Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

A little of everything looping thru South Arm Knife!
by FindHim

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 06/26/2022
Entry & Exit Point: Saganaga Lake (EP 55)
Number of Days: 6
Group Size: 3
Day 3 of 6
Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Another cold night gave way to glassy waters, loon calls, and the excitment of just fishing today. Oatmeal and coffee were the perfect breakfast on the rock face of this site as we watched the sunrise! The plan was to fish Ester, Hanson, and the Primative PMA. Paddling out with a prayerful blessing, we were greated with another bald eagle flyover and loons swimming beside us. We caught more smallies in Ester, some good bronze backs on the reefs in Hanson, and a couple in Link lake (much smaller fish though). The portage to Link was much more difficult to find but Link was nice and looked very moosey...unfortantely, we didn't see any. We made our way to the portage to Gift but decided to just walk to it as the skies were turning darker, sprinkling started, and winds picking up. All took a brief nap at the entrance to Link (lifejackets make a pretty good ground pad). After returning to camp, the boys headed west in Ester and took a look into Rabbit as they caught our dinner again. The weather turned great again, and my youngest built another good fire, cooked blackened fish tacos, used a stone to warm the tortillas, and finished the evening with some good fellowship! We probably had a 50 fish day on weightless flukes, Texas rigged craws, shaky heads, and spook jrs. Prior to bed, we picked up the weather forecast which was calling for thunderstorms the next afternoon/night and then winds to blow out of the W/SW 10-15mph with gusts to 35mph in the afternoon the following two days. This changed our plans again - originally we wanted to head into Cherry, Topaz, and Amoeber as we dropped into Knife/SAK - but with this forecast we decided to head directly into SAK and stay closer to the portage into Eddy the following day. ~Ester Lake, Hanson Lake, Link Lake, Gift Lake, Rabbit Lake