Boundary Waters - Quetico - September 2002

The story actually begins on the 4th of July. I was over at my brother-in-law Dan’s house setting things on fire when my phone rang, and it was Scott. He had just got off the phone with Gary. Apparently, a couple of guys had backed out of his September camp and fishing trip up to the Boundary Waters in Canada and he need two replacements. Scott wanted to go, and he was looking for a second. I had been in full fish mode for year at that point, so I was ready to go, I just need to sort out the logistics to see if it was feasible. I didn’t have time to think about it too much because even in July, time was running out.

Mary and I figured out a way to make it work. Now I had just about two months to get everything ready. Part of the complication was that we intended to camp in Canada in the Quetico Provincial Park. This meant that we had to apply for what was known as a CanPass. You can find out more about it or even apply for one here. Basically, it is a permit to cross the border in areas where there are no official border crossing posts. It is supposed to keep jackbags from crossing the border. It seems odd to me now to think that there are more barriers in place to prevent people from the United States crossing into Canada than there are to stop people from Mexico entering the U.S. Anyway, the CanPass approval process can be lengthy so there was no time to waste.

We had a couple planning meetings with Gary to organize ourselves and to try to get an idea of what to expect. Gary had been up at least once before, so he had a basic plan. We asked questions and he did his best to answer them and we left with a shopping and packing list. We would be using Wilderness Outfitters to set us up. You can find out more about Wilderness Outfitters here. The plan was two canoes, four guys and a week of camping and fishing in the beautiful and remote Boundary Waters. Don’t worry nothing Deliverance-ish every happened.

The fourth guy was Jay. I met Jay for the first time when his van rolled up to my house early one morning in September. Jay was burly dude with this 1970’s looking conversion van that was to be our transport to Ely, Minnesota. It was still in the early hours of the morning, and we were on the road to Minnesota. I think it was about a 14-hour drive to get to Ely. It is weird how tiring it is to just sit in a car for 14 hours. I had never been to Wisconsin or Minnesota before, so I was fascinated by watching the scenery change.

We had reserved a pair of rooms at the Paddle Inn, a quaint little place in Ely. It is one of those Inns where all of the rooms have doors that open into the parking lot. We checked in at the Wilderness Outfitters and made sure that they had everything we need and that we had everything they needed. By the time we finished there, it was already around 8:30 or so but we decided to head down the main street and find some food. There was an unmistakable Frontier feeling here. Kind of like Northern Exposure. Every place of business seemed to have huge, mounted pike, or deer heads, or moose antlers hanging on the walls. We decided that it was probably best to eat a burger since we’d be living on mostly fish for the next week. We didn’t stay out too late because we needed to be at the outfitters before 5:00am.

The alarm came too soon as you might have guessed. We got up and took what would be our last hot shower for a week. We stopped by the bait shop to pick up our flat of night crawlers. I didn’t know then but a “flat” means a big Styrofoam box or worms. This was back before Canada got all weird and banned live bait, and hooks for fishing. OK they didn’t ban hooks just the barbs, but you know. I seem to recall that the bait store had messed up the order and it wasn’t ready for us, and they might not even have enough worms to fill it.

Anyway, we get to Wilderness and it is brisk, but we are wearing our Gore-Tex and are ready to go. We pile into a truck that has all of our stuff including the canoes and a motorized boat that will take us as far as motorized boats are allowed to go. We head out of Ely in the fog on a winding road. Eventually we pull up to a boat ramp on a lake. The truck is emptied, and we all climb aboard the boat which has our canoes strapped to a rack above and all of our stuff piled in the middle. The motorboat ride was split into two parts. We rode for a while to Prairie Portage where we had to get out and check in at some kind of Customs office while the boat was dragged from one lake to the next. This seemed to take about half an hour or so but then we were back in the boat and bouncing towards Washington Island. It was a pretty long ride, and the wind was really picking up. I was tired and slept a while.

Here we are on Washington Island. We had just unloaded our canoes and all of our stuff. The guy in the red jacket was the dude from Wilderness Outfitters that dropped us off. The rest [from left to right] are Gary, me, Scott and Jay.

It was warming up but getting very windy. The Outfitter guy thought that it might be too windy to try to canoe. We considered hanging around on Washington Island for a while but decided that we get going and see how it went.

