We travelled up the day before, spending the night in the Williams and Hall bunkhouse. Morning brought us a pancake breakfast in the Williams and Hall dining room and shortly after we were on our way to Birch via the tow boat. Our route out to Knife lake was well worn and quite busy, with us crossing paths with several groups at every portage. After arriving on Knife we broke out the trolling rods to no avail. We stopped at Isle of Pines briefly, but seeing as we were hoping to hit Thunder Point yet this day we didn’t hang around for a very long time. Unfortunately we didn’t really take into account the queue that can form at these portages - we spent a fair amount of time waiting our turn. Fortunately, everyone was really respectful and despite the additional waiting, things were flowing quite smoothly even with the large number of people moving through. We were approaching Thunder Point around 4pm, so we decided to try and find a campsite nearby and hike up it the following morning. We lucked into an empty Campsite 1460 - a beautiful site right away! Our group had Sean and Jon in tents, with James and I rolling with hammocks. Plenty of space for everyone at this site. We fished the bay behind us after dinner and I managed a fair few nice smallmouth bass, a really nice pike, and a walleye! All sent back swimming along with the bass my brother caught and we retired for the night.

With a leisurely amount of time spent breaking camp, we loaded the canoes and headed to Thunder Point. Beautiful view from up there, well worth the hike up and time spent! It was nearly noon before we started on our second leg of the trip to SAK. It was shortly before 2pm when we arrived to check out Campsite 1433 - it was nice but with it being a little early in the day we decided to check out a couple other sites despite our previous rule of “if the site is good, take it”. Campsite 1431 was also open, but we liked the previous one better so we pushed to check out the last site on this island. Unfortunately, it was taken, so we looped around the backside to check out some other sites on our way back to 1433. After the next few sites either being taken or not as good as 1433 we headed around the point and were swiftly reminded why breaking the campsite rules are bad - it was now occupied. 1431 - Occupied. There were a number of canoes circling around looking for sites, it was quite the parade of nature tourists just like us. We headed across in an increasing wind to Campsite 1459 and started unloading when we noticed a pretty large widowmaker looming over the site. A quick push against it easily moved the daily large diameter birch tree, and so after a quick vote we decided to abandon the site with possible rain overnight and try for the last site that we had checked that was empty - Campsite 1435. Luckily it was open and we started setting up camp. Our mixed bag of Draumrs and tents proved to be fortunate for us - there were two OK tent pads and a couple of very workable hammock spots. Lesson learned - if you come to a site in your target area that will work, don’t get too picky!

This was the beginning of our base camping portion of the trip, and it came at a perfect time. My lower back was feeling awfully sore after paddling in the wind for the majority of the day before so a lighter, slower paced day was very welcome. Our rough itinerary had several day trips available to us, and top of that list was Eddy Falls. A short paddle away from our campsite, we landed below the falls and took the quick hike up the portage to the falls itself. Beautiful! We spent quite a bit of time hanging out and enjoying the falls before setting out to fish below it. It wasn’t long until we had a nice pike, a walleye, and a smallmouth on the stringer. Another short paddle back and it was time to fillet the fish and settle in for a nice meal of Cajun seasoned fish with a side of rice. Just a perfect little day, taking it easy and letting our bodies rest.

We awoke and felt rejuvenated after our relatively easy day before. My brother and I were actively hunting for a trip-wide BWCA Grand Slam of walleye, pike, smallmouth, and lake trout and I already had three of the four boxes ticked off. Lake trout aren’t common outside of a couple of places where we are from, so we decided that today’s trip was going to be to Sema Lake as we heard there are numerous trout in there, if not particularly big ones. The question we pondered for the morning was whether or not we wanted to day trip it or pack up camp a day earlier than we initially planned and then take a scenic route that started at Sema. After consulting the map and ruling out heading through the numerous portages to exit via Ensign, we opted to still go through Sema, the connected ponds, then through Spoon to Bonnie and out to Knife.

We packed up camp and headed out, with the idea of checking out the singular campsite on Sema and pushing on if we needed to. The portage was a pretty rocky 140 rods, and we feel like if it had rained that it would be a much more difficult portage. Luckily it was pretty dry and not a bad portage. Campsite 1420 isn’t a real campsite. Not a single real tent pad, no real place for a hammock, so we instantly ruled it out. The winds were creating some pretty solid waves, but James and Sean managed to troll for a couple of trout. Jon and I tried for a few passes, but as it neared 2pm and knowing we had several portages between us and the next campsites on Spoon we headed out.

