, we camped on our usual site on the Manitowish River, and the second weekend we camped at the Starrett Lake campground next door to Sean’s brother and his family.
Our first weekend was June 2/3. The Manitowish was actually a little bit busy when we were there, with sites 14 and 15 occupied. We headed for our favorite site and found it empty (save for a beaver who had just then felled a tree at the site and went charging into the water when we startled him!), so we set up camp for the night. I was a bit concerned about the forecast of rainy weather and thunderstorms for Saturday, but we only got a short drizzle in the morning while we were fishing for crappie and then a really brief storm in the afternoon that made for great napping weather in the tent. The crappie were mostly only active in the early morning, and we caught a few on our micro-perch rapala lures. They seemed to be more interested in the fire tiger pattern, not too surprising in that dark stained water. We had visitors in the form of a flock of about seven trumpeter swans, who Sean once said sound like middle school band practice. We also saw the tiniest snapping turtle near our fire ring, whose shell was only about the size of a quarter. On Saturday morning we saw a pair of otters swim by as well. It’s a fun stretch of river where you can see a lot of wildlife.
The next day I was really feeling the urge to catch a whole pile of panfish, so I suggested that we go check out Frank Lake. We had shore-fished from the landing the year before and had a lot of fun with small bluegills. Frank is a very pretty, larger lake with no development on it, and only electric motors are allowed. Its parking area is uphill from the beach landing and there’s no way to drive all the way to the landing, but it’s a very easy portage to the shore from the car. Because of this and it being fairly tucked away, we’ve not seen too much traffic on it. Frank Lake was FULL of spawning beds when we got out on it, but I think we were a few days too late and they were all abandoned. However, we decided to try our luck, and started exploring since we had never been on Frank with Old Ironsides before. I was casting along the shore with a worm and bobber, when something much bigger than a bluegill hit hard! It ended up being the largest smallmouth I had ever boated, so that was pretty fun! Sean was casting wacky-rigged soft bait worms for smallmouth and ended up with a very nice keeper-sized walleye, which we decided would be coming back with us. So, we never did end up with those panfish, but we had a pretty fun couple of hours out on Frank.
My big smallmouth bass.
The next weekend, June 17/18, we were car camping at the Starrett Lake campground. We brought some extra luxury stuff that we don’t normally bring, like our big comfy folding chairs and the big cooler. We were in walk-in site #10, which is smaller, but nice and isolated from the main camp and has a spot right on Starrett Lake to park your canoe. My in-laws and family took #9, which is their favorite. Site 11 was overgrown with knee-high grass and no lake view. We were blanked on Starrett during our morning fishing jaunt on Saturday, but we have had good luck there in the past catching northern pike with spoons. After breakfast, we decided to head over to Frank Lake again, because it’s right next door to Starrett. We ended up having it to ourselves and a family of loons the whole day, and it was beautiful weather with only a light breeze. The loon pair on Frank Lake had chicks, which was amazing! We did accidentally get between them when the adults swam under our canoe – they let us know how much they did not like that, and we worked fast to get out of the way! We fished in the morning and caught both largemouth and smallmouth bass on soft baits, and then found a good spot to eat a shore lunch. Clearly there are a couple of spots where locals frequent. Since it was getting kind of warm, we grabbed our snorkeling gear from the car and explored a bit under the water. Lots of fun sights to see under there!
We had hot dogs for dinner and tried fishing out at the Plum Lake pier, but a rainstorm started coming in and the wind got nasty, so we gave up fast. The whole night stayed rainy and then it stayed gloomy and rainy the next morning as well, so we went into Boulder Junction for breakfast at the Granary (very busy, but good food). It didn’t clear up, so we decided to pack up wet and hit the road.
A classic Wisconsin photo of a man and his boat and his fish.
We headed north over the New Year’s holiday to visit some friends who live in Bemidji, MN. Since it’s a multi-hour driving trip, we decided to fly. Sean had just invested in some ice fishing gear for this winter, but our ice is still relatively thin here in Madison. Bemidji’s ice, on the other hand, was just fine – a good 10 inches on Grace Lake, a smaller lake near our friends’ home. We were able to give a lot of our gear to Tyler (another Wisconsin friend who was driving to Bemidji that same weekend) so we didn’t have to pack up all the ice fishing stuff for the plane.
We’ve fished on Grace Lake before during the summer and fall, and it’s a nice little lake with a lot of bass, northern pike, and perch. I had only caught northern and largemouth on it before, and Sean had caught some rock bass. Tyler’s our serious fishing hobbyist friend who specializes in muskie fishing, and he has had good luck on many occasions at Grace Lake catching many different species. At the bait store, Tyler and Sean asked about spots where there had been good fishing of late, and thus Grace was chosen. Tyler gave Sean the perfect Christmas gift for a budding ice angler: a collapsible ice auger of his very own.
One of my first keeper perch.
I must admit that I have never ice fished before this, and I was pretty skeptical about how much fun it was going to be. I don’t love being cold, and while I do like fishing I like being able to go do something else for a while. So, we packed up a sled (generously supplied by Tyler) as well as our new ice fishing gear and stepped out onto Grace Lake. It was a relatively warm day for a Bemidji winter – about 19F and sunny, with a consistent but not super strong breeze. Sean had purchased an Eskimo 5-sided ice fishing shelter at a steep discount for the occasion, which is insulated and very roomy. It ended up being fairly warm in there from just our body heat, and Sean had purchased a propane heater that we fired up once for a minute or two to provide additional warmth.
We chose a spot not too far away from the landing, estimating about 8 feet of lake depth. There were several ice huts already set up not too far from shore (100 yards or so? I’m terrible at eyeballing distances!) We set to work with drilling a couple of holes in the corners of our shelter (not as hard as I thought it would be), and discovered that the ice was about 10 inches. Tyler left me with his panfish rod and reel, baited with a waxworm, and then he and Sean went out of the shelter to drill a couple of holes for tip-ups. While they were doing that, I got a bite! I couldn’t believe it. Sean and Tyler hurried back (I admit, I was sort of surprised-yelling) just in time to see me haul a small perch out of the hole. After that, it was on. We pulled dozens of perch out of our ice holes, with about 20-25 keepers. The waxworms seemed to be very popular with the local perch population. The water was so clear that you could peer down the hole and see the waxworm on the bottom of the lake. The perch seemed to like small, gentle pick-up jigging action with several seconds in between, but there were times that they were biting pretty reliably on every waxworm.
