6/16/26 – Sawbill’s own Damon “D-Dawg” Hennessy just completed a wonderful week of fly fishing in the Sawbill vicinity. He was generous enough write up a trip report to share herewith a few tips and tricks for early season fly fishing in the Boundary Waters.

In early Sept 2025 I had a permit and a fly fishing focused trip planned with a buddy flying in
from Portland OR. Sadly my obsessive watching of the weather in the days leading to our trip
did nothing to halt a brutal drop in temps and 45MPH winds from the north on the very day we
were to shove off. With no real flexibility in our schedules and seemingly no let up in the winds
for many days we made to tough decision to bail entirely. Bummer. So when permits for 2026
came online I jumped on one for early June. We are both fairly obsessed with catching
smallmouth bass and pike on fly rods, especially on the surface, and early June is the prime
time to do this.

Lo and behold, this time the weather cooperated, the airlines cooperated, and when the day
finally came we shoved off with our fly rods ready to chase fish.

I love canoeing the BWCA, but let’s face it, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fishing from a
sparkly bass boat, or even a decent fishing specific kayak, you know that fishing from a canoe
is less than optimal. There’s the wind… the instability… the constant hassle of paddling back
to retrieve snags. Now imagine all that plus fly fishing. It can be downright ugly. Like that
episode of “I Love Lucy” when Lucy and Ethel work the assembly line at the chocolate factory.
Trust me, look it up on YouTube, it’s a classic.

To avoid such comedy my partner and I agreed on a plan: paddler in the back, caster in the
front. Switch when it seems fair. We talked strategies beforehand and agreed on a few basics.
Mostly how to position the nose of the canoe in a place where the guy in the back doesn’t run
the risk of catching a hook in the back of the head. We are both righties so this meant casting
towards shore at roughly the 11 o’clock position.

We were only going a few lakes in and base camping so we could focus on figuring out the
lake we were on and a few surrounding lake day trips. The base camp lake we chose had lots
of spots to get out of wind and was big enough to give us a variety of spots to work.

OK, onto the fishing! I think the biggest surprise for both of us was how much we enjoyed the
paddler part of the fishing. It was way more of a team effort than either of us could have
predicted. As paddler all your senses have to be fully engaged as you are watching the water
for likely hiding places behind trees and rocks, noticing subtle wind shifts and listening for fish
along the bank that are actively chasing food. You’re also constantly tweaking the canoe
position and trying to maintain position and angle in the wind. We caught fish along rocky
banks (think bowling ball sized rocks) that had deep water adjacent, but also some fish in soft
bottom areas and some in expansive flats. And of course they were in the classic spots, behind
bigger rocks, in wood piles and near areas of wind blown current. The most fun part was sight
fishing for bass. We caught plenty of fish who tipped off their location with an aggressive swirl
as we were quietly approaching an area. Then we’d glide into place knowing you only had one
real shot to drop your fly in the right spot. The teamwork that went into these moments made it
super fun. Gear wise we had a 6 weight rod with floating line and an 8 weight rod with a
floating line and a sink tip line. Mostly we used the 6 weight and as far as flies we caught 98
percent of the fish on top water flies, either a Boogle Bug or Mr. Wiggly. (I don’t name these
things, I just fish em). At some point on day two we decided to smash the barbs on all the flies
to make releasing faster, we may have had few fish shake off after that policy change but I feel
like it’s the thing to do for catch and release fishing.

If you’re new to fly fishing and would like to try it don’t expect to learn it on a week long canoe
trip. Get a rod and practice casting in your yard, then catch some bluegill off a dock
somewhere. Once you can throw bigger flies with some accuracy you are ready. Bass are
willing but you need to be a pretty good caster to get the fly in a place where you can catch
fish. And make sure you’ve got a good paddling partner in the back!

D-Dawg