June is here and the fishing so far this season has been very typical. The Minnesota side of Saganaga has been slow for bites but producing some real big walleyes if you put your time in. The water is warming up nicely and the fish are bound to turn on soon. June is a good month for Saganaga.
The smaller lakes in and around the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) have been doing really well. Most of the designated trout lakes have been hot and I have heard some good reports from Hungry Jack and Poplar for the walleyes. I love using minnows, but a lot of times you will do better in smaller lakes with leeches and night crawlers. I think there are fewer baitfish in these lakes so the fish target other types of food.
Northern Light Lake in Ontario has been true to the reputation of nice numbers and quality fish. The lake is notorious for great fishing right off the bat. It is a little more work getting there, but it is well worth the trip. A 35-minute boat ride to the portage and ano her 30 m nutes o haul gea and rep the boat on the Northern Light side, and you are fishing in an hour.
I was introduced to a set of portage wheels on a 16-foot aluminum boat by Kyle Edlund and was pretty skeptical. Kyle is a cabin owner on Saganaga Lake and a long time friend. I have watched and helped Kyle portage this boat for a couple of years now, and it is pretty slick. I decided to get a set of them for myself. Unfortunately the guy who basically invented this system over in Ely was no longer willing to make them.
I had a local metal fabricator, Larry Marxen, make them from scratch. Larry is a very talented welder who specializes in custom choppers, and the system he made for me looks perfect. The wheels are from a dirt bike, so they are strong and tall enough to maneuver around the maze of pointed rocks at either side of the portage.
I have yet to take my portage boat on a trial run but I know it takes three people to comfortably move the boat across the portage. One person (me) should wear hipwaders to ease the bow into the water on the other side of the portage. Everything stays on the boat and you lock the wheels to a tree while you are fishing. If everything goes as planned it should take less time than humping the gear across the portage and launching a leaky old boat from the Northern Light side.
The Northern Light portage used to have a railroad system that Ontario removed about 25 years ago. Ever since people have been allowed to pay duty on a boat and lock it to a tree by the portage. There are about 30 boats over there currently but none of them are mine. It can still be done, but you would have to park the boat a long ways down the shore and I have this feeling that someday Canada will want to have all the boats removed. I have enough friends with boats over there already and it is not a problem borrowing them, but I think this portage boat is going to work out great.
It will also be a treat to fish out of a boat with a mounted depth-finder, comfortable seats, and no leaks.
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