BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
January 05 2025
Entry Point 47 - Lizz & Swamp Lakes
Number of Permits per Day: 3
Elevation: 1864 feet
Latitude: 48.0420
Longitude: -90.4998
Lizz & Swamp Lakes - 47
LIS north to Little Loon, Gun, Gebe, Oyster and Shell
Entry Date:
July 26, 2007
Entry Point:
Little Indian Sioux River (north)
Number of Days:
6
Group Size:
5
LIS North, Upper and Lower Paunesses, Loon, Little Loon
Being all packed up from the night before, we got up early from my parents house in Aurora and headed to Ely for our permit and leeches. The day started out bad when I found out that one of my tackle boxes had fallen out of the canoe seat bag that I had filled with tackle the night before (forgot to zip it shut, doh!). Good thing I had over packed on tackle and still had another tackle box to use.
We stopped at The Great Outdoors and picked up some leeches and then picked up the permit. Up the Echo Trail we went to get to the put in at Little Indian Sioux River North. The weather report called for isolated thunderstorms today, with the rest of the week looking hot in the upper 80’s. We had decided to travel up towards Little Loon Lake, which is off limits to the motors (Loon lake is not). We were on the water by about 11:30 after all the miscellaneous odds and ends were taken care of.
Well, as soon as we got onto the water, it started to drizzle. The drizzle worked itself into a steady rain. It seemed ok other than the gear getting a little wet, as the weather was fairly warm. Saw a few people on the portages, some complaining about the boats on Loon Lake and how they were water skiing, lol. We knew this was to be expected on a lake that permits motors. We stopped by at Devils Cascade to take a look, nothing spectacular really. I was more excited to find a patch of blueberries there I could snack on.
We started fishing where the river opens into Loon Lake. There I caught a decent size northern, although, we put him back, not sure if we wanted to clean fish tonight, as we would be pulling in to camp later than we would have liked. We made our way up through Loon Lake and passed a camp with a couple motorboats docked at it. Probably, the kids the other campers were complaining about. Right as we came about on Little Loon Lake, a larger dose of rain came down on us.
We looked at the first site on Little Loon, and the tent spots weren’t all that promising, so we headed to the north site. It had a small beach, some decent tent pads, although slightly slanted. We decided to call it home. After scarfing down some spaghetti, we decided to try our luck at fishing. One of the guys pulled in a 19.5” smallie on the east shore. I managed to catch a 14” walleye. All were released, as we were tired and weren’t sure about fish for breakfast.
We got a fire going after fishing, which was a little difficult due to the rain, but there was sufficient dry stuff to burn. The night presented itself with a very nice sunset with a near full moon. We capped the night off with our traditional Karkov shots followed by Kool-Aid and called it a night. 
Little Loon, Slim, Sec. 3 Pond, Steep, Eugene, Gun
We headed out by about 10 a.m. the next day and made our way over to Slim Lake. We saw a canoe of three waiting for us at the Slim Lake end of the portage. Talked to them about some of the lakes and fishing, ect… They said that they had slept standing up on Eugene (very slanted tent spots), and so that is something we wanted to avoid. We wanted to make it to Gun Lake anyway (the one below Lac La Croix, not the one by Mudro).
Judd caught a nice bass right by the portage exiting Slim. I caught a pike as well. Moved on to Steep after the Section 3 pond. Not much luck for fish, although we were moving through. On Eugene we decided to fish for some pike, as it looked as though this was a good pike lake from some research I had done. Sure enough, there were a few nice size pike. Jake landed a nice one we decided to call dinner. Clint caught probably the largest pike he has ever caught… The only problem was not being able to get it out of the water. It spit the hook as we tried to get the fish in the net (the net was too small hehe). The pike looked to be about 35” or so. Clint nearly went swimming after it as it slithered away. I was getting my camera ready to get the picture as it threw the hook, and missed an opportunity to get a good photo.
