BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
November 14 2024
Entry Point 25 - Moose Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 27
Elevation: 1356 feet
Latitude: 47.9877
Longitude: -91.4997
Labor day weekend 2024.
Entry point was 25-Moose lake. Went north, and then west onto Ensign Lake. Camped on eastern end of Ensign lake. Very busy and lucky to get a campsite. Day 2, went to Cattyman Falls and on down to Disappointment Lake. All sites full. Had to get off the water due to inclement storm. Ended up on Parent Lake on day 3, western camp site. Beautiful site. Exited from Snowbank lake on day 4. Overall fishing was poor. Some small mouth bass on Parent lake.
Nothing elsewhere. Approximately 20 miles of paddling/portaging. 11 portages in total. Already planning for 2025.
North Arm of Knife 2008
Entry Date:
June 05, 2008
Entry Point:
Moose Lake
Number of Days:
7
Group Size:
7
We have a pretty tough bunch of guys and although we don’t travel light we like to hump it to camp so we can start our fishing. So we left Latourell’s at 6:30 a.m. and arrived at our campsite well up the north by 1:30 p.m. About 200 yards from camp we hooked into a decent laker, we hoped this was a good omen.
We got to camp set up pretty quickly and had our traditional chili meal for our first night along with some baked trout. On our trips we always have prizes for big fish or small fish or whatever we think warrants a prize. These prizes are usually some sort of apparel, this year it was a jumpsuit and some Hawaiian shirts.
We started to explore all the bays and found that the bays water temps had warmed to the 60’s and the smallies were close to there beds. We spent several afternoons throwing top waters and bobbers and leeches for smallies catching many that were 20 inches or better.
It seemed that the transition zone from the cold main lake water to the bays warm water was where the walleyes were. The walleyes were mainly in 12 to 14 feet of water and liked orange or brown jigs tipped with leeches. The northerns were all over with one particular bay holding many large Pike. This was one of the larger Pike and it was caught on 6 lb test with no leader.
The campsite we camped at was particularly beautiful. It didn’t have very good fishing but the landing was nice, there was plenty of room for tents and hammocks. It had a nice fire area with logs to sit on, and a great rock where we stored all of our booze, we called it the bar rock.
The bar rock came in quite useful since my 50th birthday occurred on this trip. The day after my birthday, since we weren’t feeling up to a long paddle we went to the narrows where the North Arm of Knife Lake goes into Little Knife Lake. This area turned into a very good walleye spot and the prize for walleyes was a nice orange and white flowered shirt.
This trip turned out to be another great fishing trip. The Lakers were in about 20 to 30 feet of water hitting deep diving tail dancers. The smallies were in the bays getting ready for spawning. Walleyes as mentioned before generally in 12 to 14 feet of water on jigs and in the evenings on floating jig head tipped with leeches on the bottom. Pike all over.
Finally after 7 days it was time to head out. On the trip out we had the worst wind we had all trip probably 25+ mph but luckily it was behind us but we pontooned the canoes just to be safe
With the wind at our back we made it across knife in about 2 hours, we made it through all 6 portages in about 2 more hours. We decided to walk our canoes through 4 of the 6 portages, the water was a little chilly but all went well. All in all another wonderful trip. We ate too much, we drank too much, we fished too much, but you can never have too much fun.