I’ve got a few funny memories that popped into my head recently while looking at some maps that I have made notes on over the years. The first funny story I want to share involves a portage, where most comedic moments in the BW occur for me. My dad and I were nearing the end of a week long loop and after a fifteen minute search, located our next portage from the Boulder River to Lake Agnes (the 115 rod portage that dumps you into the N.E. bay of Agnes). My dad is in the bow, so he’s going to be the first man out as the landing is too narrow and choked with swampy reeds to get parallel to “shore”. I say “shore” because it all looked suspicious, it all looked like muskeg. I tell my dad, “hey, when you get out, step on those logs someone laid out across the swampy path”. My old man responds with, “Those ankle turning rollers? No way!”. As he swings his left leg over the left rail, it touches the “ground” and just keeps going. He quickly swings his right leg over, to try and stop himself and that leg begins to get sucked in too. The poor guy doesn’t stop until he’s waist deep in muskeg. He takes one look at me and says, “go on without me son, I’ve lived a good life”. I just about die laughing so damn hard I almost wet myself. It took us a good 5 minutes to get him out of it and another 5 minutes to fish his boot out. He had a good bath on the other end of the portage in Agnes.

Another funny moment happened at Curtain Falls. I was there with a family friend who had been coming to Curtain Falls since the 50’s. He’s pointing me to the spots I should cast and every cast, I’m pulling in a nice walleye or smallie. I’m admiring the current and strength of the falls as he proceeds to tell me about the time he and his son ran the lower 2/3rds of Curtain Falls in an aluminum canoe. I say, “you made it unscathed?” His reply is one I’ll never forget. “Yeah, we made it, but I’ll never run it again, that waterfall is fast and dangerous, reminds me too much of my 2nd wife.”

Please share some of your funny moments.

Tony

Not in the BW but Isabella area.
The wife and I had just started dating and we took our motor boat into Gegoka Lake, we boated around for a while and came back to the landing. I parked the boat up to shore and left her there while I went to get the truck and trailer to load it up. I got the truck and trailer backed up when I saw the boat floating out in the lake a few hundred feet away with my Girl Friend standing on shore oblivious to boat floating away.
When I pointed the boat out to her she promptly swam out in the lake and retreived the boat, without me saying anything else.

Had a group of high school kids and two jr high kids from a church in Cloquet. On the numbered lakes we base camped. The two younger kids were always getting reprimanded and while making supper I heard their leader ask the boys if I’d let them use my canoe. (I wouldn’t care)... but they said no and they were told then they couldn’t. Working away at cooking I heard someone say my canoe was floating away. Without looking up I whistled for it like it was a dog. The kids about died... it came back! I didn’t see it so I’m not sure what that looked like, but on the way home they wrote a song about me which included being able to call their canoe back like I did and it was printed in the church bulletin the next Sunday. Haha.
That canoe never listened to me again by the way!

nctry: "Had a group of high school kids and two jr high kids from a church in Cloquet. On the numbered lakes we base camped. The two younger kids were always getting reprimanded and while making supper I heard their leader ask the boys if I’d let them use my canoe. (I wouldn’t care)... but they said no and they were told then they couldn’t. Working away at cooking I heard someone say my canoe was floating away. Without looking up I whistled for it like it was a dog. The kids about died... it came back! I didn’t see it so I’m not sure what that looked like, but on the way home they wrote a song about me which included being able to call their canoe back like I did and it was printed in the church bulletin the next Sunday. Haha.
That canoe never listened to me again by the way!"

See Ben, I'm not the only one who writes songs about you :-)

Does anyone know where that trip report is, about the guy kicking all of his beer cans around the campsite so he doesn't leave a trace? Or using his portage wheels, while everyone is looking at him with jealous eyes? (something like that).

I had tears running down my face from laughing so hard. Wish I would have saved a bookmark to that report.

A guy I brought on a trip was convinced he left his camera in the car. He lamented during the entire trip about wishing he had his camera. While unloading his pack at trips end, guess what he found?

Great laughs!

On a trip with city teens new to the wilderness, a kid asked my co-counselor how deep the lake was. Without missing a beat, the counselor slapped his chest just below his neck and said, "About up to here on a loon."