Getting ready for a fish fry!
The tip-ups were having trouble – they were baited with minnows that kept disappearing without tripping the tip-up. Tyler and Sean really wanted to get a northern on the tip-ups, but our theory is that it’s possible that the hungry perch were stealing the minnows.
We packed it in after a few hours, and Sean spent a long time the next day cleaning all of our catch. We fried up about half of it that day, and it was delicious! I’m pretty thrilled that our first ice fishing expedition turned out to be such a good haul – it’s more perch than I have ever caught, and I hope it bodes well for a good fishing year in 2017!
We took advantage of a really beautiful late fall weekend to explore Partridge Lake, which is in the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest in Vilas County, WI. It’s a small lake with one private property on it, and one campsite.
There is a boat landing on this lake, but it would take some skill to back even a modestly-sized motorboat into this lake due to the tight turns. The landing is sandy and muddy, and very shallow. We saw a jon boat coming out and it looked manageable. If you are going to trailer load or if it’s a cold day, don’t forget your waterproof boots. We got on the water at about 2:00 in the afternoon and made our way over the campsite to unload. The site is not too difficult to get to, but the landing there again is pretty swampy. It does not seem to be a site that sees a whole lot of use – the grass was pretty tall. There are a few spots to put the tent, but the grass does hide a lot of rooty, uneven ground. With the swampy ground near this site, it may be a bit on the buggy side in the summer.
The campsite does not have the standard metal fire ring + grate set-up that we have seen in all other NHAL campsites, but it does have a fire pit with a stone circle. After a quick investigation into the location of the latrine, and then after a longer search, we couldn’t find it. The forest about fifty feet back from the site had clearly been logged pretty recently, so our theory is that the latrine had been destroyed during that process. It made for a little more rustic experience, but we survived. Having a camping trowel handy helped!
Sunrise view from the campsite
The swampy landing did require a little bit of finessing (we had to walk out to the far end of the canoe to get our cooking water, for example), but it was a good site altogether. Very quiet with only the one other property on the lake, but it does seem to be a moderately popular spot for duck hunters and anglers.
We spotted a few loons – one juvenile and one or two adults, and heard coyotes nearby in the evening. The lake itself is moderately clear but pretty shallow and weedy. Even the deeper hole is not overly deep. We fished in the deepest hole of the lake and caught a few perch, which will be added to a fish fry tonight. Good stuff!
We got married on September 10th but decided not to do a honeymoon right away, but I had a conference in Duluth at the end of September so we had a chance for a quick trip. Sean went to college in Duluth and doesn’t take a lot of convincing to go visit, and we both love the town. I did my conference work during the week while Sean went on an exploratory day-trip mission to Little Gabbro Lake to see if it would be suitable for a weekend camping trip. It’s a 200 rod portage in from the parking area to the put-in, and with our not-light canoe (plus a pack for ballast, since I was absent), Sean felt all 200 rods of it. Since I was tied up until about 4pm Friday afternoon and we didn’t want to portage or look for a site in the dark, we decided to switch gears and headed to Sawbill Lake, which is just over 2 hours from Duluth.
By the time we got to Sawbill Campground, the sun was setting and it was getting dark fast. The put-in landing at this campground is very nice and has a wide floating dock, with plenty of space for multiple parties to load/unload, which we quickly did. The nearest two campsites were about a 15 minute paddle away, but they were unfortunately taken. We didn’t relish the idea of looking for other sites on an unfamiliar lake in the dark, so we sadly turned around and headed back to the campground, where we stayed the night.
The Sawbill Lake campground was quite busy when we were there but it was pretty quiet. It was probably busy because it was an unusually nice and warm weekend for early October, with temps projected into the high 60’s and sunny. People seemed to be respectful of each other and of the condition of the campground, and it was clean and well-maintained. I bet it’s got a little more going on in the height of summer. The outfitter at the campground has really modern, clean facilities and it looks like they offer all kinds of services along with groceries, ice, dumpsters, and showers. Several of the sites are reservable (and those were mostly taken), but we did manage to grab a non-reservable site at #9.
Sawbill Campground put-in
We got up before dawn on Saturday and quickly broke down camp and got out onto the lake. We decided to grab the first empty site we came across and claim it, which ended up being 2212, back in a shallow bay. It’s got a lot of trees right along the shoreline, so it’s a little difficult to spot from the bay entrance, but there are two narrow canoe landings on the innermost curve of the bay. I recommend the one on the right-hand side as you approach, as the left-side one has a lot of shallow rocks that do not allow you to get the canoe right up to the landing. The site itself is probably not the best choice in the summer if you can avoid it, as it is low-lying, shady, and due to its location in the back end of a bay does not catch much breeze. There are some boggy areas near by, so with this combo of factors it’s probably very buggy in the summer. It also has only one really good tent pad. You can fit at least 2-3 more tents back there in a pinch, but those pads are pretty rooty and the tents will likely be pretty close to each other. The kitchen area is pretty cramped and would be a little crowded for bigger groups. But for two people on an October day, this site was just fine. We set up our tent, had a little breakfast, and headed back out to go fishing.
Sean’s record smallie
This is a relatively shallow lake, with a lot of rock piles distributed throughout. Sean caught a small northern off of the rocks just outside our campsite bay on a floating rap, and then about 30 minutes later detected a slight wobble on his line and decided to make sure he hadn’t caught a weed. He had not caught a weed, but did manage to reel in the tiniest smallmouth in the lake, who had probably gotten a little territorial with the rap and got a big surprise!
We didn’t catch much else in the morning (I was totally blanked), but we did get a nice up-close view of a beaver doing some work. It was good that we had chosen to grab a site early, because the lake was very busy on Saturday and many of the sites farther north were taken. Unlike many of our trips this year, the weather stayed pleasant and the wind was very calm, so we had a nice easy day of not getting pushed to and fro by the breeze.
