At just over 1 million acres the boundary waters is considered America’s premier canoe wilderness destination with over 250,000 visitors each year. The fact that it’s wilderness means a large percentage of the water doesn’t get the fishing pressure that more populated areas get so the fishing is considerably better. Trophy pike, walleye, bass, panfish and lake trout can be found in these waters and if you are thinking about going to the boundary waters you’ll need to plan ahead of time to get a permit and get the necessary gear together for a wilderness adventure. I’m hoping these tips will help you catch more fish on your next big adventure.
Summertime Fishing in the BW
When paddling you are usually either trekking from lake to lake and on the move, or you may be day tripping out from your campsite from a stationary base campsite.
It’s hard to do but I try to limit myself to 2-3 rods, 1 is usually for trolling or casting crankbaits and another for slip bobbers, live bait rigging or jigging. Two piece rods are often easier for portaging but 1 piece rods will work if stored inside the gunnels and treated with care, the plastic rod sleeves are helpful to eliminate lines from tangling and to protect the rods. Four piece pack rods are also ideal if you are traveling a long way in a short time and aren’t worried about fishing until you get to your destination. I usually bring a spare spool or a spare reel incase a reel gets broken or something happens.
Ideally when portaging one guy carries a lighter pack with sleeping bags and the canoe while the other guy carries the food pack and the rods and paddles. You can also bungee the rods and paddles just inside the gunnels if portaging solo.
Many lakes in the boundary waters are bog stained from the tanins in the swamps, that is to say that the water is tinted “root beer” colored and this darker water helps light sensitive fish like walleyes to feed all day instead of just lowlight periods like sunrise and sunset. Right after opener or Late spring many of the walleyes will either just be finishing up the spawn and can be found near areas of current, after that they tend to spread out to the bays and basins chasing the forage of the day, wind plays an important role in finding the fish so I look to windblown bays and shorelines. As the summer progresses fish will start to congregate on points and humps. Fish can be found using a variety of methods depending on the speed at which you are fishing.
Fast, Medium and Slow….the 3 speed fishing approach
Fast is first in my book
When ever covering water from lake to lake I like to have a crankbait hanging over the side because we are paddling at the perfect trolling speed. My favorite for trolling include floating rapalas, rebel crayfish, rapala shadow raps, #5 shad raps and berkley flicker shads. One thing these baits all have in common is that they don’t dive deeper than 4 feet so the odds of hanging them up and having to turn around to get unsnagged are slim, this saves valuable time and precious lures…they also catch fish. I like to mainline a superbraid like 20 lb powerpro and use a duolock snap to clip on my crankbaits. The powerpro saves me from using a steel leader for toothy pike and the snap allows better motion and gives the ability to change up lures or unsnap lures quickly for storage when portaging from lake to lake. Note: treble hooks seem to find their way into everything so I prefer to put them away when portaging canoes. By trolling a crank you can skirt along shore and find fish quickly, once active fish are located you can pull back out and bomb the shore with a cast and retrieve, my go to is a shadow rap because they run shallow, can catch fish at any speed and are heavy enough to throw on a windy day. If smallies are the goal I’d cast senkos into the shore as well, sometimes in June they are right up against the shore on beds and other days they can be found off the first ledge or break. Casting off visible weed edges, beaver lodges, rocky points and submerged stumps will all hold smallies. For pike I’d add some bigger baits like spinner baits, spoons and big crank baits, and if targeting big gators I’ll use a steel or heavy florocarbon leader otherwise stick to the braid and you’ll get more strikes from bass and walleyes as well.
Downshift to medium for walleyes
If I find a walleye or two while trolling I might go back and slow it down by trolling spinners or bottom bouncers or using slow death rigs with smile blades and berkely gulp crawlers, the gulp seems to do just as well as real crawlers and is alot easier to bring with for a long trip. Usually this medium speed can be accomplished by just letting the wind drift you along and if drifting too fast a small drift sock can help slow things down. I try to play the wind whenever looking for walleyes because the wind stacks up the bait and the bigger fish are usually right there with them.
Sometimes Slow and steady to win the race
Some days are a grind when the fish don’t want to chase and that’s when you have to slow it down and put some live bait right in their face and bounce it off their noses. Usually this is done by either lindy rigging or jigging and learning to scull with a paddle is basically backtrolling by hand.
The basics of live bait rigging. A lindy rig is a sliding sinker tied to a swivel and then a short leader with a bead and a bare hook or floater hook. I’ll drop a lindy rig down to the bottom and once my bait touches bottom I’ll lift it up about a beer bottle height and let it hang there, while doing this I am constantly dropping it back down to come in contact with the bottom and raising it back up always leaving my line tight to feel for the slightest bite. The bottom is always rocky and if you spend any time on the bottom or with slack in your line you’ll probably get hung up so it’s best to stay up and just keep checking in with the bottom since it’s always changing. Anytime I’m rigging, I keep the bail open and pinch or hold the line with my trigger finger waiting to feel the bite.
I tell my client that there are three types of bites. First is the tick, is just that, one small “tick” of a fish picking up your bait, it might just have the tail so I let go of the line and let the fish work on eating the whole bait, the next is what I call the “slow honey” where it feels like you are dragging that weight through some honey in the fridge…just an added pull, this is usually where a walleye or other fish picked up your bait and is swimming along with you. And the third bite is the unmistakable “freight train” where an aggressive fish grabbed your bait and is headed for the border!
No matter what the bite is let go and give the fish some time to run with your bait. Give it a count of 5-10 seconds, close the bail, reel up any extra slack and feel for the fish, if you feel the fish give a good hook set and the fight is on! If there’s nothing there reel up and check your bait to make sure it’s still there and your line isn’t fouled up, then drop back down and repeat.
