We will be going in around the first of June and was wondering if anyone knew about the fishing on these lakes. We hoped to base camp out of Pipe and daytrip to others. What kind of fish are in Pipe? Is the Vern River good for fishing? Thanks in advance.

I have fished Vern twice and both times we caught a fair number of nice chunky 17-22" walleyes. Juno is full of little slimers (pike).

As of a 1975 survey, pipe only has northern pike for game fish. Whereas east pipe has walleye, pike and probably smallies by now (2007 survey). The vern river should be capable of producing the same species of fish as east pipe.

When I was on juno, I caught to small eyes and a pike. Was also bit off twice. The water is tanin stained on juno. I mostly just paddled through vern lake but was trolling a plug as I went through that didn't produce.

Pipe Lake is a great pick. When people ask this board for an easy trip to basecamp, they are usually sent down the Hog Creek to Perent Lake. Good. Well I would send them here. Pipe is a dead end route so it gets little traffic. Many times we have had the lake to ourselves. The DNR Lakefinder doesn't show any walleye in this lake. Good. There are some walleye in Pipe and they are large. I won't give you the exact location of our honeyhole, but if you go southish from the peninsula across the lake you might find it. A definite morning bite there and be in super stealth quiet mode. The shallow bay on the north side of the peninsula will give up smaller northerns all day in the grass. The big spawning females there right after ice out will have left. On the south side of the bay that you portage into, there should be a couple of decent sized cabbage beds coming up. Use your heavy tackle there and get ready. You can follow the moose trails up to West Pipe. I took a pole and fished off the only good fishing rock you'll find but only found hammerhandles. It still is a nice little bushwhack worth doing even without the fishpoles. Very pretty lake. Now for the best part, the story of the treasure. About 20 yrs ago, when we were young and foolish, we tried to bushwhack straight south to Hilly Lake to check out the fishing. We were basecamping on the eastern most campsite and decided if we took our compasses and headed straight south for about a mile that we would hit it. About 3/4 mile into the bushwhack we found this really old but nicely built hunting shack. It was about 12'x12' and the windows were still intact and it had a good sized tree growing right through the side of it. On the inside there was conetop beercans all over the place. One of my buddies grabbed five of them but the rest of us figured we would pick them up the way back. We continued our quest and ended up missing Hilly Lake but ended up at a little lake formed from a huge beaver dam. We weren't positive where we were but the consensus was one of the ponds west of Hilly. So we turned our bushwhack straight east. We traveled east until we were stopped by swamp. From that point, with a slight fear of being lost on our minds, it was decided that we should go straight north and head back to Pipe. We came out on Pipe about 1/8 of a mile east of where we left our canoes. I have made 3 bushwacking hunts for that shack since then and it is like a needle in a haystack. Using the nice computer satelite images we have now, I'm sure that the first beaver pond we hit is the one just west of Hilly Lake. I give up. Goodluck and I hope you have a nice trip.

Some amazing fishing in that area that isn't at all obvious. Send me an email if you come back to this thread.

Thanks for all the info!! I appreciate it.

Vern River is unnavigable. We were there three years ago and between storm damage and beaver activity it is virtually impassable.

I've often wondered about the Vern River. It was impassable 11 years ago, too. Guess that's its permanent state of being.