Annual Memorial Day weekend trip with Uncle
Ben, Aidan, and Owen. This year we decided to go into the Quetico, so we
left a day earlier than normal to give enough time. Got out of the Cities about 7, stopped by Grandma Miriam's a little about 10 to pick up the
second canoe, and reached Grand Marais a little after midnight. Settled
into our hotel room and immediately fell asleep.
Got
to Tuscarora Outfitters about 10 the next morning and got our gear all put together. I arranged
for a tow to Hook Island (just inside the Quetico), which saved about 4 hours
of paddling each way. Money well spent!
Ready for the tow to Hook Island
The ride was a little chilly
I had forgotten our passports at home and was a little anxious about the border crossing. I had our Remote Area Border Crossing pass, which is technically all you should need, but was still a little apprehensive. It was all for naught as the ranger station wasn't officially open yet! The crew tasked with opening the station for the season was just leaving and got picked up by a float plane while we were there. We checked in using the off season permit and were on our way.
Cache Bay Ranger Station
We were on
some big water in Saganaga and Cache Bay, so it was good that the weather was
nice and wind low. We found our way to the portage to Saganagons, a
130-rod, rocky, up-and-down affair that parallels Silver Falls. Sue at
Tuscarora had recommended we stay in a series of islands in the NW corner of the
lake, so we headed for that. There's a long peninsula that juts out along
the lake, and thankfully there was a short 58-rod portage that serves as a
shortcut. We took that and were a short paddle from our site. We
checked a couple out and settled on the middle island. Decent site with
nice tent pads.
Sean got the first fish - a northern off the campsite
It was after 5 by the time we got there, so there was
little time for fishing after setting up camp. We did get out for about
an hour though. Sean caught the first fish (northern) from shore and then
almost immediately a nice smallmouth out in the canoe. That was all for
us that night, but Uncle Ben, Aidan, and Owen each caught really nice
walleyes. The lucky lure was this blue translucent rapala that Ben had -
it killed the fish all weekend. We were in high spirits!
Ben and Aidan's large walleye
Nice fish!
Walleye alley
Owen got a nice one rounding the corner into camp
Friday was a gorgeous day, almost too gorgeous! The
sun bore down on us all day, and we all got a bit red. Breakfast of bacon
and eggs then more fishing. Sam got on board with a northern and a
walleye. Sean caught another northern or two and a smallmouth.
Lunch at camp and more fishing in the afternoon. We continued to catch
fish but not at the pace we did the first night. Mostly trolling along
the islands near our site. We ended up with 3 walleyes and Sean's
smallmouth - nice bit of meat for a fish fry! Black beans and rice were
the perfect complement! Smores after dinner and nice campfire. We
were all tired.
Aidan sacking out
Wonder where he gets that from...
Nice island campsite
The boys and Friday's dinner
Sean's hungry for sushi!
Got up early Saturday morning at about 5:15. Sean wasn't interested in
getting up though, so Sam and I got out on the lake for a few hours. It
was a beautiful morning, and the lake was calm. We headed up to the
narrows leading to the Falls Chain where I caught a smallmouth (finally a fish
- it was to be my only one :() and Sam caught a nice walleye and
northern. Got back to camp around 8 and twisted up some pancakes and
Spam. Took a little break and were back out fishing. It was overcast most of the day and a little chilly when the wind kicked up. We
added one more walleye and had another fish fry that night. Added some
spaghetti for extra carbs.
Ben and Aidan staying warm
Worse than the kids...
Sam and Aidan out for a troll
Sam on Crap Island
I woke up at 6 Sunday morning and tried to persuade Sean to go out
with me. He had been asking to just go with the two of us, but again he
wasn't interested! We ended up having a leisurely breakfast and breaking
down camp to start our journey back at about 11.
Sam picked up a hitch hiker!
Justin Bieber joined us for much of the trip!
Skipping stones was a popular activity throughout the trip
We kept the rods strung up with the idea of trolling along Saganagons back to the big portage. Owen caught a couple lakers - one nice one - that they kept, so Aidan had to run them across the portage to Saganaga. Chorus of Fishrunner and "Runs with Fishes". Funny!
The couple campsites in the bay to Silver Falls were
horrible, so we decided to push on to Cache Bay and the island site
there. Thankfully it was open. Beautiful site - big pines, open
undergrowth, nice fire pit, etc. We set up for the night and had some
jambalaya and Owen's lake trout - couldn't finish it all!
Sean relaxing in cool tree on Cache Island site
Owen and his lake trout
Up and out by 8 to meet our tow at 9. We were glad we
covered the extra 45 minutes the night before and only had a relatively short
paddle in the morning. We saw the tow boats coming in just as we reached
Hook. It felt great to speed along at 25 mph back to the landing
site! Showers were out at Tuscarora, so we pushed on home after lunch at
Trail Center. Finally got home about 7:30. Great trip!!
Mark and I decided to do a spring Boundary Waters trip this year. We'd been doing winter trips for awhile and hadn't found time for a May trip in several years. We picked a route we'd never done: West Bearskin/Duncan/Rose/Clearwater. I've heard a lot of great things about those lakes and was looking forward to charting new territory. It was a very late spring though, and we were anxiously watching the ice out news and webcams up the Gunflint. Things looked pretty good on Hungry Jack, so we figured we'd be good to go with our route. We stopped by the ranger station in Grand Marais Thursday morning to pick up our permit, and the ranger said - as she placed her hand squarely on our intended area of operations - "I hope you're not planning to go here." Hmmm. We pulled our permit anyway and decided to give it a shot. As we pulled into the put-in point on West Bearskin, it was immediately evident that we would have to make a change in plans.
