My wife and I are making a trip from Little Indian Sioux River/Pauness/Shell/Lynx/Ruby/Hustler/Oyster/Agnes/Nina Moose. We are going week before and after Labor Day. Trying to determine which lakes to camp on.

Wondering if there are lakes on the route that are better fishing than others?
On those lakes is there structure or spots that produce more?
Any better route suggestions from EP 14 to 16 we may want to consider?

Still have time to adjust how many days we spend on each lake and would like longer stays to be on better fishing lakes! We have backpacked all over the world and being from MN am super excited to get back to the BWCA!

Shell, Oyster(the only LT lake), Agnes and Nina Moose

Following as I plan to be in this area next spring. Also looking at the lakes more to the North like GoBe or LLC if anyone has anything to add about those.

All good.....Shell-very good, Lynx-very good, Hustler-smb and fat NP, Oyster-smb, LT, Agnes-very good, Nina Moose-walleyes if you find them

I would give Lynx a long look. Great campsites and fishing.

Good info. These forums are great. I am looking at Google Earth to identify structure or potential fishing spots to be as efficient as possible, but still tough to really tell. Any particular parts of the lakes to target? Read that on Shell, near the portage to Heritage there is good activity. Drift from south to north with deep water rigs on Oyster. Any other recommendations along the route?

Have a mix of top water rapalas, deeper divers, spoons and meps. Jigs, floating jigs, slip bobber set up and Gulp Alive worms and minnows.

Be prepared for more crowds than normal. We went in on a Thursday (8/13) and did not pass anyone on their way out. We wanted to go to Heritage or Lynx. Only the campsite by portage in Shell was open at that time. Nothing was open on Heritage and we saw 7 canoes either day-tripping or fishing between the portage from Shell and the portage to Lynx (just the southern part of Heritage).

We have made this trip often in the past and rarely saw more than 1 or 2 canoes on Heritage.

Made the portage to Lynx. All campsites were full. Agawato's 1 campsite was open and the campsite at Little Shell was open. Otherwise, only option was to backtrack to Shell and hope something had opened or to take the long portage to Ruby and then Hustler, which was not something we wanted.

So, be mindful of the number of canoes you pass on the way in that are headed out and the number of open campsites as you travel. We stayed until Monday and on Sunday, virtually every campsite was open. So, better to take a campsite earlier in situations like we encountered than try to get to an ideal location with few options.

Perhaps with more people in BWCA due to COVID-19, they tended to enter early in the week and stay longer.

Good info. We enter the Weds before Labor Day, leave the weekend after Labor Day. Hoping traffic is lighter with school starting up. Did you fish? If so, how was it?