We went back to camp and did some reading and took naps – that early morning caught up to us. It was a really pleasant, sunny day and the birch trees were golden and gorgeous. While I was reading my book in the kitchen area, I heard some gurgling noises and was able to peer through the trees to watch a female grouse foraging. Our first grouse sighting! Very cool.
Sawbill walleye
After some dinner we decided to see if sunset fishing was any better. We saw that there seemed to be several people who knew “known spots” for fishing, posting up at specific areas in the lake. We decided we’d paddle troll in those general vicinities (while of course keeping a respectful distance from other fishers). On the far shore across from our bay we started tying into some eating-sized walleye, so I finally got some action! They were striking really well on our natural perch and silver-colored raps (we ended up losing both of those eventually this trip – RIP, lures!). We did end up losing one, but ended up with four good fish on the stringer. We used some paracord to give them a lot of room to run and tied them up at the site. We had purchased ice for the cooler along the north shore, so we were excited about being able to take home our catch.
After a quiet night in the woods, we got up early the next morning. Unfortunately, this was the last day of our short trip and we had a long drive back to Madison in front of us. After a quick oatmeal and coffee breakfast, we packed up and fished our way out, trailing along some very unhappy walleye. Sean caught a slightly larger northern on the way out, and lost his silver rap. My natural perch rap caught on something and lost his action fin, so he’s done as well. After dressing the fish quickly and loading up the car, we headed out.
North shore dining recommendation! We were going to go to Duluth to eat, but it was already 1:30 or so by the time we got to Beaver Bay and we were hungry, so we stopped at Lemon Wolf Cafe. It is a really excellent little spot with a good selection of bottled beer and really tasty food, good coffee, and delicious pie. Stop in if you’re headed through Beaver Bay!
The Turtle-Flambeau Flowage is located in Iron County, WI – pretty close to our usual stomping grounds in the NHAL. It’s maintained by the Wisconsin DNR, and has 66 remote campsites that are water-access only. Like the BWCA, each official site has a fire ring and a pit toilet. Unlike the BWCA, the sites have small signs marking their presence and helpful signs pointing down the correct trail for the toilet. We’re getting married in September and received a new REI Half-dome 2+ tent as an early wedding present (thanks, Dad!), so we had to field test it to make sure it was ship-shape, right? Right.
Day 1: Friday, July 22, 2016 (Madison to Turtle-Flambeau)
Due to a paucity of vacation days, we often opt to leave a little bit early on a Friday for our weekend trips. It’s about a 4 hour drive to most places we have been choosing to go in the northeast part of Wisconsin, but with the longer days in summer that means we are usually okay to drive up, get to a site, and set up while it’s still light out. That’s what we did this time, and it worked well. We got to Murray’s Landing, which is on a very well maintained road just outside Manitowish. The signage for the road from Highway 51 is very clear. The landing is very nice, too. There are dumpsters for garbage and recyclables, and a latrine. There’s plenty of parking, and there were a few cars with trailers already there. The water near the landing is very shallow and does not gain any depth until a few feet out, so be prepared to wade a little bit in order to launch if the water is up.
Like I said, nice sunset.
We got underway about 7:30, and made it to the first campsite, R-40 (I think the R stands for “rustic”). Since it was empty and it was getting late, we snagged it. The site faces west, so there’s a nice sunset view from here. There is lots of open ground at this site, but we chose a pad farther back in the woods, in a more protected spot farther from shore.
Really, the only downside of this site (and this area in general) is that it has an extremely persistent and numerous deerfly population, which we discovered at Murray’s Landing. These things were just everywhere, doing their deerfly thing and circling in droves around our heads. It was a still night, so there was absolutely no breeze to deflect them a little. They are utterly unphased by repellent (we practically bathed in Natrapel). Since it was just about bedtime, we set up our new tent and tucked in for the night just as the mosquitoes descended. Since this site is on a slow-moving body of water and right next to a boggy patch, there are plenty of mosquitoes here. Don’t forget your bugspray on a trip to the Turtle-Flambeau. We did manage to enjoy the sunset for a little while as we tested out our other early wedding present – REI Flexlite chairs. They’re definitely better than sitting on a log. I’m a larger woman and am just near the weight limit suggested by REI, but found that the chair worked well for me. It does sink in soft soil, but generally will settle okay. They fold up and pack down pretty small.
It was a hot night and we hadn’t seen anyone. Sometimes bullfrogs sound like human voices to me when I’m half-asleep, so I thought I was sort of dreaming when I thought I heard a guy talking. It must have been around 11:00 when a man and woman passed through on a boat, having a pretty loud conversation. They sounded so close we thought they were planning to land, but they seemed to just be passing through. After the BWCA, I’m not used to hearing people at remote campsites in the dead of night, so that was pretty unnerving for a few minutes!
Day 2: Saturday, July 23, 2016 (Turtle-Flambeau)
At about 4AM I had an annoying realization. I had forgotten to grab my driver’s license out of my wallet, meaning I was lacking my fishing license. After sleeping in a little after a night of pretty poor sleep, we scraped ourselves of our (roomy! spacious! ventilated!) tent and put some breakfast together. We had a few leftover dehydrated meals from the BWCA trip, so breakfast was salsa, eggs, and beans plus a nice dose of strong coffee. We saw a few fishing boats passing through while we ate. Although Sean says that this is a voluntary no-wake zone, it didn’t seem like the motor boats were really abiding by that. There were plenty of people speeding through pretty quickly.
Thimbleberries galore!
After stopping back at the car for my license, we decided to explore a little bit. The Turtle-Flambeau is a huge area, and we canoed for about 45 minutes past our R-40 site before finding site R-38, which is on a point. We decided to stop there for lunch. The breeze was up on Saturday, and the site was open enough to catch a nice breeze and take care of the bugs for us! The other fantastic thing about this site was the abundance of thimbleberry bushes, along with plenty of red raspberry bushes. If you ever get a chance to eat thimbleberries, friends, go and get ’em! I love them even better than raspberries, and they are pretty much impossible to find unless you stumble upon a wild patch. They just don’t keep well, so they’re generally not commercially available. The bright red ones are ready to snarf.
