For those of you who went through the fire area in '09, how is it looking? How did it affect your traveling? How was the fishing?

What specific areas? The Ham Lake fire just burned a small corridor along the east side of the end of the Gunflint Trail and some areas around Seagull. It did not affect a large area of the BW like the Cavity fire did.

The routes to Gillis and Gabimichigami from Round Lake.

oops...sorry...thought I read ham lake fire into that. Those would be cavity lake fire areas. I went through there in 08. Some areas were greened up nice, others will still take a while, like north of Gillis in the Peter Lake area. Most of the north end of Gabi was burned and the North shore of Lil Sag. The fishing is unchanged...mostly a Lake Trout area....not my bag.
Some pics from June 08.. Parts of Crooked were spared and parts of Gillis, but from the north end of Gabi east thru Peter and that area was torched down to the bedrock in many places. The campsites in the southern part of Gabi looked ok, and the island sites near the portage to Rattle.

Here's a cool map showing the extent of the Ham Lake and Cavity Lake Fires. Both were pretty large. The Ham Lake fire burnt up a whole bunch of Canada as well along the north side of Gunflint Lake.

The lines for the fire are marked pretty close on these maps. You can zoom and click and drag to move around and check the boundaries....may help a little. map...cavity fire

traveled extensively there in 09
and honestly it didn't affect anything we did or anywhere we went
however it did make for nice photo opportunities

We traveled that area the 1st week of June last year and found that the fishing for the Lakers was insane. The ticks were pretty bad in the regrowth, but that is to be expected that time of year. I thought the affected area was beautiful, both the regrowth and the char, but I'm sure that is because of my biased firefighting background

The only evidence you will see of the Ham Lake fire if you go through Missing Link is on the north shore of Round Lake.
There are quite a few areas where the evidence of the Cavity Lake fire is very noticable but it didn't detract from my experience at all. It was neat to see something different than I normally see in the BW. Not everything has to be pristine green and blue. Sometimes looking at the real nature that exists is pretty amazing.
As a bonus - the moose are easier to see if they are out and about in the burned areas. I watched a cow and calf last year in a burn area for an hour or more. I never would have seen them if the area wouldn't have burned.
Fishing was awesome where I was also - I have heard more than one report saying that the fishing on the burned lakes was real good last year. All of the campsites I saw looked just fine.

Wild flowers are awesome! Ticks as well. I have traveled thru Brant and up to Bingshick and the area is burned but the wild flowers are really nice.

Thanks guys. Another reason I love this site. When you are too ignorant to even ask the right question, someone will get you back on the right track.