Fishing in the Boundry Waters

My friend, R.B., and I were planning our next epic adventure, a fishing trip to Lake Winnebigoshish  in Minnesota, when it dawned on me that I hadn't documented our trip last year.  It was during that period when I couldn't seem to ever find time to write.  So here is the story.

In early 2017, R.B. asked me if I wanted to go on a fishing trip with him and three other guys.  They were planning to fish the boundary waters in northern Minnesota.  I said, "Sure!" so we began planning the trip.  Planning, of course, involved several meetings at restaurants for food and drink.

On the appointed day, Saturday, June 10, 2017, we left Tulsa in my motor home.  The five people going were R.B., his son, Bobby, James, Travis, and myself.  The first night we drove to Owatonna, Minnesota, a distance of about 670 miles, and stayed in the parking lot of a Cabela's store there.  Of course, we went into the store and spent a boat load of money on fishing and camping gear.  The next morning, we left early and drove on to Ely, Minnesota, another 300 miles.

When we arrived in Ely, we met the outfitter that R.B. had contacted for gear and made plans to begin our canoe trip the next morning.  We spent that night, our second night out, in the motor home.  We got up early the next morning, Monday, and found a wonderful place in Ely to eat breakfast.  After filling our bellies with biscuits and gravy, we went back to the outfitter's place where we had parked the motor home and began to unload our gear.  As is usual, we had way more "stuff" than we needed and left some of it there.

Unloading our Gear in Ely

The outfitter dropped us off at a landing on Fall Lake about six miles northeast of Ely.  We loaded our canoes and began our journey.  I hadn't been in a canoe in about 60 years so it took a little while to get comfortable!  Our canoe trip took about five hours and included two portages of a quarter mile each.  We went from Fall Lake to Newton Lake and then into Pipestone Bay.  Once on Pipestone, you could, if you so desired, canoe into Canada.

Each portage involved dragging our canoe onto shore, unloading all the gear in them, hauling it all along with the canoe to the next lake, and then reloading everything back into the canoes.  These usually took about three round trips to get all our gear moved.

Bobby and Travis in the Canoe

By the time we got to our selected campsite, it was about four o'clock and we quickly got our camp set up.  We were the only humans on the little island in the middle of this lake and that made it kind of eerie!

For the next four days, we fished for walleye, pike, and smallmouth bass.  Most of our fishing was done from the bank, right in camp, because the weather wasn't good enough to spend much time fishing from the canoes.
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Edd With a Smallmouth

Sleeping arrangements were hammocks strung between trees.  I was absolutely amazed at how well we slept and stayed dry in them.  On two of the nights, we had thunderstorms with lots of lightening and rain and I never got a drop of water in my hammock!  In the evenings, of course, we sat around the campfire, ate Nutter Butter cookies and drank copious quantities of whiskey.  We didn't catch a lot of fish but everyone caught some and everyone had a good time.

On Friday morning, June 16, we got up, fixed our breakfast over the campfire, and loaded the canoes for the trip back to our take out spot.  The wind was howling and we were all a little apprehensive about the trip.  As the morning progressed, the winds got stronger and stronger and we sure were glad to see the landing spot in sight.

By the time we got checked in with the outfitter and took a shower (which we all needed badly), we decided to load up the motor home and drive all the way home overnight.  We left Ely about 2 p.m. and, after a stop in Joplin for breakfast, arrived home about 8:30 Saturday morning.

I've been on several trips like this and, for most of them, the day I returned, I would say I would never go back.  That was not the case with this trip - when we go home I wold have turned around and done it again that day!