The unfortunate thing about this site was that its previous occupants had not been great to it. We discovered a mostly-used roll of electrical tape, along with an entire loaf of store-wrapped bread (!?) and plenty of root beer and beer cans in the fire ring. Plus the root beer box. Come on, people. However, if you don’t have ridiculous trash to take care of this would be a nice site to camp on. Plenty of shelter, yet enough exposure to be breezy. There are landings on both sides of the point. I would suggest the landing without the sign on it on the northern side of the point as the better of the two landings – more room, less weedy. There are a couple of decent tent pads.
After a lunch of potato stew, the weather started looking iffy. Upon consulting our phones (there is decent reception in this area), we found out that a pretty significant storm was rolling through Minnesota and heading toward us. We decided to turn around and stick closer to our site in case the weather turned nasty. We had been trolling all day with no luck, but on the way back Sean caught a very fat 15″ smallmouth on his husky jerk lure. That ended up being our only fish caught on the flowage this trip. July is probably not the ideal time to fish – or we may go to the known crappie areas next time we try to fish up here.
Back at the site, the flies were unbearable. We strung up our hammock – a Kammok Roo, which has a bug net that has saved my sanity – and I read/took a nap without bugs to bother me. Sean busied himself with improving the crayfish trap and baiting it with a couple of worms, as we were bereft of other suitable crayfish baits. Turned out a large snapping turtle in the vicinity was also very interested in worms, and poked his head up at us many times to see what we were up to and wondering why we were making it so hard for turtles to have some gosh-darn worms for dinner.
Our own dinner was salsa, rice and beans, plus beef, which I would make again. It started raining gently just after dinner, but with little wind. We had the aerial tarp set up, so we just tucked in underneath it with our chairs and our books. The flies did not bother us under the open tarp. I read later that they are attracted to the highest point, so perhaps us being underneath a higher point helped. I also read advice that you can stick a tall fern or feather in your hat and they’ll circle that instead of your head, which I’ll try to keep in mind to try for next time we deal with deerflies.
This night was muggy and sticky, but drizzly enough that we decided to close the vestibules of the tent’s rain fly. I had a really hard time sleeping, but we did wake up to a nice little thunderstorm around dawn. It tested our new tent a little bit, but we came through just fine with no water leaking in. The area under the vestibules stayed dry, and the fly kept out the water. We put our packs and spare gear under a tarp just outside the tent that was just staked out on the ground, and that all stayed dry too. We’ve made a habit of keeping Emberlit fuel under the tarps as well, in case it rains. There are lots of small pine cones at this site, which make excellent fuel. That and a dry sheet of bark from a downed birch tree, and we didn’t have to use our fuel stove at all over the weekend.
Day 3: Sunday, July 24, 2016 (Turtle-Flambeau, Starrett Lake Campground, Blueberry Lake, Frank Lake)
Our site, R-40, from the water. Surprisingly you can’t see all the deer flies from here.
We slept in again, and packed up slowly after breakfast. Our aerial tarp and rainfly dried out pretty quickly on this breezy day. After packing up, we headed back to the car and headed toward Starrett Lake for lunch. Our last leftover BWCA meal – couscous with pine nuts and veggies – was a nice meal to end on. We grabbed some water from a campground pump, and went to check Blueberry Lake to see if there were any more blueberries available. It seemed that they were all pretty much over/picked already, so we headed out without even getting out of the car.
We decided to check out Frank Lake, which is near Starrett. There is a small craft landing at this quiet lake, but we opted to just shore fish at the landing because it was late in the day. We were down to one bobber, so I fished with our nightcrawlers while Sean cast with various lures. The area near the landing at Frank Lake is just infested with tiny bluegill that grab worms as fast as you can pitch them in the water. Even when they’re tiny, they’re a lot of fun! I did catch a couple of keepers, but with only two decent sized fish at the end of the day we decided to just let them go. The water at the landing is shallow enough to just wade in and stand, and it was very nice to fish and wade in the cool water on a hot day. We will have to come back to this lake another day and fish it more extensively with the canoe. Sean didn’t have any luck with his lure from shore. We decided that my tiny bluegills altogether might get up to the weight of Sean’s smallie from the day before, so we caught equivalent fish by weight.
After a dinner at the Minocqua Brewing Company (who were really not on their best service game that evening, not sure what was happening), we headed home. Of course, we did have a hankering for some ice cream on the way back, so we made a brief detour at Belts’ in Stevens Point on the way back to Madison. They do not mess around with the size of their small brownie sundae! We were both defeated.
With the wedding coming up and summer weekends now at a premium, this is probably my last trip northward for the summer. Sean is heading toward the Manitowish River with some friends in late August. The next trip report probably won’t be till this fall.
Lakes: Seagull River, Saganaga, Zephyr, Swamp, Plume, Ottertrack, Ester, Ashdick
Day 1: Friday, June 24th (Madison to Amnicon Falls)
We tried this last year and it went pretty well, so we tried it again: Rather than take a full vacation day, we took off from Madison around 2:00 in order to get to Amnicon Falls State Park, which is in Wisconsin just south of Duluth, MN. Leaving Madison no later than 2 seems to spare us the a large part of the Friday afternoon traffic nonsense – key to driving sanity! Since we already have all our camping supplies and feel pretty fresh, we can forgo the cost of a hotel room and just stay there. Last year we did our BWCA trip in early September, and Amnicon was utterly deserted except for us. In the height of summer, not so much! We tried to go to bed early because we wanted to get on the road before dawn, but our neighbors were night owls. We also forgot that there’s a really active train track that goes right near the campground, which we did remember from last year the first time we heard a train go through. We might try Pattison State Park next year and see if that’s a little better. We had a great dinner at Thirsty Pagan Brewing, and called it a night.
