Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Kawnipi or Bust
by Captn Tony

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 07/28/2017
Entry & Exit Point: Quetico
Number of Days: 7
Group Size: 3
Day 3 of 7
Sunday, July 30, 2017 I didn't sleep well thta night as I kept thinking that is the wind comes we won't make it back to our pickup in time. Went out in the morning with Lyonty for and picked up a blue eye. Foodnazi stayed back to sleep in. I think she was still ticked about not catching any fish the night before! Caught enough fish for supper. The water was glass again and I decided to head back to where the Kawnipi narrows by the falls so wind wouldn't be a factor getting home. Lyonty wasn't real pleased about the decision as we had good luck catching fish on the island. On the way back we picked up a couple of eyes at a pinch point with a reef in the middle. Not far from that spot we found an adequete camp site and set up. I decided to cast for smallies while the other two were dinking around making camp. Picked up an eye then another one pretty soon there were three of us casting off of shore on our camp site. We must have caught around 15 fish off of shore in the middle of the summer and most of them eyes. I still can't believe it! We cooked fish that night and right as I put the fish on the skillet and Foodnazi yells bear!! I think "O crap he smelled the grease and the fish and is coming over to take a bite". I had some old bear spray so I grabbed it and run to shore to fend for our supper and hope that the bear didn't like texmex. Well it was huge, about 6 foot tall at the shoulder and had the nicest rack I ever seen on a bear. It looked like a minotaur from Greek mythology, I think it was a moosobear. After supper we paddled up to Kennebas Falls and just hammered the eyes.