When lindy rigging I mainline braid but use swivel with a florocarbon or mono leader like seaguar or trilene. Pike have razor sharp teeth and bite offs are common so bring extra leader line. My leaders range from 3 feet down to about 1.5 depending on how snaggy it is. For weights I usaully just use bullet sinkers because they are cheap and have a low profile otherwise I like the no-snag sinkers, either way if they get snagged up they are usually pinched between two rocks and you usually have to go backwards from the direction you came from to unsnag them. I usually have a colored bead just above my hook, this adds a little flash and I think it catches the fishes attention and brings them in for a closer look where they find the bait.
Jigging is similar in that I’ll drop my bait to the bottom and then lift up and hang it just above the bottom checking in to make contact but not leaving it down to get snagged up, if you feel a bite give it a set or if they are small walleyes I’ll let it hang for a second and once the rod loads up then I set the hook. Be prepared to lose some jigs to snags and pike but the nice thing about jigs is that you can add a twister tail to a jig and cast it out and work it back in to cover more water, I usually go as light as I can get away with to help prevent snags.
Another fun option in the boundary waters is fishing a bobber rig. When the wind is blowing into a shallow bay or current is sweeping through a neck down area I like to cast out a slip bobber and let the wind or current carry it into the fish without the canoe spooking it. Ideally I try to choose a campsite with a drop off where I can fish a lighted slip bobber at night, this eliminates the dangers of paddling after dark but offers some fantastic opportunities for fishing late at night or early in the morning.
Bait Choices
Speaking of bait, the beginning of the year is usually started off with minnows when the water is cool, minnows can be difficult to keep alive so we often keep them in an airbag inside the bucket until we get up to the fishing destination, then use a flow troll bucket and keep them in the water as much as possible for oxygen, try to get a bucket that latches or snaps shut to keep bait in and other critters out. Some people will also bring a minnow trap to trap their own minnows once they get to the destination, it’s hard to beat fresh local bait. If chasing big pike early in the year frozen smelt work great hung under a bobber in/near areas of current or along reed patches or weed beds.
Leeches are the next bait of choice as the season progresses and are probably the easiest to transport and keep alive all summer long. I like to use a screw top cooler because they can hold 1/2 lb or more and be banged around with out the lid coming off and spilling water or precious bait on your sleeping bag or food bag. Leech lockers will work but often the lid gets knocked open with disasterous results.
Crawlers are the final bait and work great especially later in the summer when the water warms up but need to be kept cool to keep them from spoiling. Dirt takes up valuable space so I might bring a dozen or two and keep them next to my frozen steaks which will be consumed within the first day or two. When rigging crawlers I like to use the magic worm blower to inflate them, this floats them up off the bottom and makes an attractive target for walleyes and smallmouth bass that are hugging the bottom.
As summer fades and waters cool down big minnows come back into play. I like to run a longer leader and let that minnow roam.
Bring the video games!!
Ideally one of the main reasons to head to the boundary waters is to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and leave the headaches of cell phones and other electronics behind but this is an article about catching fish and so I’d be hard pressed not to use every advantage I can get over the fish. There isn’t many good depth maps of the boundary waters lakes and the maps that exist aren’t the most accurate so you can learn to read the shoreline to find various structure like points and humps but electronics will help show you if there is fish there or not. Many ice fisherman have portable flashers and graphs that run off small 12 volt batteries and flat bottom iceducers will read a signal right through the boat without the hassle of being mounted or hung over the side. Most people are only up in fishing paradise for a short amount of time so make the most of it by locating and staying on top of fish. GPS units either stand alone or on your phone are also great for navigating back to a portage or campsite or for finding a spot that you fished a few years earlier because some days all of the islands look the same.
Lure and Color choices
The old school balsa black/silver and black/gold #11 floaters are time tested staples that are always in my arsenal, some days one color outshines the other but they both get the nod. For pike most anything firetiger in color works well and I like to use floating rapalas, spinnerbaits and spoons. The old red and white combination works well for pike and walleyes as well. Also most anything crawdad colored works well #5 shadraps in demon or rust color, rebel crayfish. Flicker shads work great for walleyes, my favorite is a chartruese with a black dot. And for bass I like senkos in a variety of colors rigged both wacky and straight. Another new favorite is the shadow rap in mossy back shiner, ghost and black and silver or purple. If I’m paddling over deep water I like to troll a tail dancer deep becuase they can go down 30 feet and have caught big; lakers, walleyes, bass and pike. Chartruse spinner blades are always good as are hammered copper/gold or silver. Hot pink, yellow and bright orange can all be good as well.
Always bring a decent net with a long handle, keep the fish in the net in the water to act as a live well while you get things unhooked, to pass a fish to the other end of the canoe or to get the camera ready for the shot. Big fish in the boundary waters are slow growing so please practice “CPR” catch photo and release. Make sure you have a jaw spreader and some long hook out outs or hemostats because big pike can be caught most anywhere and should be played quickly and returned safely if not being eaten. Bring a stringer but be careful when hanging it over the side of the canoe or leaving it unattended at a campsite because pike and turtles have been known to take your catch.
Motorized options
Most of it is canoe only with less than 25% that is motorized, these are usually larger lakes bordering Canada with certain horsepower limitations Saganaga, Basswood and Lac LaCroix. There are few options to accessing these lakes with bigger boats, some include boats with portage wheels and others have motorized portages that you can pay for or have a livery service run you and your canoes past the motorized zone and up to the paddle only areas. If you are looking for for some premier fishing without the hassle,consider hiring a guide for the motorized portion. The Ely Fishing Guide Company specializes in day trips and overnight trips up to basswood lake and other remote BW destinations.
The boundary waters is a special place and the further you get from the beaten path the better the fishing can be. Enjoy the splendor of such a special place, leave no trace and take nothing but memories.