Day 2: Saturday, June 25th (Amnicon Falls to Zephyr Lake)
We got up early and had a quick breakfast at the Superior Perkins before heading up the North Shore. We made good time, and got to the Tofte Ranger’s Station before they opened at 8AM. Luckily, they have an outdoor restroom facility so we just hung out for about 40 minutes without needed to find a place for a pit stop. The weather was turning really iffy, with dark clouds and a pretty consistent wind. The rangers issued our permit, and we heard from them that there was a thunderstorm passing through the Ely area with pretty strong winds and hail, and that it would be heading down toward the Grand Marais area later that day – near our entry point on the Seagull River! We were also warned that a windstorm the previous week had done a good amount of damage, and that some campsites and portages might have downed trees. We made mental notes to look out for “leaners” – trees that are about to come down – before setting up our tent. By the time we got going up the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais, the sky turned dark. It seemed like it was 9:20 PM, not 9:20 AM! Heavy rain and lightening made for a pretty intense drive, but we made it to the Seagull River put-in at Trail’s End just as the sky was starting to clear up, and we decided that it was safe to put in at around 11:30. We saw a couple coming out who said that Saganaga Lake, the biggest water we’d need to deal with, wasn’t too terrible. We had plastic containers with us that had held sandwiches for the car ride, which we had hoped to dispose of at Trail’s End. We had not realized that it’s a pack-your-own-trash-out campground. We vowed to remember to get rid of any stinky trash before leaving Grand Marais next year. No animal bandits in my car, thanks.
We paddled to American Point and then into the first three bays of Saganaga. Sean caught a medium-sized northern on his new husky jerk lure that he was trolling, which was our only catch that day. The weather was starting to feel iffy again, and there are only four sites in the bays. All of them seemed to be taken, which put us in a little bit of a tough spot. We could portage into Zephyr, which only has one site, or head toward the Monument portage and hope the Ottertrack site on the other side wasn’t taken… if that was the case, then it would mean at least one more portage into Ester or another 1.5 hour paddle to the other end of Ottertrack lake. We asked the guys camping at site 338 (who were out for a paddle) if they had seen anyone around Zephyr, and they said no. We rolled the dice on Zephyr, and lucked out! There’s a little portage there, and we started to hear thunder just as we were getting underway toward our site. Luckily, it’s a pretty quick little paddle.
Zephyr Lake sunset view from the campsite
We set up our tent and got our new CCS tarp up. We had experimented with tarp earlier this year, but weren’t quite happy with the set up at the time. I purchased Cliff Jacobson’s Forgotton Skills video before our trip, which has a really helpful piece about proper tarp set-up, and it was well worth it. After a quick nap, we decided to eat and get the camp a little more homey as the rain had stopped. A nearby birdcall revealed a pileated woodpecker nest in the dead tree right above our tent! There were two babies who were leaning out, very excited to see mom and dad bringing home dinner. We brought two bear barrels of food along on this trip, which are very improved by carrying cases. We have two brands of bear barrel, one from Garcia and the other from Counter Assault. It’s easier than hanging the food, and nothing has messed with them yet. We store them far away from the tent area (usually far down the latrine trail). Of note – the barrels (especially the Counter Assault) are not waterproof and will take on water in a heavy rain, as we discovered on what was luckily our last day two years ago. We solved this by storing ours under a small piece of plastic painter’s tarp.
The Zephyr campsite is up there among my very favorites that I’ve visited in the BWCA. It’s all on its own on this lake, so you have the whole place to yourself. The ground is pretty sandy, and there are plenty of shady trees and some open areas. There’s also a great view of the sunset from this site, and there’s the opportunity for a nice breeze. Unfortunately, whoever was at the site before us did not practice good stewardship. We found all kinds of little pieces of litter, including bullet casings, fishing line, wrappers, rope, and zip ties. It seems that they also cut down a small live pine tree. We packed out as much as we could, but it was really disappointing that we had to do so.
Day 3: Sunday, June 26th (Zephyr Lake – Day trip to Swamp and Plume Lakes)
We got up to the sounds of really excited woodpecker babies. We ate a half-portion of the huge dehydrated breakfast I had put together: dehydrated eggs, rice, and salsa. It was a very windy day, and we ended up using our fuel stove rather than our beloved Emberlit stove. After breakfast, we decided to try our hands at fishing. On Zephyr, Sean caught a smallie. We decided to try our luck over on Plume Lake, which has an unofficial portage from Swamp. In Swamp, Sean caught another northern on his husky jerk, and I caught the world’s tiniest smallmouth on my crawler harness, which every fish species in the BWCA seems to be attracted to. The unofficial portage into Plume lake is pretty well traveled an in good shape – better shape than some of the official portages. We stopped there for a lunch of granola bars and Landjäger sausage (which is like, the ultimate yummy traveling food for the hungry paddler). We actually bring our bear barrels with us on our day trips, as they’re not too much extra to carry, and then we have our food right there for lunch.
Sean’s goal in life is to catch all five major BWCA game fish species in one trip. He hit four last year, and was only eluded by the (fairly rare for the BWCA) largemouth bass. The others are: smallmouth bass, northern pike, walleye, and lake trout. Plume Lake reportedly has largemouth bass in it, so that was our mission. I lost something invisible right away, which we will count as the largemouth bass because there certainly weren’t any others that we saw. Sean caught another northern in Plume as we headed out – the wind was making things pretty difficult. Back on the Swamp side of the portage, we decided it was an opportune moment to pump water. I lazily cast my crawler harness while that was happening, and fully unexpectedly had a big hit on my lure! Of course, the wind was blowing us around, Sean was trying to get to his camera without dropping our water, and I was fully engaged in fighting this big whatever-it-was, so we had a couple of nice drifts into some spiderweb-filled deadfall on the shore. Fun! It ended up being worth it, and was the biggest fish I caught the whole trip – a very nice 22″ walleye. We fished our way back to Zephyr and cleaned our fish on a convenient point across the lake, wrapped it in foil, and cooked it over a campfire. We eventually decided that our next fish would be filleted. More work on the front end, but the cooked result would be better. We had couscous and rehydrated veggies for a side, which worked nicely.
We had seen a big snapping turtle hanging out in the water near our campsite shore, and this evening we were “treated” to the site of two of them mating in the shallow water just offshore while we were eating our dinner. Ah, love! (We made a mental note to give any of our tied off fish plenty of room to run with all those snappers around!)
My big walleye, just before lunch.
Day 4: Monday, June 27th (Zephyr Lake)
Today started windy and rainy, so we were glad that we had figured out the aerial tarp situation. We left some twiggy branches under the tarp so they wouldn’t get wet, and thus had plenty of fuel to make coffee and cook some oatmeal on the Emberlit. I added walnuts to the oatmeal, which was deemed “good” by Sean. Nice protein and texture addition that I’ll continue. Coffee was accompanied with Bailey’s Irish Cream, and all was right with the universe.
