Sunday, July 09, 2006
We awoke early to get a jump on the days paddling. While at the outfitters the night before we discovered that a group of 9 boy scouts would be following us on our trip. I had been here once before with my own boy scout troop, but we were hoping for solitude and were ready to make strides to find it.
We put in at 7:30am and started our trip. Becky and I in our boat and Dan and Cortney with Kida in their boat. Kawishiwi was easy. The river was kinda tough and buggy since the water level was down. There were a few lift-overs on beaver dams, but otherwise no problems. A push pole for marshes would've been more helpful than our bent-shaft paddles. The short portages were easy since were single tripping for the first time. What a relief! Square and Kawasachong were paddled through in no time and we took a break for food before tackling the combo of a 185rod portage and a 95 rodder split by a short 10 minute paddle on Townline. We crossed Polly without incident. I had originally planned to stop here for the night, but we decided to forge on as far as we could. After another 3 portages totaling close to 200 rods and more mud river paddling we reached Koma. By now its was after noon and the wind had switched around and was coming strong outta the NW. This made for a difficult northward paddle across Koma. Rather than try to forge ahead to Malberg (also oriented north-south) we took the western most campsite on the north shore. Very nice campsite with a sand landing and lots of flat rocks along the shoreline. After dinner I did some fishing. We caught lots of smallies including a dandy 19"'r and I caught 2 walleyes. I kept one and released the other. I shoulda kept them both, but oh well. They tasted fantastic roasted over the fire in tinfoil.

Kawishiwi Lake, Square Lake, Kawasachong Lake, Townline Lake, Polly, Lake, Koma Lake