Hey Everyone,

I hope all is well, I am sure many of you are evaluating all the entry point options just like me :)

So, this year our crew has decided to shake things up a bit and go up the Gunflint Trail to enter the BWCA. I am pushing 10 years of BWCA visits and I have always gone through Ely, so I am excited to see some new places.

As I am planning my trip, I looking at the MN DNR fish survey results and I am very surprised to see how few of the lakes up near the Seagull outfitters are walleye lakes. One of the guys in our crew really wants to stay on a walleye lake (with day trips to Lake Trout lakes). I am wondering if I am just targeting the wrong area of the BWCA and maybe should refocus on a different area? right now that group of guys I go with are in "relatively" good shape, so we like our trip to take us a bit of the way in so that we avoid major crowds... point being, I am open to the idea of hard-to-get locations.

Thoughts on where we might go?

Thank you!
-Kevin

Ogish isnt too bad. Day trip to Kek or Gabi for trout. Or day trip to SAK for decent fishing.
For me, the better walleye fishing is back down the Trail and go in at Lizz and hit Meeds, Horseshoe, Caribou, Gaskin. Could day trip to Winchell for trout but its not that great of a trout lake

kpdoyle: " I am wondering if I am just targeting the wrong area of the BWCA and maybe should refocus on a different area? -Kevin"

I think the Gunflint side is better for walleye and lake trout compared to the Ely side. And larger-sized fish as well. IMO.

But our usual spring fishing trip is Quetico.

This walleye caught from shore on Red Rock Lake:

We did well on walleye on Red Rock and Alpine has a good walleye reputation.
SAC on Knife Lake also seems to put out a fair amount of eyes. On the East side of the road Caribou has a good reputation.

We went into Ogish and back last May. Found some nice big ones over a few days of fishing. Would’ve liked to get to SAK but it was too far for the group I had. From Ogish you could luck into a laker or day trip to Kek where there are more lakers supposedly.

I’ve heard that Alpine is a good walleye lake too but when we went thru from Seagull every single campsite was taken! Whereas on Ogish we only saw 1 camp site that was occupied.

We did marginally well on Maraboeuf, but worked really hard for the ones we got. It was all about timing.

We've caught some nice walleyes in Ottertrack and Sag.

We caught a few nice Walleye on Red Rock late May last year. We couldn’t find the Walleye on Alpine but crushed smallie and northern. We had good luck for lakers on Jasper. Fishing was all about timing. We found they were either on or off. Put in enough time and keep mixing it up til it works. When the window was on, fishing was stellar. We had 1-2 windows per day.