Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Maiden Voyage to BWCA
by tdaubee

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 05/27/2017
Entry & Exit Point: Farm Lake (EP 31)
Number of Days: 4
Group Size: 2
Day 3 of 4
Monday, May 29, 2017 Day 3, it was projected to rain all day and it did. Not a heavy rain, but a misty, annoying drizzly rain. Thank goodness we packed good rain gear because after the first hour the rain didn’t bother me much anymore. We left Clear Lake as fast as possible that morning after breakfast, we wanted to get to new waters – new beginnings for fishing. We portaged to the South Kiwishiwi River and right away I thought that it looked like Bass country. Ryan, who loves to fish for bass, had his top water tied on and he started nailing bass of the point right next to the portage. We spent a few hours there – he was catching bass one after another and I had cranked in a small walleye as well. We made our way down the river him casting top waters to shore as I trolled on the deeper side or casted over there for northern and walleye. This seemed to work the best for us as we each were trying for different fish and usually when one was biting the other wasn’t. We worked the bays and points – next to one bay I was trolling and started rolling in walleye. It was one of those fishing experiences that you read about in the BWCA. I put my line in the water and pulled out a walleye, took it off the hook and released it and put my line back in the water and pulled out another walleye. This happened time and time again – the walleye weren’t very big but it sure was fun. The last walleye that I had on was a big one and I (almost) landed him but he somehow managed to get off the hook about 1 foot from the net. So no avail with the trophy walleye. We really wanted the high campsite on the river so we headed that way to set up camp. It was absolutely stunning – I wish I had more words but that site is so peaceful! We made ourselves a Jetboil lunch as I didn’t feel like cleaning fish (and we didn’t keep any) and we casted around our little campsite for a while – Ryan again started catching smallies on his top water. That evening we went out and headed back up River, doing the same thing … Ryan casting top waters for smallies and me trolling or casting deep waters for walleye. I hooked a nice 16 inch smallie that evening on my go-to-lure … took a picture and released him. Ryan may have caught a few small bass and a small northern. We headed back to camp to dry off for the night – we actually found enough dry wood to make ourselves a good fire and dry out some of our clothing. It was perfect. I set my alarm again to look for northern lights – nothing.