Friday, May 22, 2015

We awoke at 5:00am, showered, and headed out for an early breakfast at South of the Border Cafe. The place was filled with guys heading on fishing trips to Canada. We all had way too much to eat and then headed up the Gunflint Trail. On the way to Ram, we were very surprised to see how hard it had froze the night before. There was frost on everything. Only one vehicle at the parking lot, so we pulled to the other side of the lot and starting unloading. Shortly into the portage I was reminded about what I had heard of this one. It was a gradual uphill climb almost the entire way. For how cool it was this morning, it didn't take long for me to feel a little overdressed! I worked up quite a sweat with my backpack and canoe up this climb. I finally approached the end and saw the lake. What a relief! I made my way down that tricky end to the lake and snapped a few pictures. My first take on the lake, was that it was a nice, small lake that appeared to be a nice spot for our home the next couple of days.

We got the rest of the gear down to the lake, packed up the canoes and headed out! We checked out the site near the portage, just in case someone was at the other one. Not a bad site, just way off the water. Saw canoe landings in both directions down the shoreline a fair bit from camp. We changed course and headed down the lake to the western site. It was open! This was the one we were hoping for. We pulled up the canoes and unpacked our gear. As we spied the two small tent pads and started getting the tents set up, I had to see what time it was... It was 7:40am!!! We were out fishing by 8:30am. On a short four day trip, we were pretty much getting a bonus day of fishing. This was really going to help make this trip seem longer than the 4 days. We were all super excited to be lake trout fishing! I, personally, had read every article possible on fishing lake trout in canoe country (plus read every thread on this website twice...). Soon frustration set in, as we were getting tons of follows, but no strikes. I switched over to a jighead and twister tail and on my first cast, BANG! I hooked up. I insist to use ridiculously light line up in the BWCA, so he gave my ultralight and 2 pound test quite a battle. Wog had a small trout net that we used in vain, trying to at least get the head of the fish in the net. But, we did finally land it. I had caught my first ever lake trout!
Hunger led us back to camp for some lunch. We cooked some brats over a small fire and had some chips to go with it. We were still amped up about having that first laker on the stringer and the other guys wanted to get their own soon! After lunch, we hit the lake again and it didn't take long for Wog to have a nice hookup, also on a jig and twister tail. This fish fought and fought and when we finally got it boatside, we were floored to see a huge rainbow trout. It was such a beautiful fish! We wrestled it in and got a few pictures.
Soon after that, Wog got another strike and subsequently landed his first ever laker! The other guys continued to have follows, but just couldn't get one to latch on. We fished hard that first day and the wind became a little more problematic as the day went on. I was surprised to see how much a good wind could affect almost all of Ram Lake. During the afternoon we saw our first canoe of the trip: a solo paddler heading out today. We headed back to camp for one of our most anticipated meals, steaks over the fire! When we got to camp we also took a picture of our nice little stringer we had collected:
We collected a bunch of dead cedar and started a great fire for the steaks. Man, that was a pile of beef! I have everyone bring their own steak, so the sizes and varieties we get every year is quite funny. Especially when we learned Mike's pack had 2 huge ribeyes in it. Miraculously, all of the steak and instant potatoes were eaten!
We went out fishing until dark and Wog added another lake trout to his day. We caught some fish today, but George and Mike were yet to get on the board. We enjoyed a fairly short campfire, as everyone was pretty tired.