Me and my buddy's are planning a lake trout fishing trip in the end of January (if we have ice lol). I've narrowed it down to two different trips. Either we go up through topper and camp and fish on North or South lake or we go to the Clearwater access and camp on Clearwater or West pike lake. Does anyone have any experience on these lakes? Especially ice fishing experience. We have never fished for lake trout. We would also like to fish for some eel pout. Another fish we have never caught.

Two outta the three of us have winter camping experience, but nothing more than one night. We are planning on two to three nights. We all have pop up fish houses were staying in. Just looking for some advice

If you go the Clearwater route I've always done better in Mountain than West Pike. You should catch a lot of trout in Mountain or South, they are both productive trout lakes. The hill between Topper and South is a bugger, especially with camping gear. North is a great trout lake but easy to access from Gunflint with a Snowmobile so expect to see other anglers if you hike all the way in there. Not sure why you want to catch pout but a tip up in shallow water after dark should get you a few.

Once in early March we caught lot of small burbot(pout) in West Pike. lake trout fishing was slow that trip.

I have ate burbot many times,but the burbot from that lake were excellent tasting,far better than Mille lacs lake or a few other lakes I have ate them out of.

I've heard that mountain has a lot of small lake trout. Is there a lot of traffic from the Canadian side usually? I kinda wanted to stay on West pike or Clearwater so we could take a day trip to Gogebic for some brooke trout fishing. If it's not worth fishing either of those two lakes maybe Mountain would be the better choice. I've read a lot of mixed reviews about the fishing on West pike. Some say it's good some say it's not.

Mountain is more of a numbers lake with most fish under 1.5 pounds,but you can usually catch fish there.