Paddling Education

A couple weeks ago a group of eight women took a week off work to head north and spend four days in the Boundary Waters together.

In 2011 Natalie Warren and Ann Raiho canoed 2,000 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. They were the first women to take on the route made famous by the book Canoeing with the Cree by the late journalist, Eric Sevareid.

Lets jam out together! We created the ultimate summer playlist with songs suggested by Bending Branches team members, employees, and you. Listen now and suggest your favorite songs below.  

Chris Whittaker and Nuka de Jocas are their own main characters in their ongoing story of For Fun’s Sake Expedition. Here we take a look at Episode 8 of their 1,600-km kayak journey: How to choose a campsite along the Alaskan coast.

Since our National ProStaff and Ambassador team members are the kayak fishing experts, we wanted to find out where they love to fish in their own area.

Bending Branches Ambassador Josiah Pleasant (and many of his fellow Alaskans) lives a “subsistence” life most of us think disappeared 100+ years ago. Josiah shares with us why that is, and how kayaking plays a role.

Bending Branches ProStaffer Dennis Kieselhorst shares his favorite kayak fishing destination in his native Germany as well as other top spots in northern Europe. If you’re one of the growing number of European kayak anglers out there, these will give you some great ideas…

Bending Branches ProStaffer Will Copestake has canoed all over his native Scotland. Here, he lets us in on what he believes are Scotland’s best canoe destinations.

One of the best and most popular day canoe trips in the Boundary Waters (BWCAW) is the trip to Stairway Portage and Rose Falls.

Bending Branches Ambassador, Bill Sikora, has been a South Florida resident for several years and loves to kayak fish some of its exotic species. Here, he shares his experience and expertise with other anglers who also want to fish those waters.

Bending Branches’ ProStaffer Jason Schall and his wife, Jennifer, kayak fish together regularly. In the fall of 2022 they took a dream fishing trip together to the Amazon River in Colombia, South America.

Paddle Planner is a unique online toolkit that makes planning your canoe and kayak trips easy and fun. “It’s Google directions for the Boundary Waters,” says founder Ben Strege.

While canoeing in Minnesota and Maine are very similar in many ways—both have plenty of forests, lakes and rivers—the wilderness canoe cultures in these two US states are quite distinct from one another.

Ian Finch and Jamie Barnes, both UK natives, partnered with two others for a winter canoe trip in the wilds of Scotland’s lochs. As often happens, their trip didn’t go quite as planned, but the changes brought them to a magical “hidden glen” they wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

Backcountry canoe camping is a pretty amazing way to spend a few days. You always have a lakeside campsite. You can fish, swim, relax. You can paddle from site to site or stay in one spot.

Few things go together as perfectly as Canada and canoeing. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to some of the best canoe trips in Canada. This isn’t an exhaustive list - with so many lakes and rivers, it would be impossible to include all of the amazing places to canoe. I hope you find inspiration for your next trip!

The Musky. Fish of ten thousand casts so they say. I either cast a lot more than I think I do, or I must be one of the luckiest anglers ever as I have now landed three of these absolute beasts.

Great Salt Lake in Utah isn’t one of those destinations that’s on anyone’s list of best kayaking spots in America! But kayaker, Scott Baxter, has been paddling the lake for 30 years. Here’s his story of his circumnavigation of Great Salt Lake.

Head out on the water in this video with Hooked on Wild Water’s Drew Gregory for some big adventures with Bartrams bass.

“The novelty of paddling within an active volcano on a high elevation lake made my trip into Shoshone a unique paddling experience.” ~ Jim Gallagher, wilderness canoeist

Paul Villecourt and Christian Barbier took a month for their le voyage en canoë + vélo—their canoe and bike trip—in May, 2021 in their native France. They dubbed their trip their Canovélo Tour.