Low to mid 50s, Mostly cloudy with rain

The group got together the night before out big trip at my Parent’s home in Northern Wisconsin. There was the classic last minute scrambling and organizing of gear before we got a few hours of sleep. The morning dawned early for the 4 of us. We had some breakfast then headed out around 4:30am. The drive up was fairly uneventful and smooth. The guys slept for a while; then we caught up on life and had some good conversations for the last leg of the journey. We got to Grand Marais around 8:15and stopped by the Ranger station to grab our permit. We then made our mandatory stop at one of our group favorites, “World’s best Donuts” in Grand Marais. We had our fill of pastry goodness and were on our way up the Gunflint.

We were paddling out to a light wind and partly cloudy skies. The wind was not too overbearing but enough to be a nuisance. The temperature was in the high 50s so ideal for portaging and travel. After a couple portages and paddling we met up with my brother and his group on our destination lake for the day and made camp next to them. They went up a few days earlier than us but were heading back out before we would. However, we were able to overlap trips a bit and got to hang out some which was great. They reported that they had been catching decent size walleye but it was overall pretty slow. However, they reported the day before that they had caught 50+ smallmouth bass per canoe in a morning of fishing. My brother said he had caught his personal best smallie at 22-23" he said and it was over 6lbs. That got me pretty pumped to get on some good smallmouth fishing.

The wind was really picking up at this point so we got camp set up and just relaxed for a while. It was completely overcast with 15 to 25mph wind and on and off drizzle. We skirted the shoreline as the wind lessened some to go try fishing a nearby smaller lake hoping we would find some calmer water. It was a little better but not a whole lot. We managed a couple smallies, and a Northern in a hour and a half but the wind made fishing very difficult. We headed back to camp and played some cards and had some more good conversations about life and where God was taking each of us in our journeys. As the rain clouds moved in the wind slowly started to lessen while the rain picked up. Fishing is my number 1 priority while up in the Boundary waters so I prepared my gear to head out for an evening of fishing.

Everyone was pretty tired from the day and with the rain no one was interested in going out with me so I headed out solo. I headed out towards a spot we had caught Walleye in the past looking for the rock to mud transition points with a rock and a rope for anchor. I tried a couple spots with little luck. I decided to troll a Lindy as I was not sure the water temperature and where the fish would be located at this stage of June. I caught one Smallmouth but that was it. There was still enough wind to be a pain while paddling solo as well as a light drizzle. I headed over to my brother’s group as they were anchored on a reef in 8 fow fishing slip bobbers. In a couple hours as a group we managed around 10 fish. Mostly Walleye and a couple Smallmouth. At dark the bite shut off so we headed in for the evening. I had some late supper then headed to bed for the night excited to be in canoe country even with the crappy weather to start our trip.