Just curious how the 216r portage is from Little Pauness to Shell Lake. Is it worth going the extra distance to get to Shell? Or does Upper/Lower Pauness have some good fishing?
Thanks

I'd say yes, although portage can be wet in early spring due to huge beaver dam

Fishing is not bad on Pauness, especially if you fish the current. However, I would definitely take the portage to Shell which offers better fishing overall and easy day trips through Heritage, Lynx and Little Shell.

I would definitely make the portage. Opens up a lot of options with lynx and heritage. The portage last year was wet but not overly difficult.


We reloaded the canoe and floated this short section just a little over half way.

The portage is not bad. I would reload and float the beaver pond also. We had one guy try to walk it. Went in up to his chest.

We caught nice blue gills all day under the large pine tree hanging in the water on the east side of the north bay in shell. Walleyes along that same shoreline.

Both camp sites on Con island (north end, south end) are great.

We just went through the portage last Tuesday, other than it being wet, pretty easy. We reloaded canoes and paddled across the beaver pond, definitely too deep to wade after 2 days of rain. Shell was getting busy, we passed 3 groups going into Shell on the portage.

That is interesting, our group went through there on Thursday, 6/2 and the middle section where you would normally load up the canoes and float them across, was all dried up and it was thick mud. There were also two large trees that were uprooted and over the trail that we needed to navigate around. The storm may have damaged that section of the beaver dam. Overall, once you navigate the mud through the dam, the portage is not that bad. we went from entry point #14 to Lynx on the first day in, and then spent two nights each on Lynx, Hustler, and Oyster, and exited EP #16. Great trip overall, good fishing on Hustler, better than Lynx, but we had a couple windy days on Lynx that limited where we were able to fish.