We made the next portage to Gun and saw that the water was some of the clearest water in the BWCA. This lake is supposed to hold lakers and SMB. We trolled some Rapalas, hoping to hook into a laker or bass. Judd hooked a decent bass we added to the stringer right before the south most campsite on the lake. We looked at the south site and it looked wonderful. Nice open area with good rock shore. We started to unload after a decent day of moving. Clint and Jake looked at the other site, while Judd and I landed a couple more bass to cut up for dinner. Fishing from this site is amazing. The water clarity allows you to see over 10 feet down, and there are masses of SMB all over. Almost like shooting fish in a barrel lol.
The site also provided for some decent rocks to dive in off and with the warm weather we took a swim or two. Massive blueberry patches surrounded the camp too. Not to mention we were the only ones on the lake. The vodka shots started to pour, as we cut up the fish. After getting the filets, we cooked the fish in aluminum foil, butter, salt and pepper, added to some wild rice soup. We soon realized that we had drastically underestimated our drinking supply when we cracked open our second 1.75L of Karkov (we had only brought two and this was our second of five nights). Once again, great moon rise and sunset as the day came to an end.
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We managed all the portaging very well. It wasn't as bad as we had imagined it would be and was an integral part of the experience. We rented ultra-light Kevlar canoes that weighed about 40 pounds each. Once you got them on your shoulders and balanced, they were pretty easy to carry. We did double-portage though, carrying the boat first and then the gear. When you can manage a look at them, the portage trails are incredibly beautiful but some are better than others. 
The area got a lot of rain before we arrived so one portage trail turned out to be up what amounted to a knee-deep, fast-moving boulder-strewn creek. Fortunately, that was on a day trip with no gear, just boats.
After going, I understand the draw of the place and why people go back, year after year. It's the beauty and the solitude, the pleasure of the paddling and the pain of the portages. We paddled 50 acre lakes with one campsite, 200 acre lakes with 3 campsites spaced so far apart you would never know there was another camper for miles. We did see some people in canoes on Horseshoe Lake where there are 5 campsites and on some of the portages but on other lakes, it felt like we were the only people on earth. The quiet is amazing. I just wish it were closer so I could go back again, year after year! And did I mention the Trail Center? What a cool place with great food for a pre- and post-trip celebration! 
Oyster, Hustler, Ruby, Lynx, Little Shell, Shell
Great sunrise on Oyster brought in the day nicely. A little longer of a trip today, with a lot more people than we had been seeing on other days, probably people looping between EP14 and EP16. We made decent time and looked at a few of the sites on Shell, starting with the southern solo island site, which was taken. Most of the rest of the sites looked like there was something to be desired and we made our way up to Con Island. We took the northern most campsite on the island, just in time as a few groups popped out of the portage from Heritage (which is right next to the site).
The fire pit is surrounded by a bunch of tall pines on a large rock, about 20 feet up from the water. There is a little swampy area right below the rock where a beaver later showed up at and gnawed on some wood for a while. It seems you could walk to the other campsites on the island through the trails in the woods, although we never did. The weather was extremely hot, at least 90 degrees by our estimation, and the flies were really bad to the point where we had to wear pants. We did swim a little to cool off but not too much, as it is very shallow around the site, with some weeds and no good jumping points.
We tried some fishing in the hopes of some walleye; however, we didn’t even get a bite. Maybe the fish had been turned off by the really hot weather. We took down the rest of our vodka and pineapple chunks we had soaked in vodka. The vodka soak tasted much better than the pineapple chunks. It was gone all too fast though, next year more booze. We had another nice sunset but we didn’t really stay up for the moonrise. The sun and the heat had taken it out of us today.
Shell, Lower Pauness, Upper Pauness, LIS North
Today was our day out. We were all excited to put a few back at the Ely Steakhouse and get back to some of the other modern day comforts. We took the shorter portage between the Paunesses and found that there were a lot of lilies and weeds (we took the 40 rod portage on our way in). Finding the portage to shell from Lower Pauness might be tricky as it’s a clear cut through a lot of weeds, lucky for us we were coming the other way. I put down a porterhouse and a couple New Castles at the Ely Steakhouse and it tasted great. We reminisced about our choice campsites that we had had this year, and the good deal of seclusion we gotten from taking the road less traveled. Then we started talking about next year, maybe Kawishiway Lake? Who knows maybe we would even venture into the Quetico or try a PMA. All in all, it was a good year.