The first short portage took us to a boggy area, with a pretty mucky landing. Not too bad, and the bog was an interesting change in scenery. The second little portage brought us below a quite long beaver dam that we had to bonus portage over into the pond. This little unnamed pond we ended up calling Beaver Metropolis. The beavers are certainly building their own little civilization here, and it’s quite the sight to see the work they are putting in. It took us a while to find the entrance to the portage - it is just to the south of the inflow from the creek on the west end. After heading through the slightly overgrown portage we landed in Spoon. It’s a beautiful lake! We checked out Campsite 1419 - a super cool looking site but no real hammock spots led us to Campsite 1418. The canoe landing situation is not great, but the site was very cool. Again, our two hammock two tent setup was in our favor here. Spoon is a beautiful lake, and the beaver ponds were fun. We didn’t see a soul after we left SAK and that was pretty neat, and this day was probably my favorite despite not doing a whole lot of fishing.

It turns out we are super slow at breaking camp, but our plan allowed us to take a pretty leisurely pace. We did want to get down towards the west end of Knife around noon to start looking for a site to ensure we found one, so we travelled out via Bonnie this morning. Once on Knife, the trolling spoon went over the side of the boat and we headed west. After a couple of miles on Knife we paused behind an island to eat a snack and cast around. A few casts in and BAM - fish on. I brought a nice trout to the boat, and finished off my trip-wide BWCA Grand Slam! On the stringer he went, and we headed further west and picked up Campsite 1249, which was a pretty decent site. After dropping off our stuff, it was back out to try and catch the rest of dinner if we could. A nice smallie went on the stringer despite some tougher fishing, and after a while I saw a nice walleye floating right between the boat. I dropped my jig down, and the canoe drifted to obscure the fish but he almost instantly took it and we had our third species on the stringer! It was getting close to time to start up dinner, and a last cast near the campsite yielded me a decent little pike - giving me a BWCA Grand Slam all in one day! Overall I caught only 6 fish all day, but managed to luck in to the slam anyway. We landed the canoes and got to work filleting up the four fish for a nice big meal. A pretty leisurely day, but one that at least for me was incredibly exciting.

We packed up camp a little faster this time, and got ready to do most of the portages back to the Birch tow pickup location. Jon was my boat partner for the day, and when we got there he decided he was going to take his pack and the canoe to try and single portage - at least for himself. Challenge accepted, I picked up my pack and the rest of our boat’s gear. I doubt I could have done it with a full food barrel, but Jon and I single portaged all the way back. Having one boat single portaging made weaving through the traffic much easier, and despite doing double portages Sean and James crushed it as well and we made excellent time to Birch. We ended up at Campsite 1280 - greeted by an awesome swarm of dragonflies eating up gnats right over the firepit! After dropping off gear, we once again set out to add fish to our dinner. We caught an okay number of fish and whipped up a nice final dinner in the BWCA with whatever was left in the food barrels. Evening fishing was slow but fun as well. Overall, a solid day that set us up with a nice short paddle to the final portage.

Our tow pickup time was 10:30am, and we made it on the water around 8:45 with only a mile to paddle to the 7 rod portage. Out came the rods, and we enjoyed some really great fishing on the way out, with several nice smallmouth biting to give us a farewell to the BWCA. James only needed a pike to complete a Grand Slam but none were cooperative, and we were promptly picked up by the boat and headed towards home. We couldn’t help but marvel at the weather, the relative lack of bugs, and the amazing time we had. Aside from a totally avoidable bit of campsite anxiety on Day 2 I don’t think our luck could have been better.

A few notes on gear that we took out of this trip:

The 4 liter Platypus gravity filter did absolute monstrous amounts of work for us. Just make sure to backflush as directed - we got a little lazy early on in the trip and it definitely slowed down until we gave it a thorough backflush.

Permethrin and Thermacells were allstars this trip. Three of us never took out our head nets, even on the portages so the bugs weren’t bad, but we saw two ticks the whole trip and even when the bugs started to head towards camp, shortly after the Thermacells were lit up they disappeared.

We were given a Minnesota II and a Basswood 17 canoe, and traded canoes and partners throughout the trip. I’m glad Williams and Hall set us up like this as we got to experience a couple very different styles. The Basswood 17 was definitely slower, but far more comfortable. The Minnesota II was quick and tracked very well, but was hard on the knees due to the narrower profile.

For the most part, we were really happy with our gear. I never brought out the drift sock or the mosquito tent I had packed, though if we had stayed on Sema I would have probably used the drift sock, and if the bugs had been out in force and overpowered the Thermacell I’m sure we would have used the tent. I would probably reconfigure my clothes and bring a better variety of food, but overall super happy with this loadout, especially as a first-timer.

It was a bucket list trip, and one that I think would be hard to replicate the luck we had with fishing, bugs, and weather. Amazing.