Escape to the Boundary Waters

All ready to go

This story is a little old, but still a classic.  If nothing else, it is classic in that it is a Boundary Waters fishing story that shows, yet again, how good fishing can be up there.  This happened when my wife and I went to the BWCA in 2005, the of and after Labor Day.  This also happened to be right after Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans and that was all that was in the news.  Needless to say, it was a relief to get away from all the media hoopla surrounding that all and offered us an excellent opportunity to relax and truly get away.

Sunset on the first night

For this trip, we decided to put in at entrance #16 (I think) which starts with a long portage and then traveling many miles on the Moose River.  Eventually we ended up at Lake Agnes, an absolutely gorgeous lake with pretty good fishing, and set up camp for the first night.  We didn't have any luck on the way in or during that first night, but we hadn't tried very hard initially.  But, for me, when I'm in the BWCA and on the water, I'm fishing almost as often as possible, whether purposely fishing or even when loaded down and traveling from site to site.

In camp cooking up a classic BWCA dinner

24 in Walleye

The next morning, we got loaded up and headed out towards our next planned campsite.  Almost immediately, I put my line in the water and started trolling.  Within five minutes, my rod bent over and I had a good bite.  After fighting the fish, to my amazement I brought in a nice 24 inch, ~4 lb. walleye.  I should add, this was amazing to me because it was a radiant sunny day with very little waves; just the kind of day on which you would not expect to catch a walleye.  Sometime that day, I also caught a decent northern, but because we already had walleye, we had no reason to keep him.  In any case, this was a great start to our trip and we already had excellent fresh fish meal that evening.  After dinner, we did a little more fishing, and caught a couple smallies, but we only stayed at that campsite one night and then we were on to the next one.

Nice catch honey

All ready to go to the bathroom with TP and bear spray in hand

Bald Eagle watching as we paddled by

Small northern, typical of the BWCA

That next morning, we got loaded up an were heading out, trolling again when I happened to hook up with a small smallie.  This time, when I brought him in, I used a small fly-fishing net that we had brought with.  Unfortunately, while this net was good enough to bring in decent fish, it also was very easy to snag hooks on the size of lures we were using.  In this case, this is exactly what happened and before we could go anywhere, I needed to pull the hook free from the net.  As I did this, I pulled a little too hard and as the one hook came free from the net, one of the other hooks lodged itself directly, straight into the meat of my thumb.  From everything you read about removing hooks, you're supposed to push the hook through and then snip off the barb and back the rest out.  In this case, this was impossible as the hook was truly straight into the meat of my thumb and pushing it through would have meant pushing it all the way through my thumb.  I tried using my knife and cutting the wound open more to allow the barb to come out easier, but to no avail.  Eventually, I had to just grit my teeth and use brute strength to jerk out the hook.  Certainly it hurt, but there was nothing else to do; so I put a bandage on and kept going.

Lori's awesome northern

That day we continued north on Lac La Croix and were glad we were going that direction because there was a strong south wind creating 4 ft. waves and pushing us north faster than we knew (this only became apparent when we headed back south and it took twice as long to go back as it did to go north).  Along the way we tried to stop and see some petroglyphs that were on some of the rocks there, but because of the waves (and my difficulty seeing them due to my colorblindness) we kept cruising and got up into an area where the wind didn't have near the strength it had out on the main part of the lake.  It was in this area that my wife thought she had snagged a rock only to have her line start moving, indicating a large fish on the other end.  After a long fight with her rod tip in the water, we were able to land a very nice northern (I estimated it to be in the 8 lb. range).

