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Boundry Waters Canoeing trip

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Jimmy:
This is a great thread already!   ;D

I just committed to a meeting in Minneapolis at the end of July, and I am going to try to stretch it out into a little vacation in BWCA and/or Quanitco, too!   Rent a car after my meetings and head north.

I am an avid Smallie and Pike fishermen, so I have always wanted to fish and camp in the Boundary Waters.

Thanks for the information already!  I will be solo for three or four days, hoping to fish the whole time.

Jimmy:
I had a business trip to Minneapolis last week, so I extended my stay through Sunday night so that I could make a suicide-run up to the BWCA and do some paddling and fishing.

The smallmouth bite was hot, and the BWCA is amazing!!!

Surely one of my favorite wilderness areas yet!  Most Smallies took stickbaits of soft plastics with abandon.

And I manged a new personal best!  23.5" and likely in the neighborhood of five pounds:


Of course, I hooked this one around 2am after a particularly rowdy campfire celebration so the battle was extra-epic and the laughter and hollering was probably heard in Thunder Bay just up the road.

I accessed the BWCA from the end of the Gunflint Trail, and paddled Seagull Lake then portaged into a few neighboring waters for pike and more smallmouth.  What a great peice of the planet that is.

And the North Shore of Lake Superior amazed me.  Total bonus scenery, for sure!

waterwolf603:
great pics Jimmy I would definitely say that smallie is 5lbs

DIRTBALL2:
The BWCA is all I said it was and more, isn't it Jimmy? And you didn't even get into the best part! I'm referring to Lake Saganaga which border's on the Quetico Provincial Park in Canada! The BWCA is so big that you could spend a lifetime trying to see all of it! Which you probably couldn't do! And every last bit of it is just as beautiful and awe inspiring! Count yourself as fortunate for even the small amount of time you got to spend there. Every single time I've gone up there I feel doubly blessed and incredibly grateful! So it should hardly come as a surprise that I have getting up there again as #1 on my Bucket List! ;DDIRTBALL2 ;)

Cornbread:
I lived near the BWCA in Northern MN when I was younger. We went every year for two to three weeks for a long canoe vacation as a family. I love that area up there. Sounds like stick baits and soft plastics are still what works up there. I would also suggest bringing a set of small spoons that has a five of diamonds, a dare devil, a red eye wiggler etc. late in the year the pike can be deep so spoons can work real well to catch them down in the colder depths. Inline flexible spinners with a single hook that you put a Mr Twister on can work real well too for both smallies all day and pike( in the mornings and evenings ). I like the 3" Mr Twisters to tip them with in black, white, and that sort of jello greenish yellow color. As kids we never caught much trolling but I think that is because my parents were pretty hard core and were probably going too fast. Bring jig heads that you can put soft plastics on for both smallies and walleye. You can catch your own leeches up there while you travel each night if you want live bait and want to take the time to put out leech traps but it is a lot easier to bring them in yourself as they don't take up much room. Put them in a ziplock bag with air and water in a tiny lunch cooler with ice and then put them in a leech tamer each night in camp. The little lunch cooler won't take up much room and you can carry it by hand on portages. Bring a ton of them if you can as the fish snap them up pretty quick.

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