Anybody have any fishing reports for the BWCA or Quetico this year since the opener? Please share any pictures if possible. I'm sure there are many people going soon and would love to hear what has been happening in the woods. I know not many have been out yet, but I'm hoping people who have been will share their experiences ( good or not ). Thanks for sharing!

We had some luck with the lakers including this monster caught on 10lb mono near 20' depths with a #9 floating rapala in black and gold, no added weight slowly trolled. Had to paddle around some ice flows on Seagull, Sunday May 13th to get there. We found Lakers in windward bays, including one from shore in about 5' of water on Kekekabic.

Thanks to many of you for the advice!

I am headed in this weekend and will report back with what we find. Going out through Canadian Boarder Outfitters from Moose Lake. Side note, they do not have any leeches in stock yet. In that case, is my best bet just to call bait stores on the drive up and see if anyone has them along the way? Or where have you guys had luck getting them early in the year?

Nice Laker! I’ve always gone around the opener or a week later and always get leeches. both In Ely and in Gran Marais. Last year they were expensive though.

Spent three nights on Knife (5/16-5/18) and two on Birch (5/19-5/20). Caught plenty of lakers, mostly in 30ft of water about 10-15ft down, trolling. Landed five in the evenings from shore with the fly rod. Pike were very active on both lakes, smallies were not, but the ones we did catch were big fat females.

Going to be 80 degrees about every day in Ely for the next 10 days according to the weather forecast I just looked at. One day said 87! Water temps should be on the rise fast over that period of time. Fishing reports will be interesting on what is going on up there. Thought things were going to be running late this year, then they started to look to be normal and now if this continues everything might be early, who knows?

QueticoMike: "Going to be 80 degrees about every day in Ely for the next 10 days according to the weather forecast I just looked at. One day said 87! Water temps should be on the rise fast over that period of time. Fishing reports will be interesting on what is going on up there. Thought things were going to be running late this year, then they started to look to be normal and now if this continues everything might be early, who knows?"

Climate Change..........the only sure thing about the climate is its going to change thats for sure. Your heading up soon? Looks like you might hit it right.

Nickberger10: Side note, they do not have any leeches in stock yet. In that case, is my best bet just to call bait stores on the drive up and see if anyone has them along the way? Or where have you guys had luck getting them early in the year?


"

Vados Bait in Spring Lake Park has a cooler full of leeches.

We were on Ima lake from 5/16 to 5/20. We didn't find great numbers of lakers, but we found them spread across the lake. Several in 80ft of water (12-24") and some shallow around rocks and bays (23"-27").

mastertangler: "

QueticoMike: "Going to be 80 degrees about every day in Ely for the next 10 days according to the weather forecast I just looked at. One day said 87! Water temps should be on the rise fast over that period of time. Fishing reports will be interesting on what is going on up there. Thought things were going to be running late this year, then they started to look to be normal and now if this continues everything might be early, who knows?"

Climate Change..........the only sure thing about the climate is its going to change thats for sure. Your heading up soon? Looks like you might hit it right. "

I planned on going in a week later than normal and thought I was smart until this heat wave came along, now I'm not so sure. I will try my best with the hand that I'm dealt, that's all I can do. I'm pretty sure I won't get skunked ;)

Headed in to LLC Boulder Bay this weekend (Memorial Day) with high hopes as always.

Wishing everybody luck!

Like Cschub13, I was on Knife for a week ending Monday (I was the guy in the red canoe - we talked out there once or twice). My action was a bit slower, but I am not accomplished at fishing. I've had better days, but still did ok. Only targeted lakers, and all but one of my fish were also in 30 feet of water suspended about 10-20 feet down. Blue/silver little cleo's worked some, and an assortment of Rapalas trolled were more productive. Could be random, but natural/silver colors did not work for me - all fish were caught on something with blue, purple, rainbow, or gold.

I'm still super jealous you guys caught lakers on a fly rod. I've always wanted to do that, but could not find some of my stuff while packing so left my fly rod at home. Still waiting for that bear video on Youtube!

Photos are a little tough when you are solo and have a dog with 100 generations of breeding telling it to go out in the water and get that game for me, and trying to paddle so as not to blow out into middle of the lake, but I did manage these clips from my GoPro...

cschub13: " Spent three nights on Knife (5/16-5/18) and two on Birch (5/19-5/20). Caught plenty of lakers, mostly in 30ft of water about 10-15ft down, trolling. Landed five in the evenings from shore with the fly rod. Pike were very active on both lakes, smallies were not, but the ones we did catch were big fat females.






"

Nice! Thanks for the info!

