Hi all,
I hope this is the right area (and am allowed) to ask; I have spent the last few weeks reading all I could on this board and it is great! I am planning for a summer 2010 BWCA trip and I am a huge "researcher" (my wife would say that I am an anal worry-wort!) I am the "lead contact" person for this trip, which means I get to call the shots

. So at the moment, I am looking at possible routes.
--We will have 6 people on this trip, 4 adults and 2 early teens.
--We are looking at 5-7 days.
--I am the only one with a decent amount of canoe experience (the others do have some, but I would still classify them as advanced beginners).
--Everyone does have lots of camping/backpacking experience (~20-30 weekends a year, including the teens).
--We would probably prefer to leave out of Ely, but could do others. I have a cabin near Grand Rapids that we will be staying at pre and post trip, so proximity is really the only reason we are looking at Ely.
--We are looking at either early June or early August (leaning towards June). We are all college instructors, so August is getting close to return week for us, and I think we would all enjoy the experience more if we dont have a rushed feeling the entire time!
--I have not chosen an outfitter yet (I plan to communicate with a few right after New Years, and I am sure they can also suggest things, but I like to have a firm grasp of things ahead of time.) They will have a lot of input, but I figure members of this board may have some ideas I may also want to consider.
--All groups will be renting canoes, EXCEPT for 1. They have 14 ft Wenonah Fisherman (Royalex) that they love (and need to use for financial reasons). What this means is, if possible, to avoid any long-haul upstream paddles.
--While all the group enjoys fishing, 2 of us (myself included) will pretty much be doing nothing BUT fishing. Order of preference for fish would be northern, smallmouth, walleye (dont care about lakers).
--Small, secluded, private, great fishing lakes would be the best (isnt that what most people want!)

But small fishing lakes would be fine for us (so small lakes and fishing go above the secluded private part).
That pretty much about covers it! We arent too worried about the portages, as everyone in the group does a lot of backpacking in the mountains, with some fairly substantial packs at times. While that could just be me, a couple 150-200 rod portages spread thru-out the week wont kill us, just make us all sleep a bit better! I have done a 2.5 miler before in my search for that wilderness lake fishing experience, but would like to avoid that

Are there any routes you could suggest? Even if an outfitter will pretty much give us their choices, I would still like to see the options (as I have about 6 months to kill before the trip

Thanks for any suggestions you can give!