We went fishing for a little bit. Sean had a classic northern strike right near the shoreline – boiled right when his lure hit the water! We nabbed a smallie and a couple more northern before breaking for lunch, which was a potato stew. I have had a lot of success with dehydrated ground beef, so I tried ground turkey with the same technique but with middling results – it was a little too chewy for our tastes (but perfectly edible). Beef would go better with the potato stew in the future.
After lunch, we went out fishing again and Sean caught a walleye with a wonky parasite on its tail. We tied it with a long length of paracord to give it room to run from the snapping turtles, and left it till dinner. Wonky parasite notwithstanding, it was filleted (lesson learned!), and chunked. We boiled it up and then added the pieces to spicy quinoa and mixed veggies for a yummy meal. After our early dinner, Sean monkeyed with the tarp a bit to make it into an A-frame over the hammock. We got the bug netting onto the hammock, and I settled in with my book for some cozy hang time.
Since we had some light left and the drizzle was starting to clear up, we decided to go out to try fishing one more time. I had a large silver rappela on, which seemed interesting to a few of the walleye around the fish cleaning point. That plus the amazing Zephyr sunset really put a cap on a pretty nice, relaxing day. We decided to pack up the next morning and see if we could get the first site on Ottertrack on the other side of the Monument portage. If not, we’d portage into Ester and camp there.
Day 5: Tuesday, June 28th (Zephyr to Ottertrack)
Sean and his new frenemy
We weren’t in any huge hurry to pack up on this lovely day, but we eventually made it into the canoe with all of our stuff, and headed toward the Monument portage after finishing our eggs and salsa breakfast meal. We met a guy and his wife coming out the opposite direction. He warned us about some mud on the portage trail, but more importantly told us that the Ottertrack site that we were interested in was empty when he passed it an hour before. The Monument trail ended up being more than fine. I remember doing this portage my first time in the BWCA and thinking it was such a pain, but it really is a well-maintained trail with a nice landing on both ends. There aren’t too many muddy spots, and the ones that exist are simply not a big deal compared to the mid-calf deep (and higher!) mud pits that you might have to contend with. We’ve gotten to the point where we can do a portage with two trips (the multiple trip noobie experience is why I hated Monument my first trip in the BWCA). I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to do a one-trip portage unless we get different packs – the ones we have are meant for backpacking, and you just can’t portage a canoe while you’re wearing one. They sit too high above your head. However, we’re both fine with doing two runs over a portage if we’re hauling all our stuff. Fishing trips, we’ll just do one trip over a portage.
We found our favorite Ottertrack site empty, so we decided to grab it. We stayed here in 2014, which was my first BWCA trip. At the time, I had not appreciated that this site is sort of a key to happiness for a weary traveler. In 2014 and 2015, we traveled from the Seagull River entry point to this site. The first year, it was empty and we camped there, and there was much rejoicing. The second year, it was taken. If it’s taken, you’ve just committed yourself to going over the Ester portage (more on this portage later), going over the steep Gijikiki portage, or traveling another 1.5 hours or so down to the other end of Ottertrack to get to a cluster of sites there. Or go back over the Monument from whence you came, and look for a site in Saganaga. It really means rest, or another few hours of work after what might have been a long day. (In 2015, when it was taken, we muttered curses and paddled toward the other end of Ottertrack, after which I was completely tapped out.) This time we were coming from the much closer Zephyr site, so we decided we could roll the dice and have some energy for other options if it was already taken.
We saw many blueberries at this site, particularly on the ridge just to the southeast behind the site. Sadly for us, they were still green. The next few weeks will be awesome for blueberries at this site, though!
We had cheesy lasagna and Parmesan for lunch, which was pretty good – just a generic store brand meal-in-a-box with dehydrated additions from me. Dinner was taco mac ‘n’ cheese, which may have been the Annie’s brand. Less salt, but also less flavor. We’ll do the cheap stuff next time to really feel luxurious.
We did end up doing our only snorkeling expedition this day. Sean found a lure with a leader on it, and was psyched because he had lost a leader the day before. We also found a cool engraved silver fork with a cabin and woods scene on it, but forgot to take a picture and decided to leave it undisturbed. Just a couple of smallmouth were hanging out, though we did see a lot of little fry running around.
Day 6: Wednesday, June 29th (Fishing trip to Ester and Ashdick)
Lunch stop at the northern site on Ashdick Lake
We left for Ester mid-morning, after a breakfast of oatmeal and walnuts plus coffee. The Ester portage is very close to our Ottertrack site. We waited for a couple to come through from the other side, and got going. We used dealie bobs for the first time to secure the fishing rods and paddles to the canoe, which Sean carried, and I carried our bear barrels and day pack. That worked pretty well, but did add a few pounds to the overall weight of our heavy aluminum canoe. The Ester portage is also not quite the same level of wonderful easiness that the Monument affords. There are a few spots of ankle-deep mud and some unstable rocky areas. We decided to go right to Ashdick to try for some largemouth. Sean caught a decent-sized smallmouth just near the campsite by the Ashdick portage with his deep taildancer. The Ester to Ashdick portage wasn’t super fun either, with the same mud and rocky bits (lots of nice fist-sized ankle-breakers). We ended up being okay with not having done either of these portages with all of our stuff the day before, but agreed that they were doable. Just not super pleasant.
It ended up being a really windy, sunny day. Sean caught a northern with a spoon near the northernmost Ashdick site, which was about the last fish we caught that day. We decided to stop for lunch here, and thought this site was actually pretty nice. It had some shady spots, and a nice rocky front porch area that goes all the way down to the lake for some good shore fishing spots. The fire area is exposed, but the tent pads are pretty sheltered. Someone left their compass behind on the fire grate, so I now have a new compass. We had a yummy lunch of tomato, beef, and couscous (which is one of my favorite meals), and lazed for a little bit… before an unexpected raincloud dumped water on us for a few minutes! It blew over fast, but the wind really started picking up. We decided to head back to Ester. Keeping an eye on the increasingly threatening-looking clouds, we decided to scrap an idea of heading toward Rabbit from Ester and just head back toward our Ottertrack site. The waves were really starting to rock, and those clouds were starting to look a lot like thunderheads.