Island camp

Very nice smallie

Anyway, we finally got to our camping spot on an island in the northern portion of Lac La Croix and for several days enjoyed not seeing another person, canoe, plane, or boat.  One day, because we had the time, we took a day trip to a nearby lake that I knew did not get fished a lot and that a BWCA fishing book had indicated had excellent sizes and quantities of walleye, northern, and smallies.  While there we had a great time relaxing and I was fortunate enough to see a family of otters playing in the lake.  The fishing was also excellent, although all we could catch were smallies.  There were some huge smallies in there too.  While fishing, I hooked into  a very good one and just as I got it up to the boat, the line snapped and he dropped back in.  Now, knowing what was in that area, and not wanting to leave without a trophy, I got retied and was fishing again quickly.  Astonishingly, within ten minutes I had another nice one on the line and this time was able to get him in.  He turned out to be 19 inches and probably weighed close to 4 lbs.  Although I wouldn't probably keep a fish like this now, we did keep it, along with several other smaller smallmouth and took them back.  We ended up eating the smaller ones for dinner and had the large one for breakfast, which we were barely able to finish considering the size of it.

Island sunset

Couple of friends

In any case, we headed back after a couple of days and experienced our only bad day of weather.  There was persistent and pervasive fog, and as a result we were having a difficult time finding our way through all the bays in Lac La Croix.  Somehow we got off track because at one point we looked towards shore and saw a small building, something that is definitely non-existent in the BWCA.  Fortunately, we had tracked our route north with a GPS and after turning that on, realized that we had strayed into Canada.  We quickly got back on track and worked our way back south, stopping to see the petroglyphs and taking a break for some lightning.  We eventually made it back to Lake Agnes.

Ready to portage

Petroglyphs on Lac La Croix

Chomped walleye

Punctured walleye

As we were coming into the lake, I noticed a good under water rock saddle that was sure to hold walleye.  Because we hadn't caught anything for dinner, we made a point to go over the saddle several times.  Eventually, Lori did hook into something and began to reel it in.  Interestingly, she described that it was coming in easy and then would get real heavy, and then easy.  She finally got it to the surface and we saw that it was a small walleye as she lifted it from the water.  Then, with the fish only a couple inches out of the water, a nice northern pike literally erupted from below (just like the shark in Jaws) and grabbed the walleye, dragging it back under.  Lori brought him up and I tried to net the northern but he let go and took off.  Lori let the walleye back again, and he grabbed it yet again.  This happened a couple of times, but eventually the northern didn't come back up.  We finally checked out the walleye which had some serious puncture wounds, and then let him go, most likely to become dinner for that northern.  As a result of all this, we had a good time fishing, but didn't have any fish for dinner that night.  But, the resplendent sunset more than made up for the lack of fish.

25.5 in Walleye

The next morning, we packed up and started paddling across Lake Agnes on our way out.  We did have heavy clouds and some slight wind, but it wasn't too bad and we were ready to get home.  Because I was in the mood to catch one more fish, I dropped my line in and began trolling across the lake figuring I could catch one more northern.  As we came across the lake, I did hook into something pretty nice.  When I finally fought it into the boat, I was tickled pink to see that it was a nice walleye.  It ended up being 25.5 inch, 5.5 lb. walleye, my largest walleye to date.  Because I didn't want to waste such a fine fish, I put it on a stringer and dragged it as long as it stayed alive.  Once it died, and we were in the river, I gutted and gilled the fish and wrapped it in a wet towel to keep it cool in the bottom of a canoe.  I kept that fish cool all the way to the car, then put it on ice in Ely, and finally filleted it at midnight when I finally got home.  That fish ended up being Christmas dinner and was honestly one of the best Christmas dinners I've had in a long time.

Tiny northern

Ironically, this wasn't the last fish I caught on this trip.  On one of our portages, I noticed a very small northern in the shallows where we were supposed to put in.  We were taking a break so I took the opportunity to toss in my line a couple times, and, as you would guess, I finally caught him.  He was maybe 12 inches long; by far the smallest northern I've ever caught, but still plenty of fun.

Overall, we had a great trip and had excellent fishing.  I have been back to the BWCA several times since, but have yet to have as good a time or fishing.  In looking at these pics again, I long to return with my wife and hope to take my family in the future.  I can only hope we have as pleasurable a time as we did on this trip.  Till then...

TLaSS,
Joshua

Sunset on the last night in the BWCA