First post here as a long time lurker, I thought it'd be good to make it a trip report. Me and a good buddy of mine (Longtime friends since childhood) decided to head out on a short weekend trip up to the BWCA last weekend. This would be my 6th excursion into the BWCA, and I think my buddy's 5th or 6th as well. We figured together we'd be able to get farther and deeper into the BWCA with just the two of us young guys (we are both in our early 30s), rather than having a group of 4-6 as usual. Friends always seem to come out of the woodwork with a new-found desire to camp when we bring up plans to go on a trip, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but gets a bit much when the group sizes get over 6! Anyway, I digress.

We headed out on Lake Kawishiwi on Friday 5/2 bright and early, reaching the lake by 7-8am. On the ride up we had quite the fright when, to our amazement, we saw 2-3 lakes still frozen solid. Our hearts sunk when we saw a band of ice stretching out around 100 yards or so from the landing on Kawishiwi, but luckily we found that the ice was nothing but slush and we were able to push right through. From then on we only ran into small isolated patches of slush on the lakes which rapidly disappeared as the weekend progressed. We were the only car in the parking lot, and I did not see a single canoe until we ran into a group of 2 canoes heading in as we were heading out on Monday. (Though my friend said a solo canoer stopped by the campsite to say hello briefly one day.)

The lake was full of all sorts of mallards, mergansers, and wood ducks, and we paddled on down to Square lake on a stream swollen with the recent rains under a cloudy sky. Rain mixed with snow made us damp, but we didn't mind knowing that the weekend would bring the sun, and warmth. Passing Square lake, we ran over a couple beaver dams on the way to Kawaschong (one under the watchful eye of its maker) and found that the portage over the largest beaver dam was flooded, so we had to clamber over the opposite side. After a quick paddle through Kawasachong, and we made our way down the two portages to Polly. The portages were flooded in spots and muddy, in spots we had to just wade through and I found that my boots were unfortunately not waterproof anymore after long years of use.

We had our pick of any campsite on Lake Polly, and we ended up choosing #1076, which was very good for 2 nights. We spent the days fishing the lake and did a day trip to Koma and fished there. The water was high, and we noted that the one campsite on the peninsula on Koma was flooded, with the fire grate half-way under water. The lack of people at the campsites and the high water made the lake feel very remote and spooky, with nothing but the tracks of wolves and moose droppings on the portages.

On Sunday we decided to bring our gear back down to Kawaschong, and stayed at a campsite there and fished.

We didn't catch a single fish, even though we tried everything we could think of - deep water, shallow water, lures, jigs, worms, nothing was biting anywhere. We only had one bite where my friend hooked on a small northern or a bass on kawaschong, but it stole his lure.

Overall, it was a great trip, with good weather in the 60s on Saturday through Monday, light wind, and solitude (and beavers) in spades. In the past few years I had gotten used to feeling stressed about finding a campsite on the way in - it was a nice change of pace this time to know that we had our pick of campsites. Anyway, that's all for now. If anyone has any insight on why the fish may not be biting that'd be good to know! (Stress from temperature changes from the rain? Pre-spawn fasting?)