the bwcaw is an acronym for the "boundary waters canoe area wilderness". giant glaciers once carved the landscape and created thousands of lakes, canyons, cliffs, rocky shores, sandy beaches, island, rivers, streams all surrounded by pine and maple forests. it literally is the boundary between minnesota and canada just south of the quetico provincial park. all in all, its amazing.
i have been up there camping and fishing as a kid but it has been years...like 16 or 17 years since i have been back. amazingly, it looked exactly the same as it did when i was a kid. in order to get to the bwcaw i had to fly from tampa to minneapolis where i hooked up with my dad and drove to duluth, mn to pick up my brother. there we crashed for a few hours at a hotel. in the morning we drove from duluth to tofte, mn where we picked up our permit to enter the preserve. to enter the lakes in the bwcaw you must have a kayak or canoe, no motorized water craft is allowed. actually no motorized anything is allowed. canoes, tents, flash lights ect...thats about it. which is without a doubt why it is still as it was 15 years ago...and most likely the same as it was 1000 years ago...almost no trace of human contact.
day one was a rain storm. a cold rain storm. im not sure how cold it was but when we came out 5 days later i know it was 42 degrees...so it might have been 50 when we dropped in on the first day. it rained all day as we paddled up through sawbill to kelso river and the found a campsite on kelso lake.
the green and black line is the path we paddled and portaged.
we stayed the for the night and fished all day but no luck. this was the day after the hurricane ike destroyed houston and i think the weather was pushing through and jacking up the fishes feed habits...at least that my excuse. the next day we decide to switch camp sites to alton lake where i took this photoshop-assembled panoramic picture from our campsite at the crack of dawn.
i doubt the photo even comes close to doing justice... you would have to see it for yourself... but then you have to paddle all day in the frigid rain to get there which is more than worth the effort.
here is another nice shot from the campsite.
we didnt do so well at killing fish...actually we did really poorly. i actually hit such an obsessive note on the fishing tip that after four days of fishing and only catching one fish, my right arm was visibly swollen andpretty sore. with almost no fish to show for it... my dad caught a real nice walleye that we ate for dinner and i caught a 3 lbs small mouth bass...
..that in spite of the torrential down pour...we ate.
at this point we have basically been in the cold rain for 4 days...i didnt take a ton of pics because i didnt feel like soaking my overly priced camera...should have brought a crappy camera. in order to keep the fire going i decided to stack a bunch of rocks on the steel grate. once they got hot enough the rain would almost instantly evaporate as it hit the rocks, therefor keeping the fire hot and dry...so we could have coffee and hot snacks!
we got pretty feed up with the weather and jammed out early however that meant packing up camp and the kayaking back down to the 30 rod portage in alton and jump into sawbill...which would have been great since it was in the middle of a pretty rough storm where we had the wind to our backs...unless you get lost and miss the portage by...well im not sure 4 miles maybe? and then we had to paddle back up alton to against the wind with ice cold white capped waves....which in fact, sucked balls. my brother and i both had quick little kayaks, but my poor dad had it the worst of all, he was paddling a 2 man canoe packed in a fashion that made him look like viking/native american hybrid heroic version of jed clampett. i really wish i could have photographed it...but it will leave me with a good mental picture none the less.
we bounced back to my dads house just north of the twin cities and hung around his house, drank coffee and talked about how much mccain sucks...and how obama sucks too (just not as much as mccain does)
on my last day we drove past a little lake and i wanted to drop a line in a test the water... as if i had the secret litmus test for fish density or really know anything about fishing. we drove back to dads house, grabbed the canoe and began to fish. i guess i did have some secret litmus strip cause it was pretty unbelievable. right away i caught a couple sunnies and couple little bass. my dad informed my to switch to find northern and viola!!! i caught this beautiful 32" northern pike.
i had 2 other northerns that both got off after putting up the toughest fights i have ever had in fresh water. good times, tough fish. we only fished this lake for 2 hours and it was 10 minutes from my dads house...next year i might just stay closer to my dads...better fishing for sure.
so there you have it....my vacation in the bwcaw for 2008. with any luck i will be able to post another bwcaw blog next year too. until then...back to work.
i am currently moving redletter1 to a new location wit the grand opening on oct 4th...stay tuned!