Several years ago it began to rain as my friend Chris and I arrived at a portage. We decide to put on our rain pants. My rain pants slide on quickly.

My paddling partner Chris begins to grumble that he can't get his boot through his rain pant leg. "Why would they make rain pants that force you to take off your shoes in order to put them on!?"

So he sits on a rock and carefully unlaces and removes each boot, slips his feet through each pant leg, and re-laces the boots. At this point he stands and tries to pull up "his" rain pants...

Turns out "his" rain pants are actually his 10 year old son Michael's rain pants, and Chris can't pull them up beyond his knees without losing circulation to his feet.

I couldn't stop laughing as he went through the process of undoing his boots to remove the rain pants.

SammyN: "Does anyone know where that trip report is, about the guy kicking all of his beer cans around the campsite so he doesn't leave a trace? Or using his portage wheels, while everyone is looking at him with jealous eyes? (something like that)."

There has been a couple of those, and my favorite is from nooneuno.

I had read about the smallmouth fishing in the BWCA from a fishing magazine while I was in high school, but had never made the trip. When I was in my late 40's, my brother took his new wife up there for their honeymoon, and he doesn't even fish! I was a bit perturbed, and asked my wife if I could head up there over Labor Day. She agreed, I called Piragis, and everything was set up for a Stuart River entry. Now, I had canoed a few times before, but never solo, and certainly not in a solo canoe. I distinctly remember the excitement following the Piragis van to the Moose River parking, where I would leave my vehicle for my exit a week later. We talked fishing while we drove back to the Stuart entry, he helped me unload the canoe, and I'll be darned if he didn't just leave me there all alone. I was like, "What have I got myself into?". Well for starters, about a 1 1/2 mile portage trail. Actually, that went pretty well, and soon I was paddling down the river. Now, I have seen a beaver before, but about 20 minutes on the water and I come upon this rather large beaver dam across the river. No one has given me any instructions on how to cross something like this...I paddled to one side, swampy thick brush. I paddle to the other side...same. Well, I will put the canoe broadside to the dam, step out on top, unload if necessary, and slide the canoe the 3 feet down to the low side and reload. I first tested the stability of the dam with my paddle, then swing one leg onto the dam. It feels pretty solid, and my foot is about 3-4 inches under water on the side of the dam. As soon as I start to stand up, that foot instantly slides off the snot covered sticks and I am falling into the water. I grab the canoe, and watch as it starts to tip over. Fortunately, I decide to accept my fate, and release the canoe. When I resurface I am pleased to see that the canoe did not tip over, and all of my belongings are secure and dry. Twenty minutes on the water of the first day, and I am soaked through. Funniest thing was, I instantly looked around to see if anyone saw me fall in the water. I actually didn't see another person for 3 days.

My daughter went to the latrine and returned in a panic without doing any business. The problem was the rattlesnake she heard rattling its tail. I was a mite suspicious as I did not think any rattlesnakes were to be found within 200 or more miles of Basswood lake. Investigation found a wounded dragon fly near the latrine unable to fly, even though it was trying its best to do so.

My fav is one of my son’s friends, who we call Jocko, short for Jack O, my son’s name being Jack also, but Jack K. Jocko is one of those kids who was completely useless around camp, never helped do anything, collect wood, clean up, nothing. But he had this dry sense of humor that was priceless. One word out of his mouth would just crack me up. No specific tale to tell, well it was hilarious when his size 14 gym shoe got sucked into the mud and it took more than a few minutes to extricate it, but even though he was basically worthless at chores, a guy like that is worth his weight in food packs because of his wry wit. Jocko, he is a piece of work and I would take him on a trip anytime.

In 2017 my 19 year old son and I were fishing walleye in a channel (Mark Zup calls it Trapper’s Turn) on McAree. My son goes seriously nuts when twice-in-a-row his walleyes come unhooked within inches of my netting them.

He now becomes verbally abusive towards me saying it’s my fault and that he'll show me how to net a walleye. I hook one . . .he gets up on his knees in the bow seat facing me, reaches way out with one arm, nets the fish, but then capsizes our new SR Q 17 when trying to lift the fish out of the water with both arms.