I fished iron may 15 and 16th. The fish were very active where the beartrap dumps into peterson bay. Some nice smallies and pike were willing to hit the zulus in the current and more pike trolling rapalas.

short clip

Thanks for sharing the reports, pictures and videos! Can't wait to hook into a few myself!

Jaywalker: "Like Cschub13, I was on Knife for a week ending Monday (I was the guy in the red canoe - we talked out there once or twice). My action was a bit slower, but I am not accomplished at fishing. I've had better days, but still did ok. Only targeted lakers, and all but one of my fish were also in 30 feet of water suspended about 10-20 feet down. Blue/silver little cleo's worked some, and an assortment of Rapalas trolled were more productive. Could be random, but natural/silver colors did not work for me - all fish were caught on something with blue, purple, rainbow, or gold.


I'm still super jealous you guys caught lakers on a fly rod. I've always wanted to do that, but could not find some of my stuff while packing so left my fly rod at home. Still waiting for that bear video on Youtube!


Photos are a little tough when you are solo and have a dog with 100 generations of breeding telling it to go out in the water and get that game for me, and trying to paddle so as not to blow out into middl"

It was nice talking with you, and glad you didn't have too much trouble with the lakers. Seems you had plenty for you and your pup to eat! Catching lakers on the fly was pretty unbelievable, and definitely a major goal for me check off the list!

I just created a youtube video, just for you haha.

Swimming Black Bear

Awesome reports guys! Thanks for sharing!

cschub13: "

Jaywalker: "Like Cschub13, I was on Knife for a week ending Monday (I was the guy in the red canoe - we talked out there once or twice). My action was a bit slower, but I am not accomplished at fishing. I've had better days, but still did ok. Only targeted lakers, and all but one of my fish were also in 30 feet of water suspended about 10-20 feet down. Blue/silver little cleo's worked some, and an assortment of Rapalas trolled were more productive. Could be random, but natural/silver colors did not work for me - all fish were caught on something with blue, purple, rainbow, or gold.



I'm still super jealous you guys caught lakers on a fly rod. I've always wanted to do that, but could not find some of my stuff while packing so left my fly rod at home. Still waiting for that bear video on Youtube!



Photos are a little tough when you are solo and have a dog with 100 generations of breeding telling it to go out in the water and get that game for me, and trying to paddle so as not to blow out into middl"

It was nice talking with you, and glad you didn't have too much trouble with the lakers. Seems you had plenty for you and your pup to eat! Catching lakers on the fly was pretty unbelievable, and definitely a major goal for me check off the list!


I just created a youtube video, just for you haha.


Swimming Black Bear "

That bear looked and sounded pretty close to camp. Did you see it again?

Seems like there has been a bear or bears in the Knife area for years. Here is an impressive video of a bear in camp on Knife from 2011. I was in SAK in 2015 came upon a few campsites with notes left in the fire pit that told us of recent bear activity.

We fished Batchewaung chain of lakes with moderate success from 5/19 - 5/24. I'll go into what and how we caught all the different varieties of fish and how/when we caught them.

Laketrout: Our group of 7 total people in 3 boats caught somewhere between 10-15 laketrout throughout the trip. Fish were at the surface and we initially trolled using various lures including deep running, and shallow floating rapalas, and little cleo's. I had all my success using an orange/silver little cleo. My paddle partner and I would troll until we got a fish, and if it was calm enough on the water we would then cast. This tactic worked great as we caught 8 fish this way. It should be noted you should use a good swivel when trolling any kind of spoon (my friend learned this the hard way and ended up with a nasty mess of twisted line). It should also be noted that no laketrout were caught when we paddled through batchewaung on our last day.

Walleye: Fishing for walleye was allover the place. Our group did catch more than we could count, but some days and lakes we'd catch a lot of them even right next to shore, and other days we'd catch none. Many fish were caught using a 3/8 or 1/4 white jig head and a corresponding sized white twister tail. I caught most of my fish on a green pumpkin colored berkely smash tube rigged with a tube jig jerked around off the bottom. Various rapalas and white swim and jerk minnnows also produced fish.

Smallmouth: After our first day of paddling and not fishing hard for smallmouth we had great success on HUGE pre-spawn smallmouth. The fish were moved into the shallows by our second day on the water in the smaller lakes we were in and most we caught after 5/22 were already on their beds. Two members of our groups had very good success with their fly rods using streamers and poppers in the evening. Other smallies were destroying jerk shads, swimming minnows and floating rapalas all day in the right shorelines. At times fish would only hit silver and white minnows. On one particular lake that I know doesn't get fished often we caught trophy fish after trophy fish. I have never seen so many big bass on that lake. Every 4th fish would be in the 18-22 inch range. One bait I tried very hard to use was the z-man chatter bait with various trailers and colors used. This lure was discussed on this site and I thought the lure would destroy smallies, but I did not catch a single smallmouth on the lure. It did however catch several northern and one walleye.