At the other side of the Ester portage, we looked over Ottertrack and made a game-time decision to book it the 10 minutes back to our site. As we left the portage, we heard thunder. I saw lightening in the distance. We hit the gas – and laid flat out for our site. In retrospect, we probably could have turned around and headed back to the portage, but we ultimately made it back to the site in one piece just as the rain starting to pour. We’re lucky, and we would not risk it again next time. We wait out the storm in our cozy tent.
After the weather passed, Sean set up the aerial tarp again (so nice to have!), and we made mac ‘n’ cheese again for dinner. After dinner, we went back out with the canoe to fish a little bit. No fish, but we did get rained on! The plus side, we got a great view of a really pretty triple rainbow over our favorite campsite.
Day 7: Thursday, June 30th (Ottertrack to Saganaga Lake/Englishman Island)
Buttoned in on windy Englishman Island
We had a windy exit from Ottertrack in the morning after we packed up. We stopped to point out the Ester portage to some people who were nosing around that area, and settled in at a steady pace behind another larger group in front of us. We eventually caught up with them at on the Ottertrack side of the Monument Portage, where they had decided to break for lunch. That would have been fine – it was a group with little kids – but they had their stuff spread all over the portage landing and seemed like they were in no hurry to move out of our way. There’s a lot of room at this portage landing, but there was literally no place for us to land and unload, plus their group size would have put us over the limit of individuals allowed at the portage. I probably would be a little more forgiving had they made any effort to hurry, but they seemed happy to hang out for upwards of 30 minutes.
They eventually all got over, and we were on our way. We had thought to stay in one of the Saganaga bays on the way out, and fished our way through those. All of the sites were taken already. The first bay of Saganaga really opens up into bigger water, and the wind was up. We didn’t really have much of a choice other than to head toward American Point, which has four sites on it. We stopped on shore for a quick break, downed some peanut butter and tortillas, and gritted our teeth. It took us about 90 minutes to get up to American Point, with a stiff breeze from the north and some pretty nerve-wracking waves. We faced north pretty much the whole time, moving sideways tight to shore in case we capsized. There’s a small island about halfway toward the end of the point where we took a break in the lee, and beheld the not-very-comforting sight of a buzzard circling around the trees there. By the time we got to the first site on American Point, it was clear that it was taken too. There was a guy on shore who offered for us to come up and rest for a few minutes, and we gladly took him up on it. (Thanks Rick from New Richmond, WI!) He said he wasn’t sure if the other sites were taken, but that we could stay at that site if we needed to. We decided we’d press on and check the other sites and see what the options were.
And the other three American Point sites were… taken! American point is near the outfitters’ drop-off/take back point, so we kind of figure that everyone decided to stay close to that area. But every site from the tip of American point to the last bay of Sag was taken – if we had been going in and hoping for any of these sites, we would have been screwed. We decided we were equidistant between Rick from New Richmond’s site and more island campsite options, so we decided to press on. Englishman Island seemed empty, so we chose the less-exposed southern site of the island and gratefully made landfall.
This is a pretty exposed campsite on a small island with two sites on it. The island is picked clean of any deadfall for a fire, so if you’re staying here and hope for a fire you’ll need to forage elsewhere. There is a decent amount of poison ivy around, so keep an eye out. It’s not high on my list of desirable sites, having not many sheltered areas for tent pads and just not a lot of shelter in general. We set up the tarp and it helped block the wind a little. Fortunately, our stuff stayed pretty dry under the canoe, having been covered with our rain tarps throughout the journey. The clouds started breaking up in the west, although the wind stayed up most of the night. We had unstuffed peppers for dinner and congratulated ourselves on our hard work, even though we didn’t catch any fish after paddle trolling for several hours that day.
We packed a tight ship, with tarps over the packs on a windy day.
Day 8: Friday, July 1st (Exit to Seagull River)
We slept in a little bit after our hard work the day before, and got up around 8:00. Since it was our last day and we had a little extra coffee, we got an extra-strong pot this morning. After the last oatmeal meal was consumed, we broke camp. The aerial tarp, tent, and the plastic tarp over the tent had kept us pretty warm and wind-proofed the night before. We had a slight breeze from the north again, but it was sunny and pleasant. We fished our way through the islands, the only sad part being that Sean lost a taildancer to a deep snag. Almost made it out alive, little dude! After our first year of getting lost in these islands, we had made it through with no problems in 2015, and did great again this year. It was very nice to have the wind behind us, so we didn’t have to work too hard.
We hit our landing around noon, and packed up the car pretty quickly. We decided to eat lunch in the Trail’s End parking lot. Their camping area has a map that indicates a picnic area, but that appears to have been entirely replaced by the landing/loading dock area. Some sort of picnic area would be very welcome at this campground! Sean went up to the store to see what kinds of stuff they had for sale, and I heated up our Zatarain’s Spanish rice and cut up our last two Landjäger to go in them – it goes so well with Spanish rice, kind of like a hard andouille. By the time the rice meal was ready, Sean had come back with a real treat – some cold Coor’s from the store! I’m usually not a fan, but boy did that taste great! We toasted our success, cleaned up our stuff, and headed to Duluth.
We stayed at the Black Bear Casino and Hotel in Carlton, just outside Duluth, to avoid paying holiday weekend room rates in town. We’ve stayed there before, but might not again. I’m usually not overly picky about hotels, but the BB is more run down every year. Neither of us generally loves casinos, either.
Day 9: Saturday, July 2nd (Duluth to Madison, via Minocqua)
Since we weren’t in a hurry to get home right away, we took the scenic route home. We crossed the northern part of the state via Ashland, and went to Blueberry Lake in the NHAL. Blueberry Lake is aptly named, and now that we were a little farther south than our Ottertrack site, we found and picked plenty of ripe blueberries. After a quick stop for lunch at the Minocqua Brewing Company (try their wild rice beer!), we headed back home.
Conclusions
We did a lot of comparing between our late-June timing of this year and our late August/early September timing of our earlier two trips. We really prefer the later time frame. The weather is still generally pretty good (although you can never predict!), the bugs aren’t so bad, and most importantly there aren’t as many people. I had never been there in high traveling season, where many of the sites in the main corridors were taken. We don’t have children, so using that to our advantage and going up after most of the schools have started seems like it’s a good strategy.