We swim to shore and take inventory of our situation. Unbelievably, all our gear stayed in the canoe, but it is now floating in several inches of water. The only things missing are my prescription sun glasses — and my walleye.

Truthfully I didn’t find this funny, but I figure others might.

My son is in the photo — notice his sheepish grin and how his sun glasses stayed put atop his head.

Joe Friedrichs tells the story in a BWJ article about a couple portaging from the truck to the lake. One gets stuck in the mud and loses their pants, and the other one laughs so hard they pee their pants. So they are a half hour in and both need new pants and head back to the truck. Pretty good.

A pal and I saw black clouds coming, so we started paddling back to camp to stay dry. It started raining, so we paddled harder and then it rained harder, so we paddled harder, and on and on until we finally both dropped our paddles and laughed and laughed because it was raining so hard that we were long past staying dry.

I enjoyed RunningFox's story. How does your son reflect on that capsizing today? Has he lost any of his bluster?

I took a family trip which consisted of all the siblings (my two sisters and brother) for an entire week. Half way through the trip was laundry day. A line was setup and the clothes were hung to dry. Once this was completed I preceded to start fishing around camp. After a few catches I tried one last cast to an area where the fish were. What i didn't realize was I had gotten too close to the laundry line and on the cast I hung a piece of clothing with my lure. Here is the visual evidence.

My first trip with my twin daughters on Lobster Lake in Maine. They were high school age, but quite small, probably not even 100 lbs each. When we set up camp the first night, I left them to set up the tent while I gathered firewood. I had a nice big 4 person tent for them because I wanted them to have plenty of room and be comfortable on their first trip. As I was coming back with the wood, a wind storm blew in out of nowhere. I heard yelling, dropped the wood and ran back to see my girls sitting on the ground, feet braced against roots, each holding a corner of the tent that was about 3 feet in the air, and with each gust my daughters almost came off the ground.

Boy Scout trip, Kawishiwi River, base camp on Clear Lake at the eastern most site. There's six of us. Myself and an older scout and two dads and their 12-13 year old sons. The shoreline of the camp site is one of those where the ground level at the waters edge is 6 to 10 inches above the water level. Coming back from fishing one of the dad/son pairs approaches the shore. The son is in the bow and jumps out. Dad being in the rear seat the canoe bow pops up. Dad tells the son to steady the canoe. The son proceeds to pull the canoe up onto the shore resting only the first 6 inches or so of the bow on the ground. The dad yells "Don't let..." as the kid walks away and the canoe dumps the dad in the lake.

jhb8426: "Boy Scout trip, Kawishiwi River, base camp on Clear Lake at the eastern most site. There's six of us. Myself and an older scout and two dads and their 12-13 year old sons. The shoreline of the camp site is one of those where the ground level at the waters edge is 6 to 10 inches above the water level. Coming back from fishing one of the dad/son pairs approaches the shore. The son is in the bow and jumps out. Dad being in the rear seat the canoe bow pops up. Dad tells the son to steady the canoe. The son proceeds to pull the canoe up onto the shore resting only the first 6 inches or so of the bow on the ground. The dad yells "Don't let..." as the kid walks away and the canoe dumps the dad in the lake."

That happened on my 2015 trip . . . "what we have here is a failure to communicate"

If you ever cross paths with trippers going from Sawbill to Cherokee, and it's a group doing it for the first time, you can always get a chuckle around Ada creek because at least one person will have brown legs or more from sinking in the muck.

We've all been there. It just looks like a place you can float/line your canoe through, but you really can't without sinking a few times. I've taken experienced people with me that way and they just can't resist trying despite my warning. Muck. Just take the ankle breaking portage, lining/floating it there is too much hassle.

Something about all of us who go up to canoe country, we just have to try and end up in the muck before we take that portage.

What one will do for 11.00 plug!

Watching my 14 year old daughter trying to put a leech on a hook on her first BWCA trip was 5 minutes of pure comedic enjoyment. If this match didn't end on a TKO, the leech would have won by unanimous decision.