My daughter and I are entering at EP38 (Sawbill Lake) on Saturday. I'm debating between heading east to the Fire lakes or west toward the lady lakes. We want to basecamp after the end of day one travel. Plan to spend much of our time fishing, targeting walleye, but happy to catch pike and SM, too.

Any suggestions?

My suggestion would be the lady lake area. I would make note of the campsite on the south end of Alton first and potentially take it depending on the time you pass by. If its early I would move onto Beth and take any of those sites and my most preferred option would be one of the two on Ella Lake mostly because you are kind of off the main route. It all depends on the time though. If one was open on Beth and it was like 3pm... I would probably take it.

If targeting Walleyes, I’d personally go the Fire route.

My dad and I did this earlier this spring. We went Sawbill -> Grace in about 5 hours with a mix of single and double portaging. We base-camped at the site on the peninsula. We did a little fishing but that wasn't our focus.

I had heard that the route east out of Sawbill got pretty busy so decided to go west. Once we got past the long portage between Beth and Grace we didn't see many people and had our pick of campsites.

We did a day trip over to Phoebe and Knight looking for Walleye.

geotramper: "My dad and I did this earlier this spring. We went Sawbill -> Grace in about 5 hours with a mix of single and double portaging. We base-camped at the site on the peninsula. We did a little fishing but that wasn't our focus.


I had heard that the route east out of Sawbill got pretty busy so decided to go west. Once we got past the long portage between Beth and Grace we didn't see many people and had our pick of campsites.


We did a day trip over to Phoebe and Knight looking for Walleye."

+1

This! Going over the 280 rd portage from Beth to Grace leaves a lot of the traffic behind. Depending on when you are going you might not even find an open campsite on the Fire Lakes.