It was after our third time going in a circle in front of the Lake One entry point to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) that Benjamin admitted, “Oh yeah, I remember now! I never did this before!”. Ben was in the back of our 18 ½ foot Kevlar canoe in the “steering” position, and we were completing a series of loop-to-loops, confirming the fact that when I asked him before we took off if he had ever steered a canoe before, and he said “yes, I can do it”, that his statement was based more on wishful thinking than fact. How do you all of a sudden “remember” that you have never been in a canoe before?
We were out for a 3 day adventure in the BWCA with Benjamin, Dominick and my brother Dave and two of his boys, Michael and Eric. He left the older sister Rachel and the younger brother Sam at home this trip, with the promise that he would use this trip to figure out how the deal works so that they could come the next time. We were putting in at the Lake One entry point, 30 miles north of
The following morning, we loaded up on another dose of calories at the local café with some blueberry pancakes before heading to the entry point. When we got there, we were a tad befuddled when we could not find the 3 canoes the outfitter had promised us would be waiting for us there. We scratched our heads and hmm’d and hawed…Let’s see, the sign says this is the Lake One entry point…there aren’t any other Lake One’s…and then just about the time we said, “well, we’ll have to go back into Ely and find out what the deal is”, when a van pulled up with our canoes.
There was a fair amount of traffic this time of morning at the entry points. With 18 groups allowed to enter per day, it is one of the busiest BWCA entry points. We had a 5-canoe group of boy scouts in front of us, as well as 2-3 other 1-2-canoe parties putting in, which made the routine Ben and I did driving around in circles right after launch all the more embarrassing, as we had a full crowd of folks watching our act. Of course, I started riding him saying, “turn left, paddle backwards on the right, that’s not how you do it, what are you doing, where are we going?”. After the trip, Dave admitted that he was thinking, “oh boy, this is not going to be pretty”, assuming he would have to spend the next 3 days listening to me whining at the boys. Fortunately, after about an hour of my not-so-patient “instruction”, Ben got it down well enough to keep us generally pointed in the right direction, and we were off on our adventure, and I let the beautiful scenery and the rhythm of steady paddling infuse my spirit and turn-off the early-trip-agro.
We had two portages to do to get to our target destination, the south end of “Lake Three”. I guess whoever named these lakes wanted to keep it simple. Let’s see, you start at Lake One, then paddle to Lake Two, at the end of which we will find Lake Three. Yup, got it. With Minnesota having some 30,000 lakes, they must have run out of names, but I reckon it’s a good thing they did not start with this naming system for all the lakes, as I can’t see the notion of a summer holiday on Lake Twenty-thousand, Six hundred and Nineteen having the same romance as a trip to “Lake Vermillion” or “Lake-of-the-Woods”.
The portages were short, around 100-200 yards each, though up in the BWCA the portages are all measured in “rods” (about 16 feet?). So we had a couple of 30-40 rod portages which involved taking everything out of the canoe and doing a couple of trips back and forth to get all the gear and canoes to the next lake. It was hot, in the low 90’s, so it was sweaty work, and the other groups of canoes we saw at the launch all showed up at the portage spot at more or less the same time. Combine that with folks coming from the other direction on their way out, and there was a need for traffic lights to keep people from running into each other with canoes over their heads!
After 4 hours of paddling and 2 short portages, we found a campsite on Lake Three. Dave took a tour of the south end of the lake and found all the campsites in use, so we grabbed the first site we found, and it turned out to work out great. We made up some subs for lunch and headed out to try some fishing. Benjamin was in a canoe with Michael and they disappeared around a nearby point for about an hour, when we heard some hooting and hollering as they were paddling back. Benjamin was yelling about a GIANT Northern Pike that grabbed the rod out of Michael’s hand. We only had six rods for the six of us, and the loss of one rod this early in the trip meant we would be short one.
The story was that a huge northern grabbed Michaels lure, ran right in front of the canoe, bending Michael’s hand backwards to the point he let go of the rod, and they watched his rod get pulled away by the giant fish.
This story got us all quite excited of course, but the loss of the fishing pole, which David had just purchased before the trip, put a damper on the whole thing. We decided to go back to the scene to see if we could find the rod, in case it had ended up in some shallower water, and yup, after a few minutes of paddling and searching, we found it lying on the bottom. Dominick went down for it and came up holding the pole with the lure wound up to within 3 inches of the tip! There had been no giant northern! Evidently, Michael dropped the pole overboard by mistake while untangling a knot in the line, and Benjamin took the opportunity to apply his imagination to create the giant fish story with the bent hand, etc…
The next major event occurred the next day when we paddled over to a large rock that we jumped off. It was a good 25 foot leap, and the boys had a blast doing all kinds of jumps for a couple of hours. Dave too the opportunity to drown a leech on a jig below a bobber and hooked up a nice 2 ½ lbs smallmouth bass. It was the biggest of the trip and our third fish.
On return to camp, we cooked the three fish for a nice shore lunch. It may have just been the atmosphere, but the boys all claimed it was the best fish they had ever tasted.
The next day we paddled out, and stopped at the end of the first portage where a river was dumping into a small lake. We tried Dave’s leech, jig, bobber rig to great success catching 2 northerns, 1 walleye, 6 smallmouth bass and a couple of dozen small rock bass. One of the northerns threw the rapala on Eric’s rig into Dave's hand, burying a barb into his thumb. After lots of ooohs, and ouches, he cut the hook off the lure and pushed it through so the point was grabbable, and I yanked it out with my leatherman. Dave’s reaction was “Oh! Thank You!”.
Within 15 minutes of reaching the take-out point, the skies opened on us. We ended up packing the car with everything dripping wet, including ourselves. We drove back into Ely, arriving around 5 pm. We decided to stay in the outfitter’s house for the night rather than do the late evening drive back to
A full set of trip Pics.zip posted here and an online version is available on picasaweb.
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