Trip Notes:
Jim and I drove up first to the put-in at Kawishiwi Lake at the end of Sawbill and arrived late at night. It rained pretty decently, so Jim and I set up camp in the back of Big Blue and turned on the interior topper lights. The rest of the crew arrived around midnight and promptly made the back of Big Blue seem pretty tiny.

We pushed off pretty early, around 7:00am, and paddled into a slight morning headwind across Kawishiwi Lake about 2 miles to the first portage. We headed north across the next lake as the wind picked up, to our longest portage of the trip (about 1/4 mile). Then we headed into a pretty big lake and Jim and I were the heaviest guys in the slowest canoe, so we had to beat ass just to keep up. After the third portage, we were out of the wind and on our designated lake (Koma) that Drew had picked out. Not a soul was on any of the camping areas, so we had the pick of the crop. It was about 800 yards north of the last portage...a series of beaver dams at that river portage providing random firewood for the taking.

Two days in, Drew came up with the plan to paddle to the headwaters of the Kawishiwi River, where the famous Pictographs were located. I REALLY wanted to see them, so I helped rally the troops. It was a 10.5 mile paddle there from our base camp, so we took extra emergency gear, food and a water filter and fished on the way.

It was quite a journey, through some sheer-wall, narrow Basalt canyons that topped out at 60 feet as we rounded the north bend of the route and started heading south. The channel was only 50 feet wide at some points, and very deep. There was a series of several short portages that made it easier to just leave the canoes loaded "as is" and just put a man on each end and hump them the 200 yards or so to the other side. When we finally got to the headwaters of the Kawishiwi River, it was a pretty nasty elevation drop through some rocky terrain to the start of the Kawishiwi River below. We left all of our emergency and backup gear at the top of the portage and brought just canoes and fishing gear down and put back in below the falls.

After ga-gawing at the incredibly ancient 800-year-old-plus Woodland Indian Pictographs on the overhanging walls below the falls, someone dropped a line in the water and hit a fish on the first cast. It turned out to be a pool of very hungry walleye and Northern Pike at the terminus up the river. We caught and released about 50 fish between us for nearly an hour until we ran out of bait. Drew caught two walleyes on a dry hook after the bait ran out.

Time was marching on, and we had a 10.5-mile paddle home, so we packed up and went back up the portage with our canoes. At the top of the falls, the fishermen of the group figured it would be worthwhile to try that terminus as well. Ho-Ho!!! Fish on, on just about every cast. That photo above of Jimmers landing that Northern was at the top of the falls. We finally just had to leave, and started the paddle home.

Drew and I were the cheerleaders of paddling all the way to this destination, and we heard grumbles from the crew on the way back. We left basecamp at around 8:30am, and it took us all day and into sunset to get back. That photo of Jim paddling out of the sunset above was taken on the sunset trip back. People were complaining, yes, but I think everyone enjoyed the extreme extra effort that went into that really long day trip.

Overall, I will conclude this: I was the 8th guy in a group of 8 serious Fishermen who was NOT a fisherman. I came out of the trip knowing quite a huge more amount of fishing and how to fish and where to fish than when I started. I've never caught as many fish in my lifetime as I did on this trip, and it was only a 4-day trip. Amen.