Well, I did it. I just cancelled my May 4 Clearwater permit as this is obviously not the year for it! That prompted a thought which I explored in an article for work. How often is the BWCA actually paddleable by opening day (or by fishing opener for that matter?) Only seven lakes that serve as entry points or that are on the way to entry points have consistent historical data. (I omitted Sawbill for this reason.) It turns out that from those seven lakes, the median ice out date was found to be May 9th, a little over a week after “opening day.” I then broke down the data to show "odds of a canoe trip by a particular date. What are the odds of sneaking in a canoe trip in the first half of April well before opening day? For the data available, there was about a 9% chance of ice being out in any given year. The odds of having ice out in the couple weeks leading up to opening day (and being able to take that canoe trip on May 1) are about a 50% chance across the board which means it's 50/50 for opening day. Now, if your permit is for May 8th, a week into the season, that chance goes up to a 76%, 92% in the week around fishing opener, and is about 99% for June 1st (the lone dissenter being a June 3 ice out in 1936 on Gunflint Lake.) Another point to note on the data is that the lakes along the Gunflint Trail usually ice out later than the Ely side with an Ely permit being nearly twice as likely to have ice-out for opening day as the Gunflint on the data available (67% chance for Ely vs 37% chance for the Gunflint) and that trend continues heading into summer. Guess I'll have to wait for my Memorial Day trip!

You can figure out Gunflint area lakes a few days later than Ely area. More often than not we could go up Moose Lake maybe a week before the fishing opener.
Start talking Lake Trout waters, ice out will be a little later.

spring 2012 did a brant entry on April 27. hardly any snow in the woods, a few ice patches in well-shaded areas. very dry otherwise.

Mocha: "spring 2012 did a brant entry on April 27. hardly any snow in the woods, a few ice patches in well-shaded areas. very dry otherwise."

That was quite a year Mocha, my brother and I went into Ram lake and then Little Trout on March 30th. Also tried Moss Lake on that trip. Moss was about 20% ice covered. Fishing was slow though. We did get a few small lake trout.
Brant was always my favorite winter camping route.

Other years we went up to Prairie Portage a few days after Mn opener heading to Canada and Bayley Bay of Basswood was frozen.
One thing that was neat being the first person on portages that year. made it a lot more wild-like.

Pinetree: "

Mocha: "spring 2012 did a brant entry on April 27. hardly any snow in the woods, a few ice patches in well-shaded areas. very dry otherwise."

That was quite a year Mocha, my brother and I went into Ram lake and then Little Trout on March 30th. Also tried Moss Lake on that trip. Moss was about 20% ice covered. Fishing was slow though. We did get a few small lake trout.
Brant was always my favorite winter camping route.

"

Yep, that was quite the early spring. I also got out and into Brule Lake that year on the same weekend. Felt kinda neat being able to canoe in the BWCA in the spring without having to purchase a permit and just self-issue. And of course, didn't see a soul on the lake.