BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
December 11 2024
Entry Point 64 - East Bearskin Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 3
Elevation: 1471 feet
Latitude: 48.0407
Longitude: -90.3800
East Bearskin Lake - 64
Short fishing trip to Moon lake
Entry Date:
September 02, 2022
Entry Point:
East Bearskin Lake
Number of Days:
4
Group Size:
2
We got a late start, due to the quick planning (left Duluth at 11am). The standard stop at the ranger station proved to be somewhat eye opening when the ranger circled a spot on her map that represented two distinct things: 1. This is our destination, a home away from home if you will for the next three nights. 2. It’s ground zero for bear activity, of which there has been three sightings reported in the last 24 hours. Wonderful news…. With a stern warning not to return fish guts to the lake (which I still don’t understand), we headed north.
We joke that Mother Nature never agrees with us so it was a bit off putting when the wind direction favored our travel in our fully packed kayaks.
Our 1st portage of the trip proved to be a not so pleasant rocky, trip hazard voyage. With hills abundant, but some stairs to help, we passed through with minimal issue - besides comments on our poor level of fitness. Because of our weakness, as well as the time (now 630pm), we decided Moon lake would be our destination instead of the planned caribou lake.
Site:
We got lucky with the site. Medium sized site with many unobstructed views. Plenty of downed dead wood to keep warm in the evenings, great space for hammock employment (we forgot ours), and perfect food bag hanging space. The only less than great parts of this campsite would be it looked over a portage (not much traffic) and it faces southeast, so sun exposure in the evening was minimal. There were also some tame, somewhat aggressive chipmunk that would attempt to steal our food, A great site for this lake though. Would stay there again.
Attached you’ll find a neat log we found. Someone started to carve it. We contributed a bit and left it at the site. Feel free to whittle away! Would love to see how it progresses!
We unpacked, set up camp, ate steaks (always our first meal), and chatted by the fire with a drink.
Fishing was okay. Either of us are pro fishermen, but we certainly put in our time and had bait in the water a lot. Bass seemed to want to jump in the boat. Nothing substantial in size, but if you like bass, this would be a lake to consider. Walleye and pike were more elusive. This wouldn’t be a recommended walleye or pike lake in my book (or blog). However, they are there. We caught 3 walleye (12-18ish inches) and two pike (20ish inches) over the whole trip.
We did explore the portage to get to caribou, just a hike to see the next lake. We ran into some other paddlers, who came from caribou and said it was super busy, all the sites taken, and very poor fishing. This, of course, made us feel better about our decision to stay on moon lake.
The rest of the day was filled with beautiful weather, good discussions, and lots of relaxation. We had tacos for dinner (I know, excessive, but so delicious), and went to bed early after a small fire.
We slept in! Usually not the case, but neither of us left the tent until after 9am. Gotta say, life away from the chaos and business of work, kids, and just busy life can defiantly be refreshing. We made some breakfast, had some instant coffee, and stared at the lake until we finally fished around noon. This is very unlike us, as we usually wake up and fish early, cut wood for fires, and fix up camp before noon. A super lazy and slow morning was fantastic. The afternoon was not busy either, just some fishing in the sun! Again, slow fishing, better towards the evening, but nothing to brag about. Dinner was brats over the fire, one of the easiest BWCA meals there is. Stars were amazing, but later found out we didn’t see the amazing northern lights that were present since we faced the wrong direction.
With a pretty easy clean up we decided to egress to Flour lake. We thought we’d try a different route to avoid the climb on the other portage. We were drastically mistaken as not only was it the same climb, but no stairs and a much smaller and rockier trail. Flour lake took us to East Bearskin lake, which is where this whole adventure started.