Four inches of ice on West Bearskin
We checked out the end of our loop, Clearwater, and it was much the same. There was a little open water along the shoreline, and we briefly considered working our way up to the nearest campsite and waiting the ice out. We were itching to get out there, but we decided to back track and head to the other side of the Trail for Bat Lake (Good Call #1).
There are several, mostly short portages into Bat, and we made camp by late afternoon. The nicest site on the lake was inexplicably the only one open. Things were looking up!
Setting up the rods on Bat lake
We set up camp and enjoyed a day and a half of nice weather. The fishing wasn't great, but we had a nice fish dinner on Friday. The lakers were still schooled in 40-70 feet of water in the deep 100-foot hole on the NE corner of the lake. We tried jigging for awhile, but it was hard to keep the canoe steady.
Twisting up some chow
See kids - even the dads have to make water when you're not around!
Little Money comes through again!
Mark managed to catch a water shoe off the north campsite.
We headed over to Gillis on Friday morning to see what we could do there. There were still huge floes of dark ice on the lake, and we were only able to fish the back bay. It was a lot thicker than it looked, and our attempt to break through only rode us up on the floe, nearly tipping us. The guys in the neighboring campsite went over in the afternoon and reported that it was 60-80% clear.
It started raining Saturday morning, and didn't let up all day. It wasn't a hard rain. We fished for awhile, picking up a couple, but it appeared that we'd be hunkered down all afternoon and be packing up wet gear in the morning for the slog out. With Mark having to drive home to Chicago the next day, we decided to pack up during a mid-afternoon lull and head out early (Good Call #2). It rained on us the entire way out, and we crossed paths with my brother Pete and his son Matthew on their way in.
Nice laker in the rain
We stopped by the Trail Center for some burgers and beer, and had the best seat in the house at the bar (Good Call #3). Crashed at Pete's cabin and called it a trip! Great to get out there again in May.
I was hoping to get away for a long weekend somewhere out West, but because of sports schedules and other constraints, we didn't have a lot of time. I found a guide up in Hayward for a day of muskie fishing. Sam's been dying to catch a muskie for two years and was super excited. We headed up Saturday afternoon (3 hours) and had a nice evening in Hayward. Sunday was bright and early to beat the heat, and we were out on the water with our guide, Bruce, by 7:30.
Fishing was tough (as is par for muskie fishing). We worked hard from 7:30 to almost noon with only two follows. I panicked on mine by stopping the retrieve (it looked like an alligator!), and Sam didn't see his.
We switched lakes and were down to our last hour of fishing when lighting struck for Sean. He hauled in a nice 37-incher on a white bass lure!
Sam was initially less than thrilled that his brother - who previously could have cared less about catching a muskie - caught the only one. He rallied however, and ended up with a really nice smallmouth (some consolation). We had a great day and will definitely be headed up again.
Headed up north for our annual Memorial Day sojourn into the wilderness. In addition to me and the boys, we had my brother Ben, his two sons, and their dog, Millie. Every year the minivan gets a little tighter, and we were somehow able to add the dog to the mix. After a late start out of the cities (situation normal), we made a quick pit stop in Duluth at Grandma's house to pick up the second canoe and eventually made the Grand Marais Best Western sometime after 11.
Day 1: The Best Western actually has a pretty good breakfast buffet, so we loaded up there and made our usual stops in town: the Beaver House (very helpful), Holiday, Ranger Station for permit, and finally the coffee shop. That's when the fun started... You can reach Crocodile Lake via two entry points, East Bearskin and the Crocodile River. Bearskin is the most established and right off the Gunflint Trail. However it includes a steep portage, and given my recent ACL surgery Ben would be doing all the heavy lifting. So we decided (firm consensus) to try the other route - longer paddle, but only one small portage. Well, it's also more remote, and after travelling 30 miles of dirt road and several scouting hikes, we couldn't find it. Score 1 for Wilderness. No problem, I found a nice map shortcut back to the Trail, and we were soon on our way. Well, the closer this shortcut got to the Trail, the more narrow and rustic it became, until we were eventually travelling what might have been just a snowmobile trail - in a Honda Odyssey. We had to ford several small streams, and Ben was doing his part to hit every rock and boulder. At one point I had to hop out and tuck a piece of the undercarriage back in its seat in order to stop the incessant scraping noise. I opted not at that point to inform Ben about the separated molding behind the front tire. Eventually we hit a stream that we couldn't cross and had to backtrack all the way out the way we came. Score 2 for Wilderness. So, 120 minutes into a 20 minute trip we pulled into the E. Bearskin camp ground and lake access point.
I'm pretty sure this was all there when we started...
From there things started to look up: we made good time on the paddle, Millie was good in the canoe (a question mark at onset), and the portage only required a couple trips. Furthermore, we had Crocodile Lake all to ourselves!
We ended up taking the same campsite that Mark and I stayed at in February. Remarkably (it was a couple weeks after fishing opener), no one had stayed at the campsite since. At the very least, they didn't use the extra wood that Mark and I had left.
Rain was in the forecast, so we proactively set up a little tarp city - wise move as it turned out.
After setting up camp, we headed out for a couple hours of fishing. The rap on Crocodile is "a lot of walleyes, but no size". This was fine with us, though I was starting to wonder about the size thing after my first fish.