Each canoe had a map of the area, and the map is really important because you need to work to keep your bearings all the time. This isn’t a lake with easily recognizable landmarks like cottages or stuff. Most of the shoreline looks the same. There are just a few types of trees and the same rock formations over and over again. Well, we loaded up our stuff into our canoes. The package we got from Wilderness provided nearly everything except fishing gear. Everything was packed into heavy canvas Duluth bags. Our clothes were sealed up in watertight packs. Our rods were in my Bazooka tube, and we were off. Scott and I were first to venture out into the wildly tossing wind churning lake. I realized instantly that Scott and I had never been in a canoe together. He was in the front and I the back with probably too much stuff packed in the middle.

Our canoe was already riding low as we emerged from behind the protective cover of shore into the full rage of the wind. The waves were crashing, the tiny ship was tossed but once we swung into the wind, it wasn’t quite as treacherous. Gary and Jay had similar issues but soon we were on our way. We decided that since the wind and waves were so treacherous that we would hug the shoreline on our way. And so began our 5-hour paddle into the wind. We were heading north along United States point. We ducked behind the first island to get out of the wind. This built up our confidence and we headed to the next island where we got out and drug our canoes across a small sandy bridge. The distances seem ridiculously small on the map but given the weather of the day, it was serious effort.

We continued to paddle into the wind. A stand of big rocks stuck up out of the water away in the distance. I called them The Mocking Rocks because they never seemed to get any closer. They just sat there mocking our effort to reach them. After a couple of hours, we finally reached the point part of United States Point and followed it west. This was the second moment of sever treachery as we had to finally put ourselves perpendicular to the howling wind. Waves crashed; the canoe shuddered then we finally found protection in the northern shore.

From this point on the journey was pleasant and felt much safer. It was still a long way from where we were going to camp. We spent the next few hours saying, “is this it?” to which Gary would reply “I think it is after this next point.” Like I said earlier, it all looks the same up there. Anyway, we finally ran out of next points and headed north again. The plan was to camp at a spot where Gary’s friend had camped earlier that year. We knew where it should have been on the map, but it isn’t like there are signposts or anything, so we didn’t actually know what we were looking for. We knew it was a small island and whether it really was the spot or not, we found a small island with what looked like a nice campsite.

It really was a nice layout. There were four little cleared areas. One of the areas had a fire pit ready to go. There was also a nice landing area for the canoes and a large relatively flat rock formation that we called The Front Porch. It looked westward into a great blue body of water and green far shore.

The center area was the cooking tent. Hey look there is a picture of it. Gary and Jay set up their tent on the cooking tent’s 12. At the 6, we raised a large tarp over the fire pit area. I bent a couple of saplings and tied the tarp to them. When they sprang back, they provided constant tension for our tarp. In the first few hours of camp, we fell into what would be our roles for the week. I was the engineer. Gary was the chef; Scott was the cleaner and Jay was the mule. Not mule as in ferrying contraband but as in beast of burden. Jay was a strong guy and there was no way we would have gotten our food pack into a bear safe zone if it wasn’t for his muscles.

Scott and I had already assembled our tent when we discovered the fourth little clearing 9 o’clock from the cooking tent. Rather than take it apart, we decide to pick it up and move it. This turned out to be disastrous at a sharp protrusion of broken branch ripped a hole in the cover. Oh look, there’s a picture of it. It turned out to be a nice spot otherwise.

As we unpacked everything, we discovered that Wilderness really loads you up with stuff. We had a propane cook stove, pots and pans, cups plates, basically dinnerware for 6 or 8 people. They even packed a picnic table. Not kidding a metal folding picnic table with bench seats and all. There were all kinds of freeze-dried stuff and oatmeal and pancake mix. They even packed four frozen steaks that would be thawed just in time for dinner. A very nice touch.

Once we had everything unpacked and set up, we decided to go fishing. Again, Gary’s friend had shown us where to go so we got our rods and got back into those canoes. We headed north again, leaving our little island behind us. Scott though that since we were travelling, we might as well be trolling. So, we tied on some trolling lures. In this case we were using these giant lures called Grandma’s. Gary forgot to tell us to bring rod holders, so we were holding rods with our knees and paddling. It is harder than it sounds. We had gone a little way when Scott’s rod tip did that thing that looks like he hooked a fish. He quickly grabbed the rod and tried to set the hook. Snap! His rod tip broke. He had recently purchased some nice St Croix’s for the trip and not even an hour into fishing and one had broken. Bummer to say the least. So, he switches to another rod and a few minutes later Snap! This one break too, in almost the same spot. “I feel nauseous.” were his exact words. He still had his ultra-lite but that is no good for trolling.

