Lakes: Amoeber, Ashdick, Ester, Hanson, Knife, Knife (South Arm), Ottertrack, Saganaga, Seagull, Swamp
Campsites (as numbered on Paddle Planner): 333 (Ashdick); 325 (Hanson); 2006 (Amoeber); 397 (Saganaga)
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
Photos by Sean, full album here.
Tippy Canoe Tales 