Northern Pike: What a strange time to fish northern. We saw several big 40+ inch females being chased by males, spawning in the shallows on multiple lakes.These fish did not respond to any lures thrown at them. Throughout the trip we had difficulty consistently catching any sized northern. Success was sporadic and several fish were caught while jigging for walleye, the chatterbait as mentioned earlier caught at one time 3 different 20-25 inch northern at one beaver house. Big spoons of various colors didn't produce many fish until 5/23 when two members of our group caught a 39" inch and 43" fish within 2 minutes of each other at a small water fall inlet. First fish was caught on a gold floating rapala without a leader by the 82 year old member of our group and the second was caught on a mostly green and yellow accented daredevil. I fished a big 10" plastic minnow and caught quite a few decent fish myself.

wow you consider every 4th fish a trophy fish moderate success! Sounds to me like you had a great trip! And northerns even left you alone!

@ The Tug - did you fish any big lakes for smallmouth, or only small lakes?

QueticoMike: "That bear looked and sounded pretty close to camp. Did you see it again?"

It was swimming directly to our campsite, we had to scare it further down shore. It was still within 20 yards of us, but never did see it after that luckily.

Any new reports out there?

Just came out of Ogish. Recorded water temps between 60 and 65 degrees there which we were surprised by. Caught walleyes in 10-15 feet of water using a plain hook and leech on a slip bobber. Tried over by Mueller falls and caught 1 smallmouth but nothing else which I thought was surprising.

Saw lots of trout in the river between seagull and Alpine

Just got back from my second trip this year. This week, we had good success on the lakers. Nothing big, but they were fun anyways. The real highlight was the brook trout fishing. After a few hours, we caught 8 brookies with the smallest running 14" and the biggest coming in at a fat 19". Fun times!

jbreeggs: "Just came out of Ogish. Recorded water temps between 60 and 65 degrees there which we were surprised by. Caught walleyes in 10-15 feet of water using a plain hook and leech on a slip bobber. Tried over by Mueller falls and caught 1 smallmouth but nothing else which I thought was surprising.


Saw lots of trout in the river between seagull and Alpine"

more than likely those were suckers not lake trout.

a group of my friends came out of SAK last wednesday
they did good on walleyes-lake trout-and some nice pike , but very few smallies yet. that should change soon .

How long would it take to get to Jasper? Any other luck on smallies?

Andrew100: "How long would it take to get to Jasper? Any other luck on smallies?"

We put into Seagull at 8 am and thru Jasper by noon. Light wind and double portage. Took the 105 rod into Alpine.

shock: "

jbreeggs: "Just came out of Ogish. Recorded water temps between 60 and 65 degrees there which we were surprised by. Caught walleyes in 10-15 feet of water using a plain hook and leech on a slip bobber. Tried over by Mueller falls and caught 1 smallmouth but nothing else which I thought was surprising.



Saw lots of trout in the river between seagull and Alpine"

more than likely those were suckers not lake trout."

That’s what I was thinking too.

I got on the water for parts of two days Saturday and Sunday. My fishing partner was almost exclusively interested in walleyes. Our luck frankly wasn't all that good. We did get some mostly in 12' to 16'. When they hit they generally held on.

I got this nice one on a current break. Light tackle, strong current and some sunshine made it a memorable fight.

QueticoMike: "

shock: "

jbreeggs: "Just came out of Ogish. Recorded water temps between 60 and 65 degrees there which we were surprised by. Caught walleyes in 10-15 feet of water using a plain hook and leech on a slip bobber. Tried over by Mueller falls and caught 1 smallmouth but nothing else which I thought was surprising.



Saw lots of trout in the river between seagull and Alpine"

more than likely those were suckers not lake trout."

That’s what I was thinking too."

Right.......that was the first thing that I thought of as well but didn't have the heart to say anything.

Just got back from a weekend trip to Lake One. We didn't attempt Walleyes but the Smallie and Pike fishing was phenomenal. Smallies were all caught in less than 4ft of water. I caught one in an unbelievably unique way. I was standing in the water getting our canoe ready for fishing when I felt a tug on my Keen strap. I looked down to find a good-sized bass trying to eat the yellow knob on my keen strap. Keep in mind this is honestly probably 8 inches of water we're talking about. I quickly grabbed my jigging rod and put the jig in front of him and he ate it immediately. Ended up being a nice 16"er. The bass were fierce this past weekend.