Hi all,
Thank you for all of the help you provided in response to some questions i asked a few weeks ago. I just finished a 7 day trip and thought I would share updates about the fishing and what worked.
Fall lake - caught my first BWCA fish and first pike on my second cast with a tube. Made the portage to Newton.
Newton - didn’t fish much as nasty weather was coming and we wanted to set up camp on Pipestone. Made the portage to Pipestone.
Pipestone - set up camp at one of the first sites as the rain came down and the wind picked up. Once the storm passed, we went back out fishing. Caught 4 pike within 100 feet of camp on #5 Mepps and a jerk bait. Made our way to Pipestone falls. Very first fish was a 21 inch long 16 inch girth smallmouth (any guess on weight as it was my biggest to date?) on a tube. Proceeded to get 3 more small mouth over 18 inches in the next hour and a few around 16 inches all on the tube. We tried slip bobbering Leeches for walleye at the falls with no luck. Caught a 20 inch pike on a whopper plopper and then headed back to camp. The next morning we decided to head back to the Falls and did well catching small mouth around the 14-18 inch range. Packed up camp and headed to Jackfish Bay using the portage at the back of a small bay (forget the name of it). This was easily the worst kept portage of the trip and looked seldom used.
Jackfish Bay-lucked out and camped on the south island’s beach campsite area. We caught small smallmouth from camp and decided to use each of our three days in the bay to focus on different sides of the bay. The first day we focused on the east side and caught a 28 inch pike early on with the Mepps. Fishing was slow until about 10 and then we started getting quite a few smallmouth. They were not leader shy and ate the Mepps on the wire leader. My friend was catching them on a senko. That night we focused on the islands south of camp and caught about 20 bass and pike on whopper ploppers, tiny torpedos, and Ned rigs. It was phenomenal fishing for the hour we were there. The next day we focused on the large bluff across from the camp and the western shoreline. Despite reading lots of good things about the bluff area, no real success was had on lures or slip bobbers. We worked to the south end of the bay catching smallies and pike. The pike bite really picked up near the rivers at the bottom of the bay. They ate anything we threw: jerkbaits, flukes, senkos, Mepps, etc. by the next day we really wanted to catch our first walleye and decided to leave the consistent bites to target them. We observed where the motor boats anchored and were fortunate enough to talk to some of them. We anchored about 100 yards south of camp and slip bobbered for 2-3 hours. With no depth finder or GPS to locate the reefs we just had to move around every twenty minutes or so. Eventually we caught one, then another and then another. In total we caught 6 on leeches. We kept 4 for dinner. We both decided we prefer smallmouth. Perhaps we didn’t cook them the appropriate way though we tried breaded and pan seared.
Back Bay-The next day we decided to make progress towards our exit in Wood Lake and fished our way to Back Bay. Ended up catching a walleye while trolling a shad rap on wire on one of the points and proceeded to slip bobber a few more and 8 or so smallies. While focusing on the points we caught smallies and pike and then largemouth in the weeds of Back Bay. The following day we had to make a series of long portages to Wood Lake.
Good Lake- We caught a lot of 12 inch smallies and small pike in the 45 mins we were there. Also some perch.
Hula Lake - this was the worst horsefly area I have ever seen. It looked like the lake would be a dud and then we caught about 20 pike nearly every cast near the exit portage.
Wood Lake-we we’re pretty done fishing after the long portages but did manage a few smallies and pike.

Big takeaways:
The smallies are all full of crawfish. Many spit them up as we reeled them in. All of the smallmouth had stuffed bellies.
The mosquitos and horseflies are quite rough right now.
The fish seemed to prefer faster presentations which doubled in the benefit we could cover lots of water. I spent most my time throwing the #5 Mepps, whopper plopper, or jerk bait on a 9 inch wire leader. The fish did not seem to be leader shy at all which I suppose makes sense given how stained the water is. The few times I wasn’t using the wire, I lost my lures to pike in no time at all.
Our fishing was mostly restricted to the shoreline given our lack of GPS or depth finder to locate reefs.

Hope this provides some insight to current conditions!
Best,
Eastcoast

Nice thanks for sharing! Sounds like a fun trip and well done, when pike are hungry they won't care if you're using a rope for a leader/fishing line haha

cyclones30: "Nice thanks for sharing! Sounds like a fun trip and well done, when pike are hungry they won't care if you're using a rope for a leader/fishing line haha "

Ain't that the truth.

I had a cousin who kept 3 smallmouth bass on Devils Track lake near the BWCA and he was planning on cleaning them the next morning so he tied up a stringer to the side of the boat.

The next morning a 28" northern had swallowed one of the bass on the stringer and you could see the rope going straight down the northerns throat. Ended up cleaning the northern as well to round out the fish fry. Northerns are crazy.

I'm happy you did so well!

Nice report, any photos ?

I'd call that smallmouth an honest 6lb. Nice fish!

Nice report. Interesting that you found the bass tastier than the walleye.

Sweet smallmouth! The length to weight chart I just checked also said a 21" smallmouth is 4.5 pounds, but I don't know the effect of a 16" girth as I've never measured the girth of any of the bass I've caught.

This length and girth to weight calculator says it was 4.88 lbs.

In other words, a heckuva big bass!