We tried two new kinds of repellent this year that seemed to work pretty well – Permethrin (which is applied to clothing prior to the trip, just do it outside and keep the clothes well away from pets until they dry), and Natrapel, which is applied to skin. I found no ticks on myself, and Sean only found one climbing up his leg after a portage. I don’t think we’ll be 100% bite free, but this stuff helped a lot. Last year on our September trip most of the bugs had died off, and I don’t think I applied bug spray once! Heaven.
Toying with the idea of putting in at a new spot next year. Already dreaming of the next trip!
We left Madison at about 4:30 PM, hitting some slow traffic due to intermittent road construction all the way to Minocqua. The traffic cleared up after Portage, but slowed down every time we hit a construction zone. Although the weather was supposed to be pretty clear, it became apparent by the black skies and lightening on the horizon that we were driving right into a thunderstorm that was over Minocqua. A quick check of the phone confirmed that hail-producing thunderstorms were blowing through just then, so we decided to take shelter in the Minoqua Wal-Mart. I had forgotten to grab my fleece jacket on my way out the door, so I took the opportunity to snag a sweatshirt. It’s blue and says “Minocqua” on it, and I am absolutely not worried about it getting trashed.
We set up in the rain, which isn’t ideal but something we’ve done a time or two before. We are planning a trip to the BWCA near the end of June, so we’re using these weekend NHAL trips to knock off the rust. And wow, we have a lot of rust to remove. We forgot: My fleece, one of my prescriptions, the precious Bailey’s Irish cream for my coffee (NOOO), and a drying cloth for dishes. None of these were catastrophic, but all could have been avoided had I not been rushing around grabbing a few things at the last minute.
Happily, we slept pretty well as it was warmer out. The peepers were out and peeping, and we saw about 20 frogs hanging out at the edge of the water by the lights of our flashlights.
Saturday:
We breakfasted on coffee, oatmeal, and dried fruit, which is one of my favorite camp breakfasts. Not only is it nice and warm on a cold morning, it’s filling and really gets things going, if you know what I mean. I think I’ll add some cashews or almonds to oatmeal in the future for more protein.
Nobody was at the Manitowish River, where we put in above the dam. We bought minnows in Minocqua the night before, and I caught a crappie with those within about 10 minutes. We decided to head to Manitowish River Site 13, which is a favorite of ours as it’s relatively farther away from the first three campsites above the dam. The downside is that there are some cabins across the river from site 13, but they’ve generally been pretty quiet. Sean went ahead and cleaned the crappie and iced it while I put lunch together. We had taco mac and cheese, which I think I’ll try making with boxed mac ‘n’ cheese in the future. (I had to cheat a little and use penne and powdered cheese which was edible but not amazing.) We poked around the site just a little to see if we could find any morels, but nothing showed up. We put the crappie head and guts into Sean’s new crawfish trap to see if we could get anything in that, but ended up empty at the end of the day when we picked it up on the way home.
The wind really picked up in the afternoon, and we were unfortunately reminded of a big problem this flowage has in the spring: when the weeds haven’t grown in , you can’t see the channel very well. This flowage was created when the Manitowish River was dammed, and the flooded area includes a lot of stump fields, many of which are just out of sight under water. Those, plus the wind, meant we had a couple of pretty dicey moments of being hung up on stumps. Undaunted, we pressed on to try and find Manitowish River Site 12, which we had not yet been able to find. Across from our lunch spot at site 13 is a small channel that leads to the upper part of the flowage, and the very nice site 12 is all by itself up there. No development, either! On the way to 12, we saw seven trumpeter swans farther up the river. They took off when we got closer, and we watched them gain altitude over the water for some time. They are enormous birds, and I’m glad to admire them from a distance.
After stopping for a quick break at site 12, we decided to turn around and head back. The wind was pretty chilly, and we weren’t having any luck fishing other than the one morning crappie. We had some dinner and warmed up at Aqualand, which serves pretty decent pizza and has a good brewpub. After that, we headed over to Blueberry Lake, which Sean assures me is “full of panfish.” I have not yet caught a single panfish in that little lake, and this time was no exception. So, we decided to check out Emerald Lake, which is within walking distance from the Firefly campground but relatively unknown and generally good largemouth territory for us. Our intrepid Honda Accord bounced its way down the fire road to the walk-in trail for that lake, but we found that it was occupied by some teenagers hauling out a jon boat. Not wanting to fight our way past each other, we decided to put the canoe on Firefly, which we didn’t have any luck in. By this time I was pretty chilly, so we decided to pack it in for the day and go build ourselves a nice warm fire at camp.
The temps got all the way down to the high 30’s that night, which is about my limit. Sean can pretty much sleep at any temperature.
Sunday
We slept a little late, so fishing early didn’t quite happen. After our same breakfast of (black! ARGH!) coffee and oatmeal + dried fruit, we broke camp. I noticed that we need to replace the interior tarp in our tent, as it’s starting to smell a little funky. One of the most helpful things we ever did to keep our tent dry was to line the interior of the tent with a plastic painter’s tarp. Any moisture that wicks in from the outside is stopped by that tarp; it just needs some replacing once in a while.
We decided to try going back to Emerald Lake, and found it empty of teenagers and jon boats. We could see largemouth cruising around from the shore, and decided that we’d bring in the canoe and try our luck. With bobbers and worms, we caught several smaller largemouth, as well as a couple of nice sized pumpkinseeds, which we put on the stringer. Sean tried out his topwater frog lure, which is fun and got some hits, but it doesn’t have a great hook rate. We decided to paddle troll back to the landing, and were almost back when Sean hooked into the biggest fish of the trip – a 13.5″ largemouth, which struck on a 4″ rappela. That seems to be about the bigger end of the size in this lake – not a ton of monster bass, but a good number of fun mid-sized ones.
We ate lunch at the Firefly Lake picnic area, where we re-hydrated some beef, instant rice, and ratatouille, which was my attempt to combine and get rid of a few things. It ended up being kind of bland, but we had grabbed some season salt for any possible crawfish prep and we jazzed it up a little bit with that. And by 4:30, we were on the road home.
Tippy Canoe Tales 