We continued north to the spot where we hoped to get into some smallmouth bass. All the while we speculated on what could have caused those rods to fail. We finally got to our spot and dropped our Portage Anchors. I was using a 7-foot Guide Series Ultra-Lite from Gander Mountain. I rigged up a jig head, added a night crawler and let it drop to the bottom then give the reel a crank or two and jig. The smallmouth bass there were sizable and put up a great fight. It was common for the tip of my 7 foot ultra-lite to be in the water and those smallies tore off drag. We caught a bunch of smallmouths but didn’t stay out too long. It had been a long couple of days. We headed back to camp ate some fish and steaks and watched the sunset from the front porch.

We spent a week up in Quetico. It wasn’t until the 5th day that we finally saw another human being. A pair of kayakers wandered into our bay. They glided up the far shore then turned around and disappeared.

For the most our daily routine didn’t change too much. We’d get up early then troll our way up to our smallmouth spot. Fish for smallies for a few hours, then do some exploration, trolling all the way of course.

It was the morning of our first day and Scott and I decided to troll our way around a pair of islands at the northern end of Ranger Bay. I had my 7-foot trolling rod set up with my grandma lure. There was a nice channel between the two islands that seemed to hold good potential for some Northern Pike. We spent some time working our way up and back that channel. On one pass, I hooked a pike. While I was working him to the boat, another pike struck my grandma. Now I had two pike on the same lure. We rowed to towards the shore. I got out of the canoe and onto a rocky shoreline to finish the fight. I had just got them up to the shore when the pike that hit second thrashed and took the rear hook right out of the lure and was gone. I landed the other pike.

Here is a photo of the very same lure. You can see the that the surface has been gouged by those sharp pike teeth. You can also see that that tail hook is missing. Taken by the pike that got away. The two pike on one lure made for good campfire story that evening.

We caught plenty of smallmouth bass, Walleye and Northern Pike. We only keep what we would eat for dinner each day. After the first day we decided not to eat any Northerns. Their bone structure makes them difficult to clean and they yield the least amount of usable meat. The menu would consist of Wallies and Smallies and that was fine with us.

Here’s a shot of Gary with a stringer. The fish up there are quality. The Smallmouth fought hard, and it was difficult not smile as they ripped off drag and bent rods. We’d fish all morning then take a break around lunch time although we rarely cooked lunch. As the week progressed, Canoe Butt forced us to take more frequent breaks.

One day, we were out fishing. Gary and Jay were in their canoe. Gary had a jig bouncing on the bottom. I don’t recall the circumstances that lead to this, but Gary had his rod in the rod holder while he was focused on something else. The canoe drifted and somehow the rod came loose and sank to Davy Jones’ locker unseen. We were close by when we heard Gary discover the missing rod. Of course, he was upset, quality rods and reels are not cheap. To lose one is tough.

One night we set a large steel cook pot full of water on a nice flat rock on the edge of the fire ring. It wasn’t right on the fire but really close and soon the water was steaming. We took turns submerging out hands in the steaming water. It is strange how something like hot water seems so alien after just a few days in the wild.

I was usually the first one up every day. I didn’t sleep too well. I’ve had the same waterbed since the mid 1980’s Sleeping on the ground is really difficult evening after exhausting days of paddling. Usually at first light I’d take a little walk out to the front porch and drink in the scenery. Once the rest of the guys got moving, we’d get the coffee on and soon we’d be back in the canoes and fishing. Speaking of being sore. Canoe Butt is a serious issue. We had those Crazy Creek canoe chairs and while they provided a modicum of padding, it just wasn't enough. This issue is that when you are in a canoe for 10 hours a day, you are really stuck in a single position. You can't just walk around every once in a while, without rowing into shore. You really can't even just stand up to stretch. You are stuck on your butt. After a day or two, you really notice it. Fortunately, there is something you can do about Canoe Butt.

The weather at that time in September just happened to be perfect for us. It was warm and sunny for most of the time and evening though the nights were brisk it wasn’t too unpleasant. One morning we returned to our favorite smallmouth bass spot. We were jigging with night crawlers like has all week when Gary hooked something. He reeled it in and what do you know! It was the rod he had lost a few days prior! I know! How impossible?

I had brought a big flashlight that had an AM/FM built into it. The idea was that we’d tune into the weather every day to get an idea of what to expect. The only problem was that we’d scan the entire dial but couldn’t find any signal. We tried every night and got nothing. One night I was trying to find anything on the radio. Nothing was happening..and then..it was the beginning of that long instrumental section of the Pink Floyd song Sheep from the Animals album. We stood around the fire listening to Sheep in total amazement. When the song concluded the radio went dead again and stayed that way for the rest of the trip.

The trip was amazing we saw bald eagles, found a moose skeleton on our island, we